5 ms·

Agreed. Anecdotal: I helped my dad a few years ago do a lot of genealogy. He had pictures going back to the late 1800s for one branch of the family that just a

Agreed. Anecdotal: I helped my dad a few years ago do a lot of genealogy. He had pictures going back to the late 1800s for one branch of the family that just arrived from Ireland. Most of the men were shirtless and you could count every rib. There was very little muscle.

maxerickson 2y ago
Y'all are talking about noise inside of stage 2 from the link. A lot of it just being due to economics.
- samus 2y ago
  People not having time to train their bodies higher up the scale is also just due to economics.
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    Maybe? I feel like an awful lot of people today, especially in wealthy countries, have at least 7 hours a week of time that they do not carefully allocate. Many have much more than that.
    - brodouevencode 2y ago
      Wealthier people (presumably the ones who have more free time) in first world countries tend to be the healthier ones.
      - maxerickson 2y ago
        Right, and that effect is comparably enormous when you look at the period when the steam engine was taking hold and today. We are unimaginably wealthy compared to then.
  - kragen 2y ago
    People do have time. Over the last year I've roughly doubled my pushup strength, with very visible resulting muscular hypertrophy in my triceps, back, and shoulders (even though I was optimizing for strength rather than hypertrophy). The total time taken over that year has been about 6 hours: three 40-second sets of pushups every two days, with 2⅓ minute breaks between sets, which I'm not counting because I can post to HN and drink yerba mate during that time. This works out to one minute per day. There is literally nobody in the world who has less than 6 hours of free time per year. This is not a matter of economics; no economic system is so all-pervading as to sell every single minute of your day. I started out doing three sets of knee pushups to failure, and once I reached ten reps I switched to real pushups; once I reach failure on the real pushups (3–5 reps in the first set, sometimes as little as 2 in the last) I continue with knee pushups until failure. This takes about 40 seconds and seems to be a good balance of intensity and safety. The only equipment it requires is a reasonably clean floor or patch of grass, so you don't have to buy equipment, pay a gym membership, or even walk to a different part of the house. You can do it on the train while commuting to work, at the bus stop while awaiting the bus, in the break room at the office, outside your car in the parking lot, in the park when you walk the dog, or in your bedroom after getting up, unless your hoarding problem is even worse than mine. I'm slightly obese (109kg) like most of the population in rich countries, and I think my state of muscular development was about average in that context. Calisthenics permits increasing resistance to almost arbitrarily high levels, so you can keep the intensity high and the workouts short even as you get stronger. Stronger people would presumably need to invest more time than one minute per day to make further progress, perhaps as much as ten minutes or even more, but those aren't the people we're talking about. So what's missing? It might be inspiration, discipline, executive function, hope, knowledge, wisdom, or some combination of these. But it's not time or money.
    - samus 2y ago
      I fully agree that these simple exercises can get you quite far. I have made similarly good experiences by aiming for 50 cleanly executed push-ups per day. But you will soon have to diversify them, though that requires simple equipment only: a high horizontal bar for pull-ups and dead hangs is surprisingly hard to find outside of a gym. Aerobic exercise, which should really also be part of a workout routine, is significantly more time-consuming though, and requires proper equipment. Most importantly a new pair of good running shoes every year or so to reduce wear on the joints. So yes, even with kids or similarly demanding circumstances it should be possible to accommodate moderate exercise in most peoples lives. But the result probably won't be body-builder levels of muscular development.
- bradarner 2y ago
  Agreed, there is an economic factor here but I would see that is highly correlated with the Kardashev grade of a civilization. The conjecture of the OP is that higher Kardashev grade will result in higher atrophy. My claim is that we seem to find precisely the opposite to be true. I'm not making a counter-argument to the OP's position. I'm only making a refutation of the conjecture.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Economics, famine, religious upheaval, war - all factors that have kept people starving and pushed down the scale.
lmm 2y ago
People who fled a famine so severe that it lead over 100% of that country's population to emigrate are surely a representative sample of a normal physique from that era, especially immediately after a week-long ocean crossing.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Name a span of time in which there wasn't war, starvation, or economic reasons that would have produced any emaciated set of people.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Of course most eras have famine victims, once-in-a-century famines happen more or less every century after all. But treating those famine victims as representatives of a normal physique for that era would be foolish, in any era.

maxerickson 2y ago

Y'all are talking about noise inside of stage 2 from the link. A lot of it just being due to economics.

samus 2y ago
People not having time to train their bodies higher up the scale is also just due to economics.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  Maybe? I feel like an awful lot of people today, especially in wealthy countries, have at least 7 hours a week of time that they do not carefully allocate. Many have much more than that.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    Wealthier people (presumably the ones who have more free time) in first world countries tend to be the healthier ones.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      Right, and that effect is comparably enormous when you look at the period when the steam engine was taking hold and today. We are unimaginably wealthy compared to then.
- kragen 2y ago
  People do have time. Over the last year I've roughly doubled my pushup strength, with very visible resulting muscular hypertrophy in my triceps, back, and shoulders (even though I was optimizing for strength rather than hypertrophy). The total time taken over that year has been about 6 hours: three 40-second sets of pushups every two days, with 2⅓ minute breaks between sets, which I'm not counting because I can post to HN and drink yerba mate during that time. This works out to one minute per day. There is literally nobody in the world who has less than 6 hours of free time per year. This is not a matter of economics; no economic system is so all-pervading as to sell every single minute of your day. I started out doing three sets of knee pushups to failure, and once I reached ten reps I switched to real pushups; once I reach failure on the real pushups (3–5 reps in the first set, sometimes as little as 2 in the last) I continue with knee pushups until failure. This takes about 40 seconds and seems to be a good balance of intensity and safety. The only equipment it requires is a reasonably clean floor or patch of grass, so you don't have to buy equipment, pay a gym membership, or even walk to a different part of the house. You can do it on the train while commuting to work, at the bus stop while awaiting the bus, in the break room at the office, outside your car in the parking lot, in the park when you walk the dog, or in your bedroom after getting up, unless your hoarding problem is even worse than mine. I'm slightly obese (109kg) like most of the population in rich countries, and I think my state of muscular development was about average in that context. Calisthenics permits increasing resistance to almost arbitrarily high levels, so you can keep the intensity high and the workouts short even as you get stronger. Stronger people would presumably need to invest more time than one minute per day to make further progress, perhaps as much as ten minutes or even more, but those aren't the people we're talking about. So what's missing? It might be inspiration, discipline, executive function, hope, knowledge, wisdom, or some combination of these. But it's not time or money.
  - samus 2y ago
    I fully agree that these simple exercises can get you quite far. I have made similarly good experiences by aiming for 50 cleanly executed push-ups per day. But you will soon have to diversify them, though that requires simple equipment only: a high horizontal bar for pull-ups and dead hangs is surprisingly hard to find outside of a gym. Aerobic exercise, which should really also be part of a workout routine, is significantly more time-consuming though, and requires proper equipment. Most importantly a new pair of good running shoes every year or so to reduce wear on the joints. So yes, even with kids or similarly demanding circumstances it should be possible to accommodate moderate exercise in most peoples lives. But the result probably won't be body-builder levels of muscular development.
bradarner 2y ago
Agreed, there is an economic factor here but I would see that is highly correlated with the Kardashev grade of a civilization. The conjecture of the OP is that higher Kardashev grade will result in higher atrophy. My claim is that we seem to find precisely the opposite to be true. I'm not making a counter-argument to the OP's position. I'm only making a refutation of the conjecture.
brodouevencode 2y ago
Economics, famine, religious upheaval, war - all factors that have kept people starving and pushed down the scale.

lmm 2y ago

People who fled a famine so severe that it lead over 100% of that country's population to emigrate are surely a representative sample of a normal physique from that era, especially immediately after a week-long ocean crossing.

brodouevencode 2y ago
Name a span of time in which there wasn't war, starvation, or economic reasons that would have produced any emaciated set of people.
- lmm 2y ago
  Of course most eras have famine victims, once-in-a-century famines happen more or less every century after all. But treating those famine victims as representatives of a normal physique for that era would be foolish, in any era.