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Comment by troyvit | Hacker News Reader

If you skim the transcript you'll see stuff like this:

> [...] a big part of what I want to talk about is things you can do in your 20s in your 30s in your 40s in your 50s that lead towards you being able to do what you want which could be nothing or could be programming in your 60s in your 70s uh in your 80s [...]

Further in she says:

> it's really astonishing the minute you have proof, visual proof to strangers that your body doesn't quite work people assume your mind doesn't quite work.

To her point, she's 63. We have no idea what she's seen in her life, what sacrifices she's had to make to get where she is today, or anything. What I see is that she is doing more about it now than most of us in this thread, and it might pay to look past her "poor physical condition" to see what she is conveying.

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physical appearance is one of the most informative indicators of health.

this is easily falsifiable, since many diseases are internal: heart disease, low/high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer. also, most mental health issues do not present external indicators.

bruce lee was at peak physical performance when he dropped dead. you could smoke cigarettes and take adderall nonstop and still look "healthy".

Exactly.

She's also gone through cancer.

Physical appearance is also an informative indicator of age. Care to expand on what you think a 63 year old woman is supposed to look like? Any examples from Hollywood or Greek mythology that match what you're looking for here?

We all know what a healthy person looks like from toddler's age. It takes mental gymnastics to argue otherwise. The fact that we can only think of a couple examples of obviously fit folks who had health problems, like the other chap tried to do, is an exception that proves the rule.

Do yourself a favor and try to break away from the overly legislative mindset. Meaning is not bounded by words and definitions. The things that matter -- like true love, peace, happiness, health, contentment, and more-- are not bounded by rules and definitions. We all know those things when we see them.

If someone presents themselves as an authority on health issues and how to cope with them, they should obviously be healthy.

Your post has great insight. I would just take ever so slight exception to your final paragraph based on two physicians I know that are 8n bad shape medically through no fault of their own. ;-)

Nothing in life is deterministic. That doesn't preclude things having meaning.

Really? Nah. What does a 63 year old healthy single woman look like? What about a 63 year old woman who had four kids? What about a 63 year old woman who beat stage IV metastatic melanoma?[1] A "healthy" 63 year old person is going to look mighty different depending on the curves life threw them.

So is it not overly legislative to bind a person's health choices to their looks when you don't have the whole story?

I can look at her (and listen to her) and see healthy mind behind a body that has done decades of hard work. I hope that you can too someday.

[1] http://www.gregcons.com/KateBlog/SurvivingIncurableCancer.as...

>So is it not overly legislative to bind a person's health choices to their looks when you don't have the whole story?

No, it is overly pedantic to argue with someone making a basic and reasonable statement that someone looks overweight and would probably do better if they lost weight. Being overweight contributes to all kinds of joint pain and diabetes (which causes a lot of other physical and even mental problems). Maybe this woman is a natural oddity that can be in peak health and also significantly overweight at an old age, but odds are against it.

Hey, champ, way to jump in with an unrelated "no, but". At the start of this thread the person chose to marginalize this speaker and what she had to say because she appears "15 years older than they should be." Then they failed to give any representation of what a 63 year old woman _should_ look like, let alone a 63 year old cancer survivor. So to avoid being pedantic I'll just call it what it is: ageism.

The comment you replied to that started this whole thread was this:

>The host is clearly in poor physical condition and many of their concerns are due to lack of proper nutrition , exercise and prescription meds abuse. They appear 15 years older than they should be. Their advice is primarily reactive, and the trivial proactive advice (exercise more) is delivered almost ironically.

>Take care of yourself now. Drop the weight, get generous activity, get off the meds and you will feel loads better.

Boy that really wreaks of ageism, let me tell you. /s Being overweight makes you look older. He didn't marginalize anyone, he said that in his opinion she didn't look very healthy and was causing her own problems. He also gave some well-meaning recommendations, possibly from experience. He doesn't owe you an example or a detailed explanation of how he came up with a general impression of "15 years older." He's probably not a doctor or one of those age-guessing performers at a carnival.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're overweight and in denial like the woman in the video (who denies that BMI has any significance), and that's why you're flared up about this boring comment.

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