3 ms·

I think the main appeal of communities like this is that there is a central place to cheer on people who are trying to get into improving their health. You see

by kmfrk 14y ago

I think the main appeal of communities like this is that there is a central place to cheer on people who are trying to get into improving their health. You see something similar going on at Pinterest, which, for all its scientifically debunked advice, tries to encourage and inspire people to work out. It doesn't matter how good your workout and diet regimen looks on paper, if you have to multiply that result with an enthusiasm of zero.

petercooper 14y ago
I was thinking this. That is, even if a lot of the advice is bunk, as long as it's not harmful, anything that gets people actually thinking "Yeah, I can do this!" and giving it a go has to be valuable. For example, if my prime goal in life were to get as many people coding as possible, I'd rather have an eager but bad VBScript developer I could train up than someone who doesn't really care about programming either way. Ditto for fitness, perhaps.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  Since fitness people usually start from a very, very bad level of exercise and dieting, you'd have to do some seriously stupid stuff for the net effect of your regimen not to be a big improvement regardless. Compared to programming or anything else, it's not that important to use the perfect way to improve most of the time. Especially when all the research happens at the cost of actually doing what you set out to. So what if you can't burn fat from targeted areas on your body, when your overall weight decreases and will eventually shed that tummy fat you've been bothered by. This is one of the reasons I like Hacker News as a community a lot. I think it sometimes makes starting a company sound way too easy (and buzzwordy), but there are a lot of people here who would never have started their companies, if they hadn't found a community here to cheer them on.

3 ms·

I think the main appeal of communities like this is that there is a central place to cheer on people who are trying to get into improving their health. You see

by kmfrk 14y ago

petercooper 14y ago
I was thinking this. That is, even if a lot of the advice is bunk, as long as it's not harmful, anything that gets people actually thinking "Yeah, I can do this!" and giving it a go has to be valuable. For example, if my prime goal in life were to get as many people coding as possible, I'd rather have an eager but bad VBScript developer I could train up than someone who doesn't really care about programming either way. Ditto for fitness, perhaps.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  Since fitness people usually start from a very, very bad level of exercise and dieting, you'd have to do some seriously stupid stuff for the net effect of your regimen not to be a big improvement regardless. Compared to programming or anything else, it's not that important to use the perfect way to improve most of the time. Especially when all the research happens at the cost of actually doing what you set out to. So what if you can't burn fat from targeted areas on your body, when your overall weight decreases and will eventually shed that tummy fat you've been bothered by. This is one of the reasons I like Hacker News as a community a lot. I think it sometimes makes starting a company sound way too easy (and buzzwordy), but there are a lot of people here who would never have started their companies, if they hadn't found a community here to cheer them on.