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RobinZ comments on Shortness is now a treatable condition - Less Wrong
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Few traits that determine social status are easy to manipulate. Those that are tend to get universally manipulated away, and nobody even thinks about them much.
For example for some reasons in this culture strong natural body smell decreases social status significantly. And because it's so easy to manipulate, virtually everyone fixes this problem with regular showers, deodorants and such, to the point where it's rare to find a person who doesn't.
After all the easy ones get manipulated by everyone, the only determinants of social status that differentiate people are those that are difficult to manipulate - like being poor, or short, or ugly, or black. The situation only changes when technology makes manipulation easier, or signals change for any reason.
In case you don't believe being black lowers your social status in this culture, even four year old black children know it.
I appreciate the link, but this isn't a matter of whether being black lowers social status - what I disputed is the original assertion that illness is defined by the effect on social status.
You're right that most people will undergo procedures to eliminate undesirable traits and create or enhance desirable ones - your body odor example is apt - but that's a lifestyle choice.
It seems there's a misunderstanding here. I was talking about sufficient, not necessary conditions. There are obviously proper types of "illness" like cancer, flu, and such.
And on top of that, treatable things that lower social status, are very often added to the list. Can you think of many counterexamples?
To be quite frank, my chief objection was that expressions like "such-and-such is a disease" have been cover for prejudices in the past - for example, regarding homosexuality. But more to the point, race is seen as an intrinsic property of the person which cannot be eliminated even if the actual markers of race are eliminated (witness the one-sixteenth rules) - which would make it a genetic disorder which can only be managed, not eliminated. A "blackness" which is treatable is so different from the modern, Western sociological phenomenon we call "race" that it doesn't make sense to talk about it.
So it's a poor example that makes people uncomfortable, in sum.