I know I come to Hacker News specifically to hear software junkies make bad analogies about health. I also go to my local paper's opinion column for the best tech news.

Engineers generally like smart people with powerful brains. If exercise improves the function of your brain, that's something that is likely interesting to engineers. Especially if they get into the details of how and why.

Shutting down discussion of "living healthy" is kind of counter intuitive to fostering a community of smart people. You can be smart without exercising, but exercising does seem to help the process. It's crazy to see something that makes you smarter and hear someone say "please stop talking about that, it bores me". Maybe you always hear people talking about it because it really is that useful of a tool?

It adds cost to the healthcare system and to health insurance that company pay when so many people are unhealthy.

Yes it does, but we've brought that on ourselves by insisting that pre-existing conditions (such as obesity, high blood presssure, etc.) cannot be cause to deny coverage or charge higher premiums. Smoking, interestingly, seems to be an exception to that standard.

There is no such insistence in the US. My insurer gives premium discounts to members who maintain a healthy BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar level. So people with problems on those metrics do pay higher premiums than the rest of us.

God forbid you switch jobs after getting sick.

As long as we have largely employer-based healthcare, the pre-existing conditions exemption is asinine.

Maybe once we have an actual market, we can talk about re-introducing it.

I can easily see somebody who isn't sufficiently motivated by being physically fit because they're too focused on intellectual persuits. This is now a(nother) reason for them to exercise.

And anyway, speaking for myself, I can see people being on the fence. Reading about articles or even comments online can be a tipping point to get (back) into a good habit.

A low power:weight ratio disqualifies one from useful service in the citizen's militia.