Isn't that pretty similar to the lifestyle of a hunter? Short periods of very intense activity separated by long periods of inactivity?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

    - Adopt a Paleolithic diet as much as possible: plenty of fruit,
      fish, vegetables, nuts, and meat while avoiding most forms of
      food not in existence in paleolithic time. It implies avoiding
      all processed food, and in particular junk food and food with a
      high glycemic load, such as sweets and cultivated crops like
      potatoes and cereal grains (in particular wheat).
    - Exercise frequently, but with a variety of durations and
      intensities (including rest periods) rather than doing always
      the same, extended routines in a gym or while jogging.
    - Perform a variety of complex "natural movements" (e.g. walking,
      running, jumping, crawling, climbing, carrying, throwing,
      swimming) that use the whole body rather than artificially
      constrained exercises that focus on specific muscles (like those
      afforded by most gym equipment).
    - Maximize contact with nature, e.g. by keeping plants, gardening,
      working with animals, hiking in the woods, or climbing trees (as
      also proposed by the biophilia philosophy).
    - Use a minimum of clothes and don't wear shoes: exposure to heat,
      cold, pressure, and other natural forces strengthens rather than
      weakens the body.
    - Expose yourself regularly to the sun or at least to natural
      light, to get sufficient vitamin D and prevent depression.
    - Try to sleep at least 8 hours a day, preferably in line with
      natural day-night rhythms (though people in pre-industrial
      societies do not sleep in contiguous blocks - see anthropology
      of sleep and segmented sleep).
    - Spend sufficient time relaxing, playing, and just "being in the
      present", without worrying about later.
    - Reduce overall levels of stress; avoid overworking in favor of
      downshifting and simple living.
    - Allow contact with dirt: soil contains plenty of beneficial
      bacteria that strengthen immunity. Eat fermented foods like
      sauerkraut, kim chi, kombucha, etc. Lifelong exposure to a
      variety of microbes may actually be necessary to prevent
      allergies and autoimmune diseases, as proposed by the hygiene
      hypothesis.
    - Rear children the way hunter-gatherers do: extended
      breast-feeding, carrying of babies on the body, co-sleeping,
      while allowing older children to play and explore
      autonomously.
    - Sit with legs level with rear end (essentially, in the squatting
      position), as people in indigenous tribes do.
    - Socialize and interact closely with a small group of real
      friends, instead of staying alone or "networking" with thousands
      of superficial acquaintances.

    - Die with 22 years from measles.

Not everybody accepts this though. Especially about point 2 and 3 I've had discussions, almost religious fights sometimes. People sometimes get offended when I question if just going to the gym and train a couple of standard groups or just jogging are sufficient exercises. They might be, just from the point of 'getting enough exercise', but I somehow believe it is better for your body in general to have way more types of movement trained, like the third point says. Not sure if this is backed up by research but it just seems logical to me? Another impression I have: the body of a person doing all kinds of sports always looks way more natural and healthy to me than persons doing only one or two sports where not all muscle groups are trained.

I'm wondering whether our ancestors did stretching exercises. I could imagine that the occasional yawn/stretch and a variety of different movements is sufficient to avoid contracture.

I disagree strongly with this part of what you're saying.

This seems exactly what human civilisation has traditionally done: conserve physical energy until it's the right time to hunt, do some very intensive hunting, spend a lot of mental energy figuring out better tools and systems.

The article measures activity as: cycling, running, swimming, etc. That's intensive activity. Missing that out had a higher risk of death.

Civilization is pretty young when you compare it to the evolution of humans. I think you're also missing out the difference of energy spent when comparing hunting versus agriculture. Even when you're not hunting, there is still a lot of physical activity around it. Not to mention automation.

Agree. But in order to change that, we have to change our value system.

Worst thing, I'm almost sure that this accumulation of stress can slow down productivity.

That's the worst thing? As you can see, productivity is still our highest value. Health and well-being are not worthy goals on their own, but they are pursued to get more productive.

But wouldn't better mental health increase productivity ? I mean a healthy horse might be more productive. Of course at some point, maybe better health doesn't increase productivity so much. But I tend to think that cerebral workers would work much better if they have less stress or better mental health.

It's kind of funny that you put it this way because that is exactly what people do at my job and it is encouraged. A walking break every hour or two is accepted, managers do it, we were even encouraged to install something on our computers that would remind us every X minutes.

And I work for a giant corporate entity which you would think would never encourage this.

That said, when you're working on a hard problem its very easy to lose track of time. I kick myself on the days where my only walking break is at lunch.

Try it with an anti-fatigue mat, they do wonders. I think, it takes about eight weeks to get used to the new position. Definitely talk to a doctor regarding the swelling first though.

That may be true, but they will be soon enough thanks to evolution.

I am not advocating inactivity, in fact I enjoy walking every day very much.

...

>evolution

So, a few million years?

Humans will still be Homo Sapiens in 1 million years as long as we still call them that. In other words, "how old" homo sapiens is is a rather arbitrary matter of convention, so it doesn't make a good argument.

Sure, and conditional on that I'd probably call their grandparents H. sapiens too, and conditional on that, probably also their grandparents. But it doesn't take that many generations before all these "probably"s multiply out to a "probably not".

I don't think the distinction between homo sapiens and not-homo sapiens is so fuzzy that we can't distinguish between evolution working on 250,000 and 1,000,000 year timescales.

How many generations would it take for some evolved feature to become part of homo sapiens has nothing to do with how many features are needed to not be homo sapiens anymore. Other than the fact that they both take time and are statements about evolution, there is no relation between the two.

I don't know what you mean by this. I don't know what feature-based differentiation I'm supposedly countering, and I don't know what it would mean to counter it.

What argument do you think I'm trying to make, exactly? Because all I'm saying is, "evolution makes significant changes on timescales significantly less than millions of years".

This thread isn't actually particularly interesting to me, so I may tap out now.