3 ms·

Thanks for your insightful comment. As I stated in a comment below, balding can result in disadvantages to ones career and partnership options that are all but

Thanks for your insightful comment. As I stated in a comment below, balding can result in disadvantages to ones career and partnership options that are all but real. A number of studies suggest that there is a not insignificant number of men (and of course women) that have psychological issues like anxiety and depression stemming from going bald and I don't think anyone is in a position to easily dismiss that.[1] 1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1261195/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1261195/

EForEndeavour 7y ago
I think one valuable takeaway from that study and from discussions about altering one's appearance is that some people literally aren't fine just the way they are. Looks are not merely superficial attributes. Your appearance (actually, society's response to your appearance) heavily affects your mental health, happiness, career development, and relationship prospects. Appearance is quite literally life-altering.
- rocgf 7y ago
  What you said should be blindingly obvious to everybody, and yet some people feel the need to prove how enlightened they are by saying things like "the baldness doesn't define you". Sure, it does not define you, but it can definitely be a huge kick in the groin for your self-esteem. And all the people saying that those resources could have been used somewhere else are technically right, but likely hypocritical or, at the very least, cognitively dissonant. A large portion of the people on HN are working in IT, and a lot of them are working on either CRUD apps or, maybe worse, on figuring out ways to squeeze more revenue from private user data via ads because, like it or not, that's where the big money is. To other industries, we are also resources being wasted because we could all use our brains to computationally tackle medicine, climate change etc., but we go for the well paid hedge fund 0-sum game.

EForEndeavour 7y ago

I think one valuable takeaway from that study and from discussions about altering one's appearance is that some people literally aren't fine just the way they are. Looks are not merely superficial attributes. Your appearance (actually, society's response to your appearance) heavily affects your mental health, happiness, career development, and relationship prospects. Appearance is quite literally life-altering.

rocgf 7y ago
What you said should be blindingly obvious to everybody, and yet some people feel the need to prove how enlightened they are by saying things like "the baldness doesn't define you". Sure, it does not define you, but it can definitely be a huge kick in the groin for your self-esteem. And all the people saying that those resources could have been used somewhere else are technically right, but likely hypocritical or, at the very least, cognitively dissonant. A large portion of the people on HN are working in IT, and a lot of them are working on either CRUD apps or, maybe worse, on figuring out ways to squeeze more revenue from private user data via ads because, like it or not, that's where the big money is. To other industries, we are also resources being wasted because we could all use our brains to computationally tackle medicine, climate change etc., but we go for the well paid hedge fund 0-sum game.