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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!
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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
“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
—Robert Heinlein