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I think the problem is that our civilization is built in the idea of comfort and economic specialization. I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of

• GigabyteCoin 12y ago
  >I don't think our bodies are prepared That may be true, but they will be soon enough thanks to evolution. I am not advocating inactivity, in fact I enjoy walking every day very much.
  • magmadiver 12y ago
    >soon ... >evolution So, a few million years?
    • philh 12y ago
      Evolution isn't that slow. Homo sapiens is only about 250,000 years old.
      • magmadiver 12y ago
        I exaggerated for comical effect.
      • Retra 12y ago
        'Homo sapiens' is a very rough category. If you would call a 250,000 year-old animal a homo sapiens, you'd probably call its grandparents one too. Time-frames used this way are only really applicable to talking about some static history, not active evolutionary processes. Humans will still be Homo Sapiens in 1 million years as long as we still call them that. In other words, "how old" homo sapiens is is a rather arbitrary matter of convention, so it doesn't make a good argument.
        • philh 12y ago
          > If you would call a 250,000 year-old animal a homo sapiens, you'd probably call its grandparents one too. Sure, and conditional on that I'd probably call their grandparents H. sapiens too, and conditional on that, probably also their grandparents. But it doesn't take that many generations before all these "probably"s multiply out to a "probably not". I don't think the distinction between homo sapiens and not-homo sapiens is so fuzzy that we can't distinguish between evolution working on 250,000 and 1,000,000 year timescales.
          • Retra 12y ago
            My point is that we distinguish species based upon their features, not timescale. So you cannot use this timescale-based differentiation to make a good argument to counter a feature-based differentiation. How many generations would it take for some evolved feature to become part of homo sapiens has nothing to do with how many features are needed to not be homo sapiens anymore. Other than the fact that they both take time and are statements about evolution, there is no relation between the two.
            • philh 12y ago
              > you cannot use this timescale-based differentiation to make a good argument to counter a feature-based differentiation. I don't know what you mean by this. I don't know what feature-based differentiation I'm supposedly countering, and I don't know what it would mean to counter it. What argument do you think I'm trying to make, exactly? Because all I'm saying is, "evolution makes significant changes on timescales significantly less than millions of years". This thread isn't actually particularly interesting to me, so I may tap out now.
• Matumio 12y ago
  I think the problem is that our civilization is built in the idea of comfort and economic specialization. Agree. But in order to change that, we have to change our value system. Worst thing, I'm almost sure that this accumulation of stress can slow down productivity. That's the worst thing? As you can see, productivity is still our highest value. Health and well-being are not worthy goals on their own, but they are pursued to get more productive.
  • jokoon 12y ago
    > If that's the worst thing, then productivity is still our highest value, and health comes second. But wouldn't better mental health increase productivity ? I mean a healthy horse might be more productive. Of course at some point, maybe better health doesn't increase productivity so much. But I tend to think that cerebral workers would work much better if they have less stress or better mental health.
    • collyw 12y ago
      Do we really need to increase productivity?
• stdbrouw 12y ago
  > I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of pattern where you stay inactive for 5 hours, while your brain is still very active, and stop to run non stop for 1 hour. Isn't that pretty similar to the lifestyle of a hunter? Short periods of very intense activity separated by long periods of inactivity?
  • matthewmacleod 12y ago
    That's a pretty good observation – I expect you're right, and it would probably play out like that in practice! Not sure of the background research though. Certainly there are likely to be complicating factors (e.g. the damage caused by sitting, specifically.)
  • kaybe 12y ago
    A common method seems to have been to just run after the animals slowly, so they can't rest but don't run yet, until they die from exhaustion. Our heat dissipation system is better than most animals, so it works better when it's hot. It's possible to do it alone, and hunt big animals with only a knife to kill them in the end, if you know what you're doing. However, it means you have to move for a long time.
    • adwn 12y ago
      This is called "persistence hunting" [1], and is still pursued by some hunter-gatherer cultures today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
  • rndn 12y ago
    Here are the recommendations from the Wikipedia page on Paleolithic lifestyle [1]: - Adopt a Paleolithic diet as much as possible: plenty of fruit, fish, vegetables, nuts, and meat while avoiding most forms of food not in existence in paleolithic time. It implies avoiding all processed food, and in particular junk food and food with a high glycemic load, such as sweets and cultivated crops like potatoes and cereal grains (in particular wheat). - Exercise frequently, but with a variety of durations and intensities (including rest periods) rather than doing always the same, extended routines in a gym or while jogging. - Perform a variety of complex "natural movements" (e.g. walking, running, jumping, crawling, climbing, carrying, throwing, swimming) that use the whole body rather than artificially constrained exercises that focus on specific muscles (like those afforded by most gym equipment). - Maximize contact with nature, e.g. by keeping plants, gardening, working with animals, hiking in the woods, or climbing trees (as also proposed by the biophilia philosophy). - Use a minimum of clothes and don't wear shoes: exposure to heat, cold, pressure, and other natural forces strengthens rather than weakens the body. - Expose yourself regularly to the sun or at least to natural light, to get sufficient vitamin D and prevent depression. - Try to sleep at least 8 hours a day, preferably in line with natural day-night rhythms (though people in pre-industrial societies do not sleep in contiguous blocks - see anthropology of sleep and segmented sleep). - Spend sufficient time relaxing, playing, and just "being in the present", without worrying about later. - Reduce overall levels of stress; avoid overworking in favor of downshifting and simple living. - Allow contact with dirt: soil contains plenty of beneficial bacteria that strengthen immunity. Eat fermented foods like sauerkraut, kim chi, kombucha, etc. Lifelong exposure to a variety of microbes may actually be necessary to prevent allergies and autoimmune diseases, as proposed by the hygiene hypothesis. - Rear children the way hunter-gatherers do: extended breast-feeding, carrying of babies on the body, co-sleeping, while allowing older children to play and explore autonomously. - Sit with legs level with rear end (essentially, in the squatting position), as people in indigenous tribes do. - Socialize and interact closely with a small group of real friends, instead of staying alone or "networking" with thousands of superficial acquaintances. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_lifestyle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_lifestyle
• rndn 12y ago
  > but My ankles Startes swelling after two hours Try it with an anti-fatigue mat, they do wonders. I think, it takes about eight weeks to get used to the new position. Definitely talk to a doctor regarding the swelling first though.
• learnstats2 12y ago
  >I don't think our bodies are prepared to that sort of pattern where you stay inactive for 5 hours, while your brain is still very active, and stop to run non stop for 1 hour. I disagree strongly with this part of what you're saying. This seems exactly what human civilisation has traditionally done: conserve physical energy until it's the right time to hunt, do some very intensive hunting, spend a lot of mental energy figuring out better tools and systems. The article measures activity as: cycling, running, swimming, etc. That's intensive activity. Missing that out had a higher risk of death.
  • lloeki 12y ago
    Possibly, but this pattern has been shifted at such a dramatical rate since the last 10k years and the advent of agriculture that evolution and genetic selection may not had time to catch up. It's even possible that some forms of applied science (via medical care) is introducing a bias against natural selection by relieving some pressure bu it's possibly too short a timespan to judge that, although evolution sometimes can operate at very short timescales. (Short term I'm OK with that but lacking data I can't decide if long term this is good for us humans... Well we'll end up merging with our metal overlords anyway!).
  • jokoon 12y ago
    > This seems exactly what human civilisation has traditionally done: conserve physical energy until it's the right time to hunt, do some very intensive hunting, spend a lot of mental energy figuring out better tools and systems. Civilization is pretty young when you compare it to the evolution of humans. I think you're also missing out the difference of energy spent when comparing hunting versus agriculture. Even when you're not hunting, there is still a lot of physical activity around it. Not to mention automation.
• brational 12y ago
  > Maybe forcing people to work in 2 or 3 hour sessions, and ask them to go walk for 15min, might have some positive effects. It's kind of funny that you put it this way because that is exactly what people do at my job and it is encouraged. A walking break every hour or two is accepted, managers do it, we were even encouraged to install something on our computers that would remind us every X minutes. And I work for a giant corporate entity which you would think would never encourage this. That said, when you're working on a hard problem its very easy to lose track of time. I kick myself on the days where my only walking break is at lunch.