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I'm perfectly willing to believe it. From an Occam's razor perspective, exercise most directly and clearly is wear and tear. Stories about how the body overcome
by Aron 9y ago
I'm perfectly willing to believe it. From an Occam's razor perspective, exercise most directly and clearly is wear and tear. Stories about how the body overcome and benefits from that are more complicated, hence more likely wrong.
- 3131s 9y agoI don't see it as wear and tear. If you exercise correctly, everything from your bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles will become stronger. The athleticism and strength that come from exercising will be beneficial for aging people in preventing and recovering from accidents. Not to discount the possibility of harmful effects, but the other benefits of intense exercise (especially cognitive health benefits) are easily worth it for me.
- ramparrt 9y agoExactly this. Training principles are built upon the theory of supercompensation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation) - by using something you make it weaker and your body makes it stronger.
- Aron 9y agoIt's two separate things. The exercise is most directly damaging. The repair and improve process is a response. Our experience with things like bench press shows the response generally works on the measure of lifting iron. However, it's simpler and more demonstrable that exercise damages all your parts, than the theory that all your parts can be repaired and improved. Hence perhaps arthritic wear and tear, or damage to some part of the heart, etc.
- AppeasingRoko 9y agoAn entirely sedentary lifestyle has incredibly high mortality. Similarly so for extreme exercise/steroid abuse. By definition, there is a point in between which maximises longevity on average. This may not be the same as the point which maximises quality of life. How exactly does exercise "damage all your parts"? You need proof to back up that bizarre claim. Humans are evolutionarily designed to be long distance athletes.
- moretai 9y agoLifting weights literally shreds the muscle fibers. You eat to recover the damage your body underwent. Diet is 80%. Exercise is 10%. Sleep is 10%.
- candiodari 9y agoA LOT of functions of your body work by simply accepting damage and working around it. That's how your muscles build strength: first cells overexert themselves and a portion of them die. If this happens a few times the other cells will overcompensate while replacing them and you become stronger, up to a point. Both processes have both short term and long term cost and accelerate senescence. More cells need more replacing under normal circumstances and this is limited by your genes. The absolute number of cells that will ever get replaced in your muscles is strictly limited in what is probably a measure against cancer. So increasing strength in muscles brings the day you get cancer forward. Not by much. To a point this can be a worthwhile trade off, as it improves other aspects of your body. But if you need or use food additives, or, god help you, steroids, you're far past that point. In the short term over exerting muscles releases toxins, and over taxes your liver, heart, sometimes lungs, pancreas, and more. Needless to say this can trigger problems, and cause cell death in those organs too. And lastly physically stressing your body can and will of course damage it. Even when there aren't large scale injuries there is damage. Any exercise will cause blood vessel ruptures. Will cause cell deaths due to crushing. It will bend or reshape your bones. Minimally, but nonzero. Of course, having a bmi of 35 will do cause more of this stress.
- AppeasingRoko 9y agoYeah exactly, that's why people who study at university are dumber, because they wear out their brain!
- AppeasingRoko 9y agoAlso, the worst use of Occam's razor I've ever seen. By your logic, superficial observation and intuitive models of reality are more likely right than in depth, much more-complicated science. How is a process of building muscle through exercise, which humans have been doing for hundreds of years, and which is extremely well understood by modern science more likely wrong than a bizarre metaphorical similarity to how physical objects degrade due to stress? Use it or lose it is our latest understanding of both the mind and the body.
- Aron 9y agoPhysical objects degrading under use by natural forces, is a common pattern and all a part of entropy and so on. We also happen to be physical objects. We can propose, and we know it's true that the body has repair mechanisms. However, it is a far more complicated effort to repair everything than to damage everything. Therefore, one should be open to establishing where the burden of proof lies, so that we know how to process the science, which tends to be rather unconvincing, frequently contradictory, etc. when it comes to issues like this.
- AppeasingRoko 9y agoOkay, I am happy to leave this part of the discussion. I think biological processes are highly distinguishable from non-biological ones, however (i.e. heavy brain usage is highly beneficial). However, the article just says minimum exercise should be maintained for minimum entropy... there's no analysis as to why minimum entropy is a good thing. Longevity and wellbeing are complicated, multifactorial goals, and are certainly not determined by something as reductive as "biological entropy".