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In your example, the difference between the high altitude person and you would be too small to matter if you weren't a mountain climbers or professional athlete

In your example, the difference between the high altitude person and you would be too small to matter if you weren't a mountain climbers or professional athlete. So for most people altitude differences are to small to matter but they do matter to certain subgroups. The analog here from Scott's article is that he mentions that this skew towards first-borns might be STEM specific. A 1.5 point difference in knowledge based (creative) careers might matter. But most people work in training based (vocational) careers, and a 1.5 point difference might not matter there.

paganel 9y ago
> the difference between the high altitude person and you would be too small to matter if you weren't a mountain climbers or professional athlete. I just said that it matters for sea-level people who have to perform physical tasks in La Paz, a populous city, nonetheless. I gave Messi's example because that was the easiest one, but I could have given an example of a Bolivian guy moving to La Paz from the country's planes area and trying to find a job physically carrying stuff in a warehouse. His rate of work would be much diminished compared to a guy born and raised in La Paz, so, presumably, his pay would also be lower. It matters because it shows that our bodies have changed and are indeed different based on certain geographical circumstances, but because some crazy guys in the late 19th-early 20th century have decided to kill millions of people based on some other differences that means that it has become tabu to discuss about this.