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Humans Simply 'Hardwired' For Laziness, Study Says (studyfinds.org)
Zorro shares a report from Study Finds: [...] A new study shows we may just have to chalk it up to our brains simply being hardwired to prefer hanging on the couch instead of the chin-up bar. Researchers from the University of British Columbia and University of Geneva sought to better understand the brain chemistry behind what they refer to as the "exercise paradox." This happens when people pledge to engage in regular physical fitness, but instead find themselves becoming less active. "Conserving energy has been essential for humans' survival, as it allowed us to be more efficient in searching for food and shelter, competing for sexual partners, and avoiding predators," explains Matthew Boisgontier, a postdoctoral researcher in UBC's brain behavior lab at the department of physical therapy, and senior author of the study, in a UBC release.
So Boisgontier and his co-authors recruited 29 young adults who wanted to improve the level of exercise in their lives to take part in a computerized test. The test required them to move a human figure on the screen either towards images of physical activities or away from images of sedentary activities that would randomly appear, and then again vice versa. Participants were hooked up to an electroencephalograph to monitor their brain activity during the exercise. The results showed that participants tended to move towards the active images or away from the sedentary ones at the fastest rates. "We found that participants took 32 milliseconds less to move away from the sedentary image, which is considerable for a task like this," says study co-author Boris Cheval, of the University of Geneva, in a university release, adding that this finding went against the so-called exercise paradox.
So Boisgontier and his co-authors recruited 29 young adults who wanted to improve the level of exercise in their lives to take part in a computerized test. The test required them to move a human figure on the screen either towards images of physical activities or away from images of sedentary activities that would randomly appear, and then again vice versa. Participants were hooked up to an electroencephalograph to monitor their brain activity during the exercise. The results showed that participants tended to move towards the active images or away from the sedentary ones at the fastest rates. "We found that participants took 32 milliseconds less to move away from the sedentary image, which is considerable for a task like this," says study co-author Boris Cheval, of the University of Geneva, in a university release, adding that this finding went against the so-called exercise paradox.
I am fulfilling my intended role in the universe! Whoo hoo!
Obviously.
zzzz
We are like water, always seeking the path of lowest resistance. :) Hubris is one of the great skills in programming. (Larry Wall's Perl if I recall..?)
.. but I just didn't feel like it.
once more into the breach
That's why we're still running around naked with no space ships or computers or anything. Because we are lazy.
Where is Diogenes when you need to refute stupid fucking premises like this?
Food was scarce for the vast majority of our evolution. If you burned too many calories, you died of starvation, or ended up too skinny to be considered a viable mate. Thus, we are wired to hunt for shortcuts and get the most stuff with the least amount of effort.
(I just wish our stack engineer who piles layers of fads onto our stack had this "feature". The bastard seems to like typing...or watching us type.)
Table-ized A.I.
Someone can sum up the article please?
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux...
I cannot believe this story! I will write a stinging retort... sometime, maybe later if I feel like it. Or maybe not. Whatever. I have other things to do. I am not actually doing any of them, I am just watching videos on YouTube and writing snarky ironic comments on slashdot... damn, maybe they ARE right.
Some of us are wired for hard work and combat. When the wars come, you fat fcks will be killed first.
Clothes make it EASIER to stay warm. We can be warm sitting on our butt instead of needing to exercise or otherwise burn calories to stay warm. Clothes help us be lazy.
Computers make things easier. We can lazily click to have things delivered to our doorstep, rather than going to the immense effort of sitting in the car driving to the store. Computers help us be lazy.
We chose to build spaceships not because it is easy, but because it is hard ;) Actually at first we built rockets because we were afraid of the Russians. We're hard-wired for lazy, but we're also hard-wired to be powerfully motivated by fear. Fear overcomes laziness.
These days satellites do make things easier, no need to actually red a nap, we can let our phone read the directions out to us. We can be lazy.
'Humans Simply Hardwired For Laziness Says New Millennial Study' FIFY
Human beings aren't 'hardwired' for many behaviors - they are almost entirely dependent upon conditioning, human beings are endlessly adaptable. What this 'study' actually shows is that there is an entire generation or two that have seldom been challenged by life or by themselves in any meaningful way. This not a good thing.
Another scoop at 'Science 101', human are also hardwired to eat fast-food!! /Insert 'you don't say?' meme
I mean, seriously. Human (and all living organisms really) have evolved to survive as long as possible and for calories burning machine like our species, one of the challenge was to survive when food wasn't available. A then evolved to store fat, to love high calorie diet and to love 'not' wasting them when possible. That's how our body are made.
By chance, our brain is now smart enough to understand how dumb he really is. But take any animal (like my dumb cat), give him all the food of the world and he will get so fat that his paw won't touch the floor 'Garfield style' and he will die of thirst.
Elok
competing for sexual partners
Because you find so many more sexual partners hanging on your couch at home than when you are at the gym.
... are just so stories. Their sole criterion for believing is how believable they sound. They can explain everything, so they shed light on nothing. The leap of logic from the experiment they did to the conclusions they drew was, quite literally, mind boggling.
Sure we have a genetic predisposition to conserve energy, otherwise we'd walk ourselves into starvation. But that's not the same as saying we're born to be couch potatoes; if that were true then how do you explain the existence of marathon runners? You could just as easily argue that we evolved to chase down mammoths; we certainly have physical adaptations unique among land animals for long distance running.
The one obvious thing about human behavior is that it is tremendous flexible. Under the right circumstances a couch potato will become a marathon runner.
The "exercise paradox" usually refers to the fact that increasing physical activity does not, on its own, result in weight loss. That's not really a paradox, it's just a reflection of the fact that calorie consumption tends to naturally rise as our activity levels rise. The behavioral "exercise paradox" they're talking about here isn't a paradox either. It's just social psychology. It's well-established that telling people you are going to pursue a goal (like exercising more) actually reduces the chances of you taking concrete steps toward that goal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So are all other animals. Except squirrels. I swear to God, these things most be permenantly plugged in to 120.
In a perfect demonstration of laziness, rather than find a new topic to discuss the SAME SLASHDOT EDITOR allowed a submission about the SAME RESEARCH by the SAME SUBMITTER but merely from a different and rather tardy source almost a month later. Way to prove the point, guys!
The parent's point plus the sample size here is completely ridiculous. You cant draw any meaningful conclusions off those miniscule numbers.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
This physical continuum is geared for survival ! Who could have thought that...
Western society wants us to be consumers and sets everything in our lives to be geared to that is then bothered by why do people don't like effort after consuming their week according to someone elses wants. Weird
I've read before that humans are busier than beavers.
Humans like most creatures need rest.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
(n/t)
How bout all life? It is instinct to expend the least amount of resources/energy to get something done. Look at wildlife and the trails they make though the wilderness. to things like watering holes or what not. They dont purposely make trails that go up a hill or mountain instead of going around it, same thing with thick brush.
It isn't even that long ago in human time where one might not want to expend large amounts of energy to get something done, since one might have to hunt or trap their food, and depending on the region not know when one might be able to hunt or trap more. It's really only been in the last 2-3 generations where there are store shelves stocked with whatever you might want year round a few minutes drive away, maybe 1.5 generations where you could order things like pizza over the phone from home and not even a decade since you can get just about anything delivered in less than an hour though the internet/uber eats.
Will the rise of getting just about anything delivered whenever you want make people less lazy and more prone to do things like work out? who knows, probably not.
But I couldn't be bothered to read it.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once, during a job interview, I was asked the standard "what do you consider your strong points?" question. Impromptu, I replied: "Probably my strongest point is my laziness." The interviewer was appropriately shocked and asked me to expand. "Sure. I could do like the horse in Animal Farm and just 'work harder' but I'm always looking for ways to do things easier, faster, more consistently and with less work by me - Gerry Gilmore." Oddly enough, I got the job.
the less energy expended on any given thing, the more energy you have for noticing dangerous stuff and figuring out how to run away from said danger as fast as possible..
Is the reason I'm against things like Universal Basic Income.
Because, if you give some people the opportunity to simply do NOTHING for a living, nothing is EXACTLY what they'll do.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes, I'm work shy. Work adverse, to be accurate. And anyone who isn't is an idiot. Nobody in their right mind would willingly do something they don't want to do for no good reason whatsoever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
too lazy to find a mate so i found a dolphin toy and it works just fine
he likes to swim around there for a bit too before the big finale
Just stand near a place where they have parallel stairs and escalators, and watch people all crowd in front of the escalators. I have witnessed groups of people walking around the stairs so they can get in line to take the escalator down.
Evolution premiates systems that waste less energy and not retards who waste it for no apparent reason (i.e. a couple dozen of morons running after a spherical object for the entertainment of several thousand of other morons)... it's us humans who do that, not evolution. Oh, and that goes both ways: either wasting it because you exert yourself due to too much exercise, or you waste energy because you're in too awful shape that even getting up the sofa makes you heat up more than I do while running a marathon.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against exercise or sports (far from it... I bike to work every day, I exercise and keep myself in top shape)... but morons sitting on a stadium isn't much exercise (except for the faint of heart maybe), and those running like headless chickens after a ball are paid pornographic amounts of money for some idiotic reason that I cannot fathom (and I ventured in pro sports myself, back in the day).
I always knew Buckwheat wasn't a racist character! He was the best one!
Sensible people who understand that time is our most precious and limited resource will work for others only just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Any hours remaining after that need is met can be dedicated to favourite hobbies, pastimes, unpaid vocations or other personal interests --- that's called "Having a life".
If you don't understand that then you're either an employer who benefits from the depressed wages that come with a mass labour pool, which is the primary reason for promoting the work ethic, or you have fallen for it yourself.
Either way, labouring is a distressing waste of people's lives, and advocating that it should be normal in a modern technological society is a barbaric and unethical position.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
News at 11: the second law of thermodynamics (manifested via the principle of minimum energy) also applies to living organisms. We are not "lazy" -- we are doing everything we can to conserve energy. The human brain does the same.
I am officially a lazy fucker. In light of this pronouncement, I don't quite how to interpret these findings.
you'll wont be good in either of them if the only thing you do is sit on the couch all day.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
young adults who wanted to improve the level of exercise in their lives
Also I wondered if this meant that they wanted to "lose weight and get healthier" but weren't doing a good job to / not committed to it. If that's true, shouldn't they also have mixed in people who were fit and worked out regularly along with committed couch potatoes? It sounds like their test group was the "I want to lose weight but I don't like to exercise and I love cake!~" crowd.
but I just can't be bothered.
i love to lay in my hammock and slowly sip Southern Comfort
https://i.imgur.com/OT0cJi8.jp...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
—Robert Heinlein
Exercise is BORING! Dancing to live music was my favorite until I wore out my knees on the concete floors of the venue on Austin. Life is too short send time to do boring things, unless I getting paid.
That's why your mom just lays there like a starfish...
Perhaps the active pictures are easier to recognize as active? They're perhaps more colorful and striking with dynamic poses? Maybe its because the testing was done while the participants were sitting down? What happens if they do the same test while walking down a hallway or jogging slowly around a track?
That must be down in our lizard brain. Reptiles will often lie around for ages until they see something to eat, then jump on it. It's a simple power-saving strategy... don't do something when you have nothing to do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Too lazy, didn't read
Especially where they don't have to gather food (or fatten up) for winter,
They needed a study to figure that out. All mammals are lazy by nature. As the joke goes "The lazy guy invented the wheel".
Stupid ones, shouldn't be allowed to vote. A SIMPLE constitution test & history test should be required before voting to weed out the STUPID ones.
I have been explaining this for decades.
I came up with the idea originally doing game dev and having to figure out why so much scifi makes terrible/nonviable critters.
My first rule of xenobiology is "All life is lazy". All of it, on earth and out across the universe. Fuel (in our case calories) is valuable, wasting it means running out and dying. Life wants as much fuel with as little effort as it can manage.
This also means things like, "your creatures will not have piles of large superfluous limbs", this is because they are not adding much and you have to feed them.
So when making alien creatures always ask "How lazy is that and can I make it lazier?"
I think they mean socialists are hard wired for laziness. Kind of like the laziness that went into this study.
Is this really a quality of humans, or of everything that lives?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I hate to break it to these guys but there are countless examples that disprove this. I believe I am human and when I show up to a job where I could slack easily I prefer to work hard. Yes, I'm just one example; an anecdote that doesn't equal evidence as I'm sure some idiot would be quick to reply. The problem is that there are many, many like me as well as other counter-examples.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Does BeauHD even read the articles or check for dupes??? see last months post by the same user & also approved by the BeauHD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FTS:
"The results showed that participants tended to move towards the active images or away from the sedentary ones at the fastest rates. "We found that participants took 32 milliseconds less to move away from the sedentary image, which is considerable for a task like this," says study co-author Boris Cheval, of the University of Geneva, in a university release, adding that this finding went against the so-called exercise paradox."
'participans moved at the fastest rates'?!?!?! Hunh? with respect to what?!
If it takes less time to move away from a sedentary image than from an active one, wouldn't that be evidence that people are 'hard wired' to be less lazy!?!! *SMH*
We develop technology in order to use it, not to just throw it away without uaing it. The purpose is to use it, in order to expend less net effort.
Guy: Who are you?
MW: I'm the guy that's doing his job! You must be the other guy!
That makes 50% of the human race. Note: I normally base my statistics off popular movies.
So the path of least resistance is the one most people prefer to take. Amazing really, considering our evolution. In our ancient past as hunter gatherers I feel like people will have been more motivated to get to the gym because they had to be fit to survive. The fitness industry back then must have been thriving. Imagine it: if you didn't have a schredded six pack then how the hell is a mammoth going to know that it's number is up when it sees you coming, wearing this seasons newest trainers and carrying your finest sharp stick. Now that we can just get food delivered to our doors and not even visit a bank to pick up some cash to pay for it the motivation of our species to get increasing one rep maxes / do pilates has significantly decreased. Really we should blame take-out restaurants for this.
Many people are lazy, not all people. Spaceships existence helped by people viewing on TV. Watching TV generally a lazy activity unless treadmill, bike, cooking etc
Hard work may pay off the long run, but laziness always pays off now.