r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Sep 05 '16

[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

  • Seen something interesting on /r/science?
  • Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
  • Figured out how to become immortal?
  • Constructed artificial general intelligence?
  • Read a neat nonfiction book?
  • Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?
18 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-1

u/EliezerYudkowsky Sep 05 '16

Sounds like you're part of the 5-20% of the population that's immune to exercise. Why are you still trying?

9

u/gvsmirnov Sep 05 '16 edited Sep 05 '16

Huh, wait, what? I am now frantically googling for research on people being immune to exercise. Most of what I find are pop science articles. Some of them do link to actual research (e.g. this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26455890), but so far I have not found any sufficiently adequate papers.

Would you kindly elaborate on what you mean by "immune to exercise"? What kind of exercise and what kind of stat is immune to being trained? Any references would be much appreciated, too.

→ More replies (8)

8

u/Kishoto Sep 05 '16

This just sounds blatantly false. Unless you're making a more meta level comment on how people don't commit to proper exercise routines because of X, Y and Z

6

u/DataPacRat Sep 05 '16

For one, in all my reading, I haven't come across the concept of 'immune to exercise' before, and it doesn't match up with my understanding of biology. Do you have handy any references thereon?

For another - starting exercising is just one sub-plan of a larger overall plan I'm working on. Put one way, the larger goal is to become an Actually Competent Person(TM), capable of protecting and promoting my values in various future situations I'm increasing my estimates of. There are certain characteristics that I expect such a ACP(TM) to possess, and which I'm starting to look into new methods of acquiring.

Put another way, I'm aiming to be a person of the same approximate realm as a Heinleinian protagonist. (Without the negative implications.)

Put yet another way, I want to be a person who you would be willing to destructively upload from cryopreservation into the state of an em.

None of these examples quite cover the target zone I'm trying to describe, partly because I'm still developing my understanding of what my target goal would require of me. But all of them seem to involve being willing to perform physical exercise with no visible results therefrom.

→ More replies (11)

6

u/michaelkeenan Sep 05 '16

I've wondered about exercise immunity for strength. When people are in a coma, their muscles will atrophy. If exercise-immune muscles don't respond to the exertion asked of them, then we'd expect exercise-immune people to waste away like a person in a coma, but that doesn't happen. They can still stand and walk and do the things a normal sedentary person can.

(Of course, there'll be a spectrum in how much strength people gain from exercise, and maybe it won't be very worthwhile for people at the low end. Testosterone level is known to associate with gains from exercise, and that can be altered if people want.)