Comparing cycling to the auto world short cranks would be like a car in the LeMans vs long cranks for the car in the Indianapolis 500... taking advantage of A.I., for us older folk dealing with a range of joint problems, shorter cranks may offer some advantages, e.g.,

Joint Health & Smoothness: They reduce the range of motion for your knees and hips, decreasing joint stress and preventing injury over long distances.

High Cadence: Like a Le Mans engine that must balance high power with long-term reliability, short cranks favor a higher, smoother cadence over raw grinding torque.

For any who may be interested.. beginning with 165 mm cranks (which are not hard to come by and relatively inexpensive) you can easily experiment with even shorter cranks by fitting the 165mm cranks with crank length shorteners, e.g., some studies have a lot of positive things to say about going as low as a 145mm crank length but going even shorter is possible if a joint issue demands it. Using crank shorteners does increase the Q-factor but I never found that to be an issue and may be of some benefit if you ride in ordinary shoes which generally have a wider heel than cycling shoes.