Hacker News Reader

Comment by beforeolives | Hacker News Reader

> Our bodies were never designed to sit in chairs 8 hours a day for forty years.

Your body wasn't designed to do anything. It's the result of random mutations that survived better than other random mutations.

> The very idea of needing to spend free time exercising just to keep your body from falling apart is, well, preposterous.

A somewhat sedentary job with the option to take breaks to move around and exercise outside of that is still vastly preferable to any other combination. Non-sedentary jobs and manual labor will break and wear down your body in different ways, they aren't some ideal to aspire to.

View on HN

> > Our bodies were never designed to sit in chairs 8 hours a day for forty years.

> Your body wasn't designed to do anything. It's the result of random mutations that survived better than other random mutations.

Fair enough; it would be more accurate for me to say, "Our bodies are poorly adapted to sitting in chairs for 8 hours a day for 40 years."

> A somewhat sedentary job with the option to take breaks to move around and exercise outside of that is still vastly preferable to any other combination. Non-sedentary jobs and manual labor will break and wear down your body in different ways, they aren't some ideal to aspire to.

I'll agree with you that many jobs will wear your body down, but it isn't obvious to me that a sedentary job with forced motion breaks is the best combination.

> but it isn't obvious to me that a sedentary job with forced motion breaks is the best combination.

You left out exercise. With exercise it's the best combination because you're able to choose what kind of stress to put on your body, in what quantities and you can do so safely in a controlled environment. That's a huge luxury that many people who do manual labour don't have.

When the newspaper prints what time is sunrise, I don't write it to protest that the sun doesn't go anywhere; it's the Earth that is spinning on its axis. Sunrise is just the way we refer to that phenomenon because it looks like the sun is rising.

I think it's perfectly fine to say that your body was designed to do this or that. It may have been the result of random mutations, but evolution has done such a good job it damn well looks like it was designed.

There are plenty of jobs that consist of not much more than walking around - beat cop, traffic warden, security guard, park ranger, even janitor. I find it unlikely that walking around for 8-12 hours is going to damage your body more than spending the same time mostly sitting down, not moving. Speaking personally, I've held both types of job, and I know which kind leaves me feeling healthier (it's not the sedentary kind).

If it paid as well as my current job I think I would much rather be a mailman.

It's a scale though. A job in construction is different to a job as a park ranger. Both are different to office work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com