You’re right that the situation probably does not look like that simple picture. But I’ve always been dubious of the assertion that the AE was scarce on calories. Studies on hunter gatherers find they work about 20 hours per week to sustain themselves.
Edit: ” Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin’s view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day”
So that’s still quite a bit of work, but definitely not sunup to sundown work.
Good point, but System 1 is far older than that… going back to the “lizard brain” basically. But this sounds like a worthwhile thing to investigate, I just don’t yet know how. Did they just by magic chance have the balance that the amount of work that makes one just about comfortably tired yields just about enough calories? I wonder why either they didn’t work harder just to afford to feast hard, or the opposite, enjoy being too lazy and put up with suboptimal calories for a day or week?
Causation goes the other way. A creature evolved that can sustain itself with an amount of effort that makes it comfortably tired. If the AE was harsher we would be better inclined to working 80 hour weeks perhaps.
Yes, this sounds sensible. Still, I cannot exactly put my finger on it, but something must be missing from this picture…
Nevertheless, I find your idea quite interesting. Basically, building a self-motivation science based on what kind of arguments, evidence or motivation does System 1 finds the most moving. I see potential in it.
I think as a first step we could split up System 1 to two parts, the really old ones, and the more specifically human parts. The really old parts probably only know the carrot and the stick, immediate reward and immediate fear. The more specifically human parts are I think predominantly social. I find the theory highly plausible that human intelligence evolved because of a selective pressure of competition inside the species and not some external pressure, because an external pressure should have resulted in a normal distribution of intelligence in the primate species, and basically today we would have half-retarded chimp servants. This runaway arms race of intelligence inside one species must be caused by some pressure inside the species. Probably sexual selection and mating. From this angle, the argument or evidence the human part of System 1is most likely to pay attention to is social status or sex appeal.
There’s evidence that people will move for the fun of it, and more so if movement is socially supported.
I suggest that the desire for movement gets trained out of a lot of people through being expected to be still a lot of the time when young, and also because ordinary non-athletic movement is presented as too low status to be motivating.
I may be overdoing this, but I think taking a half hour walk lacks coolness, while running marathons, or at least half marathons, is the minimum needed to count as exercise.
Also, the default idea for exercise is that it should be simple movements done at a level of intensity that many people find unpleasant to painful.My paranoid reading is that exercise is structured to be unpleasant so that there’s a status gain for people who do it.
Well, one thing is true, if an evil genius wanted to make people sedentary, inventing classrooms and teachers who frown upon fidgeting would be an excellent way to :)
A related issue is that at some point around puberty kids find it no longer matching their half-adult dignity to just run around playing. At that point they don’t really have many ideas what other ways to move.
I think it also got less social, people used to do sports together, now run or lift alone.
You’re right that the situation probably does not look like that simple picture. But I’ve always been dubious of the assertion that the AE was scarce on calories. Studies on hunter gatherers find they work about 20 hours per week to sustain themselves.
Edit: ” Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin’s view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day”
So that’s still quite a bit of work, but definitely not sunup to sundown work.
Good point, but System 1 is far older than that… going back to the “lizard brain” basically. But this sounds like a worthwhile thing to investigate, I just don’t yet know how. Did they just by magic chance have the balance that the amount of work that makes one just about comfortably tired yields just about enough calories? I wonder why either they didn’t work harder just to afford to feast hard, or the opposite, enjoy being too lazy and put up with suboptimal calories for a day or week?
Causation goes the other way. A creature evolved that can sustain itself with an amount of effort that makes it comfortably tired. If the AE was harsher we would be better inclined to working 80 hour weeks perhaps.
Yes, this sounds sensible. Still, I cannot exactly put my finger on it, but something must be missing from this picture…
Nevertheless, I find your idea quite interesting. Basically, building a self-motivation science based on what kind of arguments, evidence or motivation does System 1 finds the most moving. I see potential in it.
I think as a first step we could split up System 1 to two parts, the really old ones, and the more specifically human parts. The really old parts probably only know the carrot and the stick, immediate reward and immediate fear. The more specifically human parts are I think predominantly social. I find the theory highly plausible that human intelligence evolved because of a selective pressure of competition inside the species and not some external pressure, because an external pressure should have resulted in a normal distribution of intelligence in the primate species, and basically today we would have half-retarded chimp servants. This runaway arms race of intelligence inside one species must be caused by some pressure inside the species. Probably sexual selection and mating. From this angle, the argument or evidence the human part of System 1is most likely to pay attention to is social status or sex appeal.
There’s evidence that people will move for the fun of it, and more so if movement is socially supported.
I suggest that the desire for movement gets trained out of a lot of people through being expected to be still a lot of the time when young, and also because ordinary non-athletic movement is presented as too low status to be motivating.
I may be overdoing this, but I think taking a half hour walk lacks coolness, while running marathons, or at least half marathons, is the minimum needed to count as exercise.
Also, the default idea for exercise is that it should be simple movements done at a level of intensity that many people find unpleasant to painful.My paranoid reading is that exercise is structured to be unpleasant so that there’s a status gain for people who do it.
Well, one thing is true, if an evil genius wanted to make people sedentary, inventing classrooms and teachers who frown upon fidgeting would be an excellent way to :)
A related issue is that at some point around puberty kids find it no longer matching their half-adult dignity to just run around playing. At that point they don’t really have many ideas what other ways to move.
I think it also got less social, people used to do sports together, now run or lift alone.
I think car seats are also part of the problem.