The three foot solution

[CplFerro]

Someone suggested this to me a while ago, and I don't have a decent response. Perhaps someone else does.

The suggestion is, wouldn't the world be better off if we embarked on a global project to change human beings, making all subsequent generations only three feet high? -- similar to those florensis people/creatures found in Malaysia or thereabouts a few years ago. The argument goes, this would save on resources as less material would need to go into housing, people would be eating less food, etc. - everyone wins.

The question begged is, would this be possible? What comes to mind is that such people wouldn't be able to operate heavy industry, or light industry for that matter, which rely on a certain economy of scale. For instance, wouldn't such small people have a hard time smelting steel? But, I'm not sure. What do you think?

 

[JamesDillon]

I think there are a lot of genetic improvements that could be made, but never will because enforcing the reproductive discipline required to implement them would violate modern conceptions of human rights. For example, we could breed smarter, healthier, longer-lived human beings by permitting only smart, healthy people to reproduce, after a certain age (say starting at 30 and raising progressively in each successive generation). That will never happen because it would be unacceptably oppressive to permit only a small segment of the population to have children, even if it would ultimately benefit the species as a whole.

 

[Jimbo07]

For example, we could breed smarter, healthier, longer-lived human beings by permitting only smart, healthy people to reproduce, ...

it would be unacceptably oppressive to permit only a small segment of the population to have children, even if it would ultimately benefit the species as a whole.

Okay. Allow the masses to get their freak on. Allow the rich to genetically engineer their children to be super smart.

It will all balance out when these uber academics are the first against the wall when the revolution comes...

 

[CplFerro]

Yes, I know there would be great problems in implementing a switch to three-foot human beings as the standard, but that's not my question. My question is, would society be able to function with everyone only three feet high?

 

[JamesDillon]

Yes, I know there would be great problems in implementing a switch to three-foot human beings as the standard, but that's not my question. My question is, would society be able to function with everyone only three feet high?

I recall that one of the arguments of H. floresiensis skeptics was that a hominid of that size would lack the brain capacity to invent or make tools. I have no idea how valid that argument is, but it would certainly be something to consider.

 

[BobK]

Certainly. Happen all the time.
Three foot adults exist now, and function quite well. Three foot high children also function quite well. Scale of common objects may make things more awkward occasionally. If so, change the object scale.

 

[CplFerro]

Dear Bob,

Would that change of scale work across the board? In a steel mill, for instance? Or corn cultivation? Or petroleum production? - think of all the extra steel that would be wasted making tiny oil drums. Aren't there some things that we simply need 6-foot humans to do?

Cpl Ferro

 

[Dogdoctor]

While it might be possible with a world dictator situation that doesn't exist and you won't find people willing or able to give up their rights for the sake of future generations. There are ways to work around all the other limitations you mentioned but human nature won't let it happen.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Certainly. Happen all the time.
Three foot adults exist now, and function quite well. Three foot high children also function quite well.

Children do not function very well compared to adults. Midgets have a lot of health problems, and three feet tall is short, even for midgets. The human body plan simply isn't built to work at three feet. Their legs are too short to run or walk normally, their internal organs are compressed, etc. I don't see how it would reduce consumption much, either. And if three feet is the norm, would that means that two feet would become a common height?

 

[Yahzi]

What comes to mind is that such people wouldn't be able to operate heavy industry, or light industry for that matter, which rely on a certain economy of scale.

Not at 3 feet.

3 inches, maybe... when you get so small that the surface tension of water is significant, then you will notice some problems. But people who are 1/4 the mass of existing people will not find physics very different.

The economies of scale you are talking about are an economic issue, not a physics issue. The Picts smelted steel in coffee-cups.

 

[Yahzi]

but human nature won't let it happen.

As long as chicks want to date dudes taller than themselves... ya, you're spot on.

 

[American]

The question begged is, would this be possible?

To "beg a question" is a term of English, one that makes a logical fallacy as in this example:

"Girls are dumb."

Why is that?

"Uhh. They are dumb because they are stupid."​

The sexist pig in our example has "begged the question" by re-stating a view instead of explaining it (the question being why?).

When in doubt, say that something "raises the question" in order to appease the language police.

 

[ynot]

Someone suggested this to me a while ago, and I don't have a decent response. Perhaps someone else does.

The suggestion is, wouldn't the world be better off if we embarked on a global project to change human beings, making all subsequent generations only three feet high? -- similar to those florensis people/creatures found in Malaysia or thereabouts a few years ago. The argument goes, this would save on resources as less material would need to go into housing, people would be eating less food, etc. - everyone wins.

The question begged is, would this be possible? What comes to mind is that such people wouldn't be able to operate heavy industry, or light industry for that matter, which rely on a certain economy of scale. For instance, wouldn't such small people have a hard time smelting steel? But, I'm not sure. What do you think?

They tried "apartheight" in South Africa and it wasn't popular with the masses.

 

[Art Vandelay]

The economies of scale you are talking about are an economic issue, not a physics issue.

But the whole point is to create economic benefits.

The Picts smelted steel in coffee-cups.

They had coffee cups?

 

[Scott Haley]

Breeding for traits is done by in-breeding. People create traits that they want in animals through making closely related animals mate. My sociology teacher said that to make a separate breed of humans like the breeds of dog that we have, to American Kennel Club standards, would require the breeding of parents to children in a family, exclusively, for over a century. We don't want to do that.

Transgenic technology may make old fashioned selective breeding obselete. Maybe we could invent a retrovirus that makes the women who catch it bear pygmy babies.

Instead of saving resources by making the people smaller, we're improving technology to make the resources bigger. Better and cheaper materials for making things, improved oil drilling and mining technology, robots to build things for us, improving farming technology and transgenic crops, and so on.

 

[blutoski]

Someone suggested this to me a while ago, and I don't have a decent response. Perhaps someone else does.

The suggestion is, wouldn't the world be better off if we embarked on a global project to change human beings, making all subsequent generations only three feet high? -- similar to those florensis people/creatures found in Malaysia or thereabouts a few years ago. The argument goes, this would save on resources as less material would need to go into housing, people would be eating less food, etc. - everyone wins.

The question begged is, would this be possible? What comes to mind is that such people wouldn't be able to operate heavy industry, or light industry for that matter, which rely on a certain economy of scale. For instance, wouldn't such small people have a hard time smelting steel? But, I'm not sure. What do you think?

There is a type of dwarfism where people are perhaps around this height, and are quite normally proportioned, and have normal health and lifespans.

The problem, though, is the unspoken assumption that there would be any benefit to this. From our experience with dwarves, they eat almost as much as a non-dwarf, buy just as much real estate, and so on. They work exactly the same jobs as their non-dwarf peers, including manufacturing.

Gains would only be realized if people were limited to eating their minimal daily requirements, and need to be stacked like cordwood for some reason.

Not to mention the costs of retrofitting the planet.

There are much simpler and cheaper alternatives, such as managing population.

 

[Ririon]

The only problem is that the USA takes centuries to adopt any new standard. In this case, the USA would rule the world after a few generations since all other countries would be inhabited by tiny inbred people struggling to replace their entire infrastructure to fit the new standard people.

 

[politas]

Breeding for traits is done by in-breeding. People create traits that they want in animals through making closely related animals mate. My sociology teacher said that to make a separate breed of humans like the breeds of dog that we have, to American Kennel Club standards, would require the breeding of parents to children in a family, exclusively, for over a century. We don't want to do that.

I think your sociology teacher should stick to teaching sociology, and leave biological pronouncements to biologists. To make a separate breed of humans would not "require breeding of parents to children in a family, exclusively, for over a century", though that would certainly be a way to get fast results. Probably not successful results, though.

What it actually requires is genetic separation of a segment of population. As long as no genetic transfer occurs between the separated ppopulation and the remaining human race, and some artificial selection is succeddfully applied to the separated population, speciation will (eventually) occur.

If I were to guess at how long it would take, I think we're likely talking at least tens of thousands of years, but that's a pretty wild guess with almost no real basis in fact. I'm not qualified to make a good estimate.

 

[Pup]

The argument goes, this would save on resources as less material would need to go into housing, people would be eating less food, etc. - everyone wins.

This seems to be a thought experiment based on "what if everyone today were three feet tall?" If the change occurred instantly, with all artifacts scaled down to match, that's one thing. But when you start considering how it could be implemented as a global project over a long period of time, the flaw is in assuming the number of people remains the same.

Yes, if you have X number of people and Y amount of resources, it's possible that requiring the people to be smaller will raise the standard of living (in other words, make it seem like each person is getting relatively more food, more housing space, etc.)

But if you're talking about required breeding over many generations, there's no reason that X needs to remain constant. In fact, one would assume that the smaller people would continue to increase until they hit equilibrium with the resources in their environment, unless their population were artificially controlled. But if you have to artificially control numbers, there's no need to make people smaller. Keeping people the same size but decreasing their number will also raise the standard of living.

There's also the problem of assuming that the resources are finite. More efficient use of resources (which has been the historic answer to the problem) also raises the standard of living, even if the people are the same size and there's the same number of them.

 

[phildonnia]

I thought it sounded familiar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_O'Clock_(The_Twilight_Zone)