Our muscles will atrophy as we climb the Kardashev Scale

https://solmaz.io/our-muscles-will-atrophy

by hosolmaz • 2 years ago

187 249 2 years ago

Interesting blog post. I think the majority of what you see is that due to how rapidly technology and other fields have bloomed via human involment, and due to how we have become an interconnected society due to the industrial revolution.

I think that the major way humans cope/tackle this is via specialisation. While not for everyone, most people seem to find a job in a field, and the work in that field helps us support a more complicated society than we can fathom. Most people can't memorize all the stuff from multiple domains, or they would burn out. Most people don't understand how truly complex a semiconductor is, or how electricity and power is generated, or how to design a car. These are just basic examples but I'd argue a really good example of how humans have chosen a specific domain or thing and over time developed better understandings of the field and topic. The average person could do any job I'd argue.

We are not as physical as we used to be, we have "engineered" ourselves replacements. The tractor, the car; both replaced horses but at the cost of needing someone who understood the principal of the new technology.

Be it robot workers replacing amazon warehouse employees, or the tractor that improved the farmers ability to harvest or plant crops; both required smart people to not only develop them but to maintain them.

I'd argue while we really are less physically active, due to technology and general advancements we have made over the years; this comes at the cost of mental strain. We mentally must process and think more than ever before, pushing our brains to keep up so we can stay relevant.

cyberax6• 2 years ago

Stupid premise.

We already have exercise mimetics in pre-clinical trials. If you can keep yourself fit with zero expenditure of time, why wouldn't you?

delichon• 2 years ago

The joy of motion and physical effort.

happytoexplain• 2 years ago

The parent means "why wouldn't you stay fit (either manually or with drugs)" rather than "why wouldn't you do it with drugs".

gr3ml1n• 2 years ago

Do you have any useful search terms for them?

383toast3• 2 years ago

i assume EMS (electrical muscle stimulation)

Mistletoe3• 2 years ago

Sometimes I think that is what metformin and statins do, because weirdly enough both seem to blunt the exercise response. I’d love to take them but I already exercise.

cyberax6• 2 years ago

"Exercise mimetics" are fine. You need to look at the professional publications. It's a very active area of research, so things change rapidly.

The newest research: https://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/388/2/232.long

Here's a nice, but a somewhat obsolete review: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8728540/

DevX101• 2 years ago

Bold take to proclaim we'll figure out interstellar travel before we figure out how to prevent muscle atrophy.

383toast3• 2 years ago

also bold take to proclaim we'll still have human bodies before moving up kardashev scale

guerrilla2• 2 years ago

We are human bodies.

pk-protect-ai• 2 years ago

also bold take to proclaim, that humans will be required for teleoperation...

7thaccount• 2 years ago

One of the lead SETI researchers wrote about this and how biological life might just be a transitory phase.

Mistletoe3• 2 years ago

We already know how to prevent it, it’s called anabolic steroids or testosterone. Once I read a study that showed sedentary people on testosterone gained more muscle mass than people actually working out.

automatic6131• 2 years ago

Bhasin et. al 2001. If you get in many internet fights about bodybuilding, it's an important part of your repertoire :-)

dyauspitr3• 2 years ago

Yes that’s how you get an enlarged heart and die by 35.

YawningAngel• 2 years ago

Those are really unpleasant and dangerous to take and basically not an option for half the population though

layman51• 2 years ago

My first thought is the study must be capturing what they call “newbie gains” or “diminishing returns”. The sedentary experimental group can gain muscle so fast because they are just starting out on their journey.

Also, it kind of reminds me of the idea that athletes take these as performance enhancing drugs because it helps them in the same way that following a strength-training program would help them.

justinator2• 2 years ago

It truly is a wonder therapy with no known side effects. I pair it with Ozempic! /s.

Dylan16807• 2 years ago

Testosterone is a very broad spectrum way to mess with your whole body.

Much better to do something targeted like reduce myostatin.

FuriouslyAdrift• 2 years ago

They'll also tear their ligaments and tendons when they go to use that muscle mass...

jjcm• 2 years ago

This is me. I cycle on and off testosterone (100mg/w for 12 weeks typically) and combine it with light exercise (20-30min of lifting 3x a week). Other than that my only exercise is walks with my dog (typically ~45min). The rest of the time (~12hrs/day+) I'm at my desk. When I'm on testosterone it I definitely see major results, just from that level of exercise.

My perspective on it is it is borrowing from the future. I feel better while on it, but it's just changing what the problem is. I've turned a sedentary lifestyle issue into a hormone issue. There are side effects (ie enlarged heart in the future). I'm using it as a crutch while I have a demanding job that keeps me working for longer hours.

mr_mitm2• 2 years ago

Shouldn't that be obvious? A lot of untrained men are stronger than a lot of trained women, the deciding difference being their natural testosterone levels, presumably.

jeffreyrogers• 2 years ago

We know how already: exogenous testosterone (or other, more anabolic hormones), but that has downsides like left-ventricular hypertrophy, masculinization in women, and (usually reversible) infertility.

loeg12• 2 years ago

Yes, yes, it's safe to presume GP means "figure out muscle atrophy without the well-known terrible side effects of current treatments" from even a mildly charitable reading of his comment.

yreg• 2 years ago

Interstellar travel is not a prerequisite for K1 or K2.

mperham3• 2 years ago

I think realistically we have to reduce our body mass by 99% if we want to go interplanetary, much less interstellar. It's extremely expensive to drag around 70kg of meat and minimizing weight is key to making solar sails work.

owenpalmer• 2 years ago

We definitely don't need to reduce it for interplanetary travel.

knowitnone2• 2 years ago

Sure, let's remove 70kg. That'll get the ship moving...not.

dmonitor• 2 years ago

that's a fun thought experiment, but not at all practical

samus4• 2 years ago

The mass of the actual meatsacks inside the spaceship is barely anything compared to the rest of it. A true step forward would be to rengineer ourselves to be way smaller. Santi-like.

deadbabe2• 2 years ago

I think we’ll just probably convert ourselves into data and beam ourselves across space at the speed of light and install ourselves into machines deployed at various sites.

jandrese• 2 years ago

I kind of suspect that working out suspended animation would be easier than trying to shrink humans. You can save a lot of mass by minimizing the amount of space you need via keeping the humans dormant for the entire trip and while also reducing food and water needs. Tightly pack them in, surround them with cargo to help with radiation shielding, and keep them hibernating for the entire trip.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

Will we even remember what a muscle is at that point?

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

It's not just steroids and replacement testosterone.

I recall certain classes of drugs that make mice into muscle-bound warriors, I believe using a different pathway then steroids.

pvaldes• 2 years ago

This is the easiest part. Our bodies are not good for this task, so only frozen gametes should travel to be "assembled" on destination. End of the problem

ecshafer• 2 years ago

This post vastly under-estimates the amount of malnutrition in most societies pre-modern times. Even with heavy physical labor, I would be willing to bet that the average physical laborer in say 1800, who we know was significantly smaller, would be weaker as well. Farmers and people who do physical labor do build muscles, but they also have modern high nutrition diets and medicine.

snozolli• 2 years ago

In another vein, technology could also help us perfectly fit bodies by altering our cells at a molecular level. But if there is no need to move to contribute to the economy, why would anyone do such an expensive thing?

Because it's nice to have the strength when you need it. Also, it protects your body. I developed a bulged disc in my neck from decades of spending too much time at a computer. Muscular balance and variety of movement is critical to maintaining a healthy body. Not to mention benefits like lessening injuries from accidents.

shermantanktop• 2 years ago

Also because physical attributes are a key component of attractiveness, regardless of their actual utility.

We're not just economic units. We eat, we love, we breathe fresh air, we sleep. Even in a far-flung future, if we are still human, we are still animals.

GuB-42• 2 years ago

And it is not even expensive to a full type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale. We just need to hack some genes to not require exercise to develop muscle mass. We already can do it with drugs, and we probably could do it genetically if it wasn't for safety and ethical concerns. As for the cost, I expect a Type 1 civilization to be able to fix genetic diseases as a routine operation, and they could fix muscle atrophy at the same time, if desired.

Muscle mass requires more energy, but by definition, a Type 1 civilization has no shortage of it. And I expect making food out of thin air (like plants do) would be the kind of technology such a civilization would have.

ANewFormation4• 2 years ago

If society ever developed along the lines proposed, which is highly improbable to begin with, then speaking of humanity as a whole is a complete nonstarter.

We'd naturally fork, because that future sounds like a dystopic hellscape to many (if not the overwhelming majority).

And indeed once we reach the point of being able to reliably colonize other planets, large scale splintering (both physical and cultural) will begin near immediately. You'll have libertarian planet, Islamic planet, even the Mormons will finally have their planets! And so on.

And the people who want to sacrifice their bodies to go enter the machine will certainly have their own little slice of the universe as well.

383toast3• 2 years ago

getting splintered metaverses seem way more feasible than splintered physical planets

elzbardico• 2 years ago

Then you get a Chicxulub and it is all over.

jerf• 2 years ago

You have to have everyone go into the splintered metaverses to avoid physical expansion. Everyone. Every biological body. Every AI. Every AI written for the specific purpose of having a long enough time horizon to settle new locations physically. Even the AIs written specifically to marshal together the physical resources to build more metaverse computing power. Even the AIs and fiesty biological bodies who one way or another end up with a 100% bias towards physical reality. Even the many, many beings who will quite accurately observe that no matter how short-term appealing this is a long-term loss. Even the beings who specifically want to be the ones in charge of the physical machinery and see an advantage to continuing to expand it. Every. Last. Being.

I don't think this degree of uniformity is plausible.

I reject this as an explanation for the Fermi paradox for similar reasons, except they're even more relevant across all of the putatively common alien civilizations. I don't even find it plausible that all of human civilization would do this, let alone all of every civilization ever.

UltraSane• 2 years ago

In the excellent very hard sci-fi novel Diaspora by Greg Egan humanity has split into 3 main branches that don't really trust each other much.

biological humans, which are subdivided into various genetically altered varieties and the original unmodified humans.

nuclear powered humanoid robots that are not allowed on earth but are perfect for working in space.

fully simulated humans being run on nuclear powered computers buried deep underground for security. Their minds run 700 times faster than normal humans.

This feels pretty plausible to me.

meiraleal• 2 years ago

Can't wait for the Rastafari planet

selimthegrim2• 2 years ago

even the Mormons will finally have their planets

I can’t remember if this was in the Heinlein novel, but in the film the director was certainly having a go at this when that planet was the one to get attacked

ANewFormation4• 2 years ago

The Expanse also had fun with this bit. It's a nice little easter egg because I think most people think Mormonism is just another typical Christian branch.

selimthegrim2• 2 years ago

*Starship Troopers I should add for completeness

SubiculumCode• 2 years ago

While its fun to explore ideas, this post commits the intellectual sin of simple extrapolation-ism when everything is just oh so much more complicated than that. As others are pointing out here in the threads, biological interventions for physical strength are inevitable.

This stands to reason once you mentally discard exercise as a pre-requisite of strength. An elephant is strong, not because it exercises, but because of the biological mechanisms e.g. genetics that says: grow big, grow strong, and the effect size of those mechanisms are much much larger than individual differences due to exercise. It is clear, at least to me, that the need for exercise for adjusting strength has more to do with not spending extra energy building a body that has high upkeep if it isn't needed for survival.

keiferski• 2 years ago

I don't know, to me it seems like biomedical engineering and manipulation will take off and develop a lot sooner than people willingly "upload" their minds to a machine – itself a dubious idea full of problems. I think it's far more likely that current-state humans won't be exploring the stars, but a genetically modified version of them will be.

I think there is much less angst regarding the idea of upgrading humanity piecemeal, a la the Ship of Theseus, than there is to fully discarding one's body for a digital existence. This has already sort of happened over the last few hundred years with the concept of transplantable organs. Prior to the widespread acceptable of the interchangeability of organs, it was not uncommon to think that your self and body are unified and linked in a way that implied organ transplation was problematic or undesirable.

And on that note - is it just me, or are biological visions of humanity's future fairly scarce in sci-fi and in futurism (another name for sci-fi)? My guess is because such topics seem dominated by software engineers, physicists, etc. that are less interested in biology.

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

I recently re-read Frederick Pohl's Plague Of Pythons which I will try hard not to spoil for you. In it there is not only the most evil set of villains that I've ever seen in science fiction based on dear Tellus, but they suffer muscular atrophy too.

GlacierFox• 2 years ago

Sounds like an interesting book, added it to my reading list.

optimalsolver2• 2 years ago

"Gateway" by the same author definitely worth a read, too.

RunningDroid• 2 years ago

"Plague of Pythons" is available (for free) on Standard Ebooks for anyone else interested in reading it:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/frederik-pohl/plague-of-py...

visarga• 2 years ago

When we get to that point we will have the right methods to sculpt our bodies as we like. It's a matter of hormones or some other biological hack.

derektank• 2 years ago

There's no guarantee of this. It's quite possible that muscle and bone cells require the stress of weight loading to develop properly and that there's no simple hack to make them do it without that response.

0_____0• 2 years ago

Even beyond that, there's a bunch of neuromuscular training needed to deploy the muscle properly!

When you first start lifting, your 1 rep max is limited by your ability to recruit muscular functional units simultaneously (and in the correct order) to complete the movement. I forget the real number but an untrained person will be able to recruit maybe 1/3rd of the muscle they have for a 1RM movement.

Keyboard ticklers - get out there and use that meat! I mean it!

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

Maintenance of one's muscular-skeletal system is a Goldilocks problem. Too little exercise leads to atrophy, but too much also leads to degeneration. Eg the productive lifetime of slaves in the labor-intensive Caribbean sugar plantation system was only about 10 years. Breakdown of joints, ligaments and tendons was a common problem related to overwork (and is commonly seen in athletic training today).

Similarly, my understanding of the history of yoga in India is that it was introduced because of the sedentary lifestyle of the Brahmin caste, and much like with office workers today in the USA, it served to keep them in decent physical shape.

usixk• 2 years ago

Physical health is directly correlated to mental health, if anything we'd all be jacked to the teets

caycep• 2 years ago

everyone knows our future is predicted by Wall-E

justinator2• 2 years ago

I don't think I actually agree with this guy. As anyone who is trying to grow their body knows, rest is important -- just as important as working out and workouts aren't all-day affairs either. You can get very strong with only a few hours/week in the gym.

That's different than subsistence farming, where you're doing a lot of work at sub max levels most every day. You may get strongish, but you won't get large.

Consider a modern day elite marathon runner, who works out >10 hours/week. They can only do so at sub max levels of effort. The top end are prone to injury (overtraining), and the training itself limits muscle development.

The majority of us are getting weaker and fatter. A few of us are still testing the limits of human physiology. The difference is you have a choice to be whatever part of the spectrum you want to be. Most choose "weak and fat".

Much of this is tied to nutrition, which I don't think is talked about in the fine article. Same story, we have a choice to eat the best for us food, or to eat crap. That wasn't always the case for the subsistence farmer.

ffsm82• 2 years ago

You can get large with decently defined muscles with medium time investment.

But real strength, like farmers traditionally had, is hardly visible and needs an insane amount of time just handling heavy weights.

These people look completely average but can easily handle way more weight than the totally jacked body builder can.

But if the goal is mainly the physic and not strength... Then yes: a few hours a week is plenty

jajko2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't claim they can handle more weight (since top bodybuilders are lifting insane weights to get those muscles), but they can certainly do it for much longer than bodybuilder who trains for short bursts of maximum efforts. Our body literally builds only around the effort it experiences, and 0 more, running in absolute minimalist mode.

If you ever ie been running, say at 10km consistently, try to move that one day to 20km while maintaining the intensity. Significantly harder, you may experience various connective tissue issues too and not just muscle and energy management.

Or break a leg or two like I managed with recent paragliding accident, don't move one of them for 3 months and you will find that body, in its quest for lowest energy spending at all costs literally consumed all connective tissue to barest minimum, so stuff just doesn't move at all. I guess other mode didn't develop since in our distant past, like in rest of animal kingdom, broken leg meant certain death.

cman14442• 2 years ago

This is misleading.

You've only identified body builders specifically here. Strongmen, powerlifters, wrestlers, and other elite athletes can put in a similar amount of hours as a bodybuilder at the gym and certainly gain more "real strength" than a farmer will.

It just feels romantic for many to imagine that the farmhand is the "real" macho man.

Gud2• 2 years ago

Sorry, completely wrong.

hwillis• 2 years ago

Silly.

1. Myostatin inhibitors are already in development. We're already using a drug that stops us from getting fat, why would we not use a drug that prevents atrophy?

2. This is entirely focused on what would be efficient at a global scale, while decisions are made on individual's desires. People (in general) want to look muscular and fit; it's as hardcoded into our reproductive desires as anything else is. Given increasing resources, is it reasonable to assert that people will choose to totally forgo their biological body? Why is it impossible for them to have the same productive advantages while retaining a physical body for when they want it?

Human desire trumps production, even in the long term, or at least medium term. I could eat monkey chow every day and never have to do dishes or cook ever again, and save an extra 10 hours a day. I could wear the same thing every day so a machine can fold it. I can put my brain in a jar to avoid commuting. But no matter how much technology advances, if I still spend 8 hours working with my brain implant or whatever then I'm still doing at worst 24% as good as the guy working 24/7. Why would it ever be worth giving up such basic human pleasures as eating or sex just for 4x the salary?

mywittyname• 2 years ago

Given increasing resources, is it reasonable to assert that people will choose to totally forgo their biological body?

Maybe sexual selection will be altered by further technological changes. If we manage to technologically replicate the feeling of amazing sex with super hot individuals on demand, there would be little point in expending the effort it takes to have a great body for that purpose.

There are plenty of other reasons great to exercise regularly. For one, it helps stave off the negative effects of aging in a way that I doubt a pill will ever manage. But that's also an argument for ridding us of these pesky bodies that we have to be carried around in.

swayvil2• 2 years ago

If paying the rent is our aim, who knows what unnecessary limbs may be disposed of. What need has a programmer for legs? Or arms even, if neuralink happens.

Gud2• 2 years ago

Not everyone considers their bodies to be “pesky”.

frankhhhhhhhhh• 2 years ago

Sounds a lot like slavery.

up2isomorphism• 2 years ago

He probably should worry about our brain atrophy sooner than our muscles.

dang• 2 years ago

Related. Others?

Kardashev Scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40327782 - May 2024 (28 comments)

Kardashev Scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067895 - May 2021 (5 comments)

Classifying Civilisations: An Introduction to the Kardashev Scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26108947 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)

The Kardashev Scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24084021 - Aug 2020 (1 comment)

Nikolai Kardashev (of Kardashev scale fame) died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20619494 - Aug 2019 (1 comment)

Kardashev Scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20603386 - Aug 2019 (31 comments)

Kardashev scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2183106 - Feb 2011 (15 comments)

archagon• 2 years ago

I’ve been wondering if a similar phenomenon will be observed with our mental muscles. Will future generations know how to write a coherent e-mail or essay? Will they know how to approach solving a complex problem without AI assistance? Will doodling in class be supplanted by Midjourney prompting? Why bother thinking too hard when the machine can do it for you?

When we are all immersed in the substrate of AI, will there be a gym equivalent for the intellectual?

rekabis• 2 years ago

Bold of them to assume we’ll survive the century at any level above the Iron Age, and with any population above the high millions to low billions.

Capitalism is keeping us locked into the “Business As Usual” model that will bring us to civilization-destroying climate change by the middle of the century, and with tropics-denying lethally high wet bulb temperatures that will get well into the temperate zone by the end of the century. Think most of CONUS being uninhabitable for multiple days to weeks every year, with or without AC.

swayvil2• 2 years ago

The ideal towards which we all strive is, of course, the Dalek.

asdasdsddd• 2 years ago

Why do we use weird arbitrary milestones like the (logarithmic) Kardashev scale. It adds literally nothing useful to otherwise fun conversations like this.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Jargon is often used for in-group signaling.

wy35• 2 years ago

Yes. "Kardashev Scale" has now become a slop indicator.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Tech can surely overcome muscle atrophy if it was a real issue. Do we even need muscle if we add more powerful add on to walk for example? I would argue we want to keep muscle because we can have very precise control and feeling, unless the new stuff can make it even better.

bradarner5• 2 years ago

A castle built on sand. The only way to take the premise of this claim seriously is to ignore data for the past 100 years.

When I was in the US military, we all complained about the Body Mass Index standards. They were based on the WWII era "normal". Men were smaller. Less muscle mass. Shorter. If the average fit American young man tried to fit into a pilot's cockpit from the 1950's, it would feel quite cramped. Like it was built for much small people. It was.

We have certainly climbed the Kardashev scale since the 1950's. To what degree is a matter of contention. But, all would agree that we have moved up the scale.

Muscle atrophy has not been correlated with the growth. The opposite seems true. The average American, both male and female, has more muscle mass than in 1924. A 2024 person spends significantly more time on average in a gym pushing their muscles to hypertrophy than in 1924.

In addition, it is likely that the romantic picture of the average laborer "bodybuilding" is fictive and ignores how muscle atrophy and hypertrophy works. Most laborers are NOT doing activity that leads to hypertrophy. They are staying well within cardiovascular zones of muscle activation. Hence, bodybuilders as we know them are largely a modern phenomenon. And they are certainly WAY more muscular.

Seems the model that underlies this claim is built on seemingly demonstrably false premises.

RankingMember• 2 years ago

The average American, both male and female, has more muscle mass than in 1924.

I don't necessarily disagree with your thesis, but I'd be genuinely interested in reading the source on this, unless you just mean because people are bigger overall they have more muscle as a function of weight.

bradarner5• 2 years ago

No, I do mean precisely the average muscle mass is higher. Granted we are dealing with statistics. There is inevitably a lot more context than just a myopic focus on this single fact.

Dated but still relevant: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/evolution-bmi-values-us-adult...

This is particular relevant in the military because your fitness level is graded relative to you BMI. Hence, it is common trope one hears in the military. It is a practical question in the military. If the BMI is based on 1950's pilots and today's soldiers have a higher average BMI, then it can have an impact on promotions, fitness scores, health assessments, etc.

loeg12• 2 years ago

The average American, both male and female, has more muscle mass than in 1924.

This is true, but sort of a sleight of hand -- obese people that don't exercise have more muscle mass than non-obese people who don't exercise, just to carry around all of the fat. And obviously the average American, both male and female, is more overweight/obese than in 1924.

(I agree with basically everything else you say, though.)

bradarner5• 2 years ago

Agreed, I was debating whether or not this was relevant to mention.

What I could have added was a caveat that sample non-obese people from each time would indicate that 2024 people have greater average muscle mass.

Personally, a more interesting question is whether growth along the Kardashev scale leads to a greater disparity in muscle mass vs body fat. The past 100 years would seem to indicate that it is possible. That being said, it could also be a uniquely American phenomenon. My hypothesis would be that avg muscle mass among French men has still grown over the past 100 years but I don't think obesity has grown to the extreme that it has in the USA.

naveen99• 2 years ago

by that logic, women would have more muscle mass then men, because they carry around more fat. Average american by definition is average. Overweight by definition is above average. BMI normal is outdated, just needs to move up.

pino999• 2 years ago

Obese people don't have more muscle, especially if you look into the more extreme cases. Muscle atrophy seems to happen due to low insuline sensitivity.

And relative they are weaker in the sense that the ratio between strength and body mass is smaller than that of normal people.

And then we have the powerlifting community.

nradov• 2 years ago

The major federal government food assistance programs came out of findings in WW2 that many potential recruits were literally malnourished and underweight. They had grown up poor and starving during the Great Depression. Beyond the human tragedy this was a national security issue. Some men were too small and weak to meet military standards.

bradarner5• 2 years ago

Indeed. Which would seem to indicate that positive growth along the Kardashev scale will lead to hypertrophy not atrophy, as conjectured by the OP. One could hypothesize that growing control of energy is highly correlated with the ability to empower a population to increase in muscle mass. Of course, history would seem to indicate that there can also be a correlation to increased obesity.

voldacar2• 2 years ago

It's worth noting that the anatomic accuracy of classical statues like Laocoon, the Farnese Hercules, etc. indicates that there were at least some men walking around in antiquity with an amount of muscle mass that could only be developed by deliberate hypertrophy training of the whole body, as opposed to just getting muscle as a side effect of specific athletic training. It seems like these people were doing something quite similar to modern bodybuilding, goal-wise.

tartoran• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(ancient_Greece)

mhb• 2 years ago

Wendy, the bully whippet, would like a word:

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/wendy-the-whippet-f...

pitpatagain2• 2 years ago

Milo of Croton is often cited as the earliest recorded examples of a progressive resistance training program: "He would train in the off years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back. He carried the full-grown cow the length of the stadium, then proceeded to kill, roast, and eat it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_of_Croton

tom_2• 2 years ago

It's also worth noting that the anatomic accuracy of the art of Tom of Finland, depicting men with penises in an anatomically accurate position, indicates that there were men with enormous bulging dicks in the early 1960s, enormous bulging dicks of a size and heft typically unequalled by the average man today. Could he have imagined a penis larger than he had ever actually seen? Impossible, of course. The human brain is incapable of bringing to mind anything that it has not seen actually put in its eyes' field of vision.

brodouevencode6• 2 years ago

Agreed.

Anecdotal: I helped my dad a few years ago do a lot of genealogy. He had pictures going back to the late 1800s for one branch of the family that just arrived from Ireland. Most of the men were shirtless and you could count every rib. There was very little muscle.

maxerickson3• 2 years ago

Y'all are talking about noise inside of stage 2 from the link. A lot of it just being due to economics.

lmm2• 2 years ago

People who fled a famine so severe that it lead over 100% of that country's population to emigrate are surely a representative sample of a normal physique from that era, especially immediately after a week-long ocean crossing.

h0l0cube5• 2 years ago

The faulty premise I see here is that squishy bodies will even be relevant as we climb the scale. Exo-suits are already a thing that can make us stronger in spite of muscle atrophy. And further up the scale, in-silico intelligence will replace the need for a highly inefficient body to power our highly inefficient brains. We could even down-throttle our consciousness to make journeys to distant stars. The future will be so abstract to us that we can’t even fathom what humanity will have become.

HPsquared• 2 years ago

We already kind of have exoskeletons anyway: cars.

antonygonsalves• 2 years ago

There is another, and in my opinion, a much greater flaw with the base argument - most predictions about the future are very, very wrong. The future is not only built on technological and scientific progress, but also on the generation and evolution of social mores and expectations. We are already seeing a scientific and cultural shift that celebrates being healthier, including working out to have more muscle mass and investing heavily in optimising this, and there is no way on how this will evolve in the future.

And for another argument, from a psychological perspective, we know that a healthy body in a vital component of a healthy mind - even with the development of excellent mind-silicon interfaces, we are probably a very, very long way from keeping minds healthy without a correspondingly healthy body (including muscle mass).

karaterobot2• 2 years ago

A 2024 person spends significantly more time on average in a gym pushing their muscles to hypertrophy than in 1924.

What is this focus on hypertrophy? The article isn't about having prominent muscles, it's clearly about being physically fit in the sense that farmers and manual laborers are fit, not in the sense that actors are fit.

baranul• 2 years ago

"And I still have a hard time beating him in arm wrestling despite the 40 years of age gap."

Another example, from the article, that backs up what you are saying. Arm wrestling, is not a clear overall indicator of total strength or fitness. It's as much about technique, rules, psychology (through sh*t talking or facial expressions), and very specific muscle development than anything else. Doesn't show how much a person could lift or squat. Strength in one area, doesn't mean strength in another or if people in the past were "stronger".

datadeft• 2 years ago

Having growth hormones in your ultra processed food helps

begueradj• 2 years ago

Well, a popular French army soldier who trains the soldiers of the Foreign Legion said multiple times on his YouTube channel that a good soldier is "un chat soldat" (cat soldier): his weight must be between 60 and 70 kg only.

A cat soldier is the only one who can overcome all type of obstacles and is operational under all circumstances with high efficiency.

Spartan soldiers were too efficient are were known for eating little (not until they felt full).

portaouflop• 2 years ago

The efficiency of the Spartan army is a myth, in fact there were quite insignificant; they basically won a battle once and after that were wiped out

potato3732842• 2 years ago

Most laborers are NOT doing activity that leads to hypertrophy.

Modern laborers aren't even allowed to. Just because you're jacked and can install semi truck tires by hand doesn't mean your boss wants to risk the insurance or OSHA dumpster fire that could arise if you throw out your back doing so.

whatever1• 2 years ago

I need three hands so that I can hold my smartphone at alll times

kibwen• 2 years ago

Not that our muscles aren't important, but I'm less worried about our muscles atrophying as a result of technology and more worried about our brains atrophying as a result of technology.

sneak3• 2 years ago

More people read more things off of more screens than ever before in history.

This fear is unfounded. It isn't the proliferation of technology that is making people dumber; it's the American cultural deemphasis of education, entirely independent of technology.

knowitnone2• 2 years ago

Yes, with the internet, I've read more, learned more than it would have ever been possible without the internet. But with LLMs, I fear the part of our brain that performs reasoning/critical thinking will diminish. Just look at all those who fell for flat-earth, alien cow abductions, anti-vax, etc.

ganzuul• 2 years ago

...So I'm advanced?

This means I'm advanced.

jonnycoder• 2 years ago

He says he has a hard time beating his feather in arm wrestling despite him working out. Anecdotally blue collar people have much strong wrist flexion (cupping) than us white collar people, but pronation and technique can help negate that. My experience shows that power cleans can help with arm wrestling but not many people do those.

loeg12• 2 years ago

Yeah, arm-wrestling is kind of a specific skill that isn't covered by most "exercise" (including strength training) unless you are specifically focused on it. It's like notorious for skinny-looking specialists being able to best jacked non-specialists.

nunez• 2 years ago

Absolutely correct.

Traditional office culture makes it very difficult to get a proper workout in while, at the same time, confining you mostly to your chair, hunched over a desk (and/or craning over a small screen), to view things on a screen that eats away at your eyes by default.

WFH made this worse. I've worked with so many people that start work at 0700 and end at 1700 or later.

Add shitty, cheap food, 2.5 kids and a partner in there, and you're basically on an express train to bad hips, bad knees, poor health markersa and immobility at (not so) old age.

"Work out during your lunch hour," you say. The author spends a lot of time on muscle use. Powerlifting workouts require lots of rest between sets, especially as you get stronger. Spending 2h on a workout is normal in powerlifting. Not happening during lunch hour, not like this matters because someone will just schedule a meeting over it anyway.

"But I wake up at 0400..." No. Just no. (A) A parent with two and a half kids is not getting up at ass o clock in the morning to chase that pump (or work out to stay healthy) when their kids are gonna wake them at 0640, and (b) this is an awesome way to either sleep like shit forever or incinerate the last fledglings of your social life.

All this aside, the farmer life is a super hard way to live, . Overuse injuries are very common. However, we went the complete opposite direction in building today's office culture, and it's a real shame.

maxglute• 2 years ago

Be hipster type II civilization brain in a jar. Wonder what it's like to have muscle / strength train. Incubate a body, start lifting.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

The timescales involved in us becoming even a K1 species are probably enough to say we won't be anything resembling current humans, neither physically nor socially.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

why would anyone do such an expensive thing?

I find it amusing that somehow resources would still be constrained as we go closer to be a Kardashev I civilization.

csense• 2 years ago

"The muscles are severely atrophied and the internal organs appear to be under-developed. The sensory organs, including the eyes, do not appear to function at all.

The brain, however, is well developed and draws on a high proportion of the body's blood supply. It is a mystery as to how this creature can sustain itself without external support."

The above quote is information you get from studying deceased bodies of a particularly advanced alien race in the original X-COM game, released in 1994.

(The X-COM in-universe explanation for the aliens' physiology is more psionic than cybernetic, as OP suggests. This makes OP a bit more credible than the Microprose writers, at least if your object is a discussion about plausible aliens or far-future humans in the real world within the known laws of physics. The aliens' psionic powers are kinda terrifying AF, so the Microprose prose does just fine for its intended purpose: Good storytelling for a computer game that makes no attempt to be fully real-world plausible / "hard" SF.)

comfortabledoug• 2 years ago

Physical fitness is a chemical process that we trigger with exercise; we will find a way to short-circuit/mimic it with pills or injections. There are already "exercise in a pill" compounds in the works.

chimpanzee4• 2 years ago

Physical fitness is a chemical process that we trigger with exercise

Physical fitness is not just chemistry. The body is responding to actual physical forces and the response is tightly coupled to how, when and where those forces are applied. Bone density and structure for instance is not just a matter of increasing production of bone cell production. It instead responds to the forces of gravity and other forces on the body as it moves through space. These forces do trigger electrochemical signals in the body, but it wouldn’t be trivial to recreate these signals in such a way that the body is fooled into responding just as it would if the signals were triggered by gravity and other physical forces.

It seems like it could be a more difficult but similar problem to the one experienced by lab-grown meat producers. The meat texture still isn’t right. And these meat “muscles” only require proper taste and texture. They wouldn’t have to actually support a living organism.

Edit: On reread I realize your comment allowed for assisting rather than totally replacing the required physical aspects. I agree with that. Use of chemicals could make it easier to trigger the necessary reactions, lowering thresholds, increasing outputs, etc. This could be applied broadly and the physical forces of everyday life might do the rest.

cadamsau• 2 years ago

My non physical desk job leaves me with a fresh body after my very much non 12 hour workday.

Because I have the physical energy to, I take that body to the ocean for a swim, to the park for a cycle, and to anywhere with a nice view for a run. Depending on the day. Oh and the gym is a pleasant 12 minute walk from home, so I do that a few times a week as well.

Sorry to burst your bubble OP.

avidphantasm• 2 years ago

I remember being struck a few years back when shaking the hand of a friend’s farmer father. He was about six-inches shorter than I am (6’1”) but his hands were MASSIVE.

xyst• 2 years ago

Uploaded intelligence will pave the way for BMS-III. Climate change resolved (no more need for ag, transportation of any kind, housing). Human brain uploaded to quantum servers cooled in Antartica.

Skeleton crew or robots to maintain physical world while a majority of humanity living in the matrix. Controlling machines from far away lands (or galaxies).

pshirshov• 2 years ago

I think that by the time we reach other stars

Isn't that the ultimate hubris?

tw04• 2 years ago

All you need to do is look at the NFL to know how silly this claim is. At every level of sport, athletes have gotten bigger, stronger, and faster over the generations. You can write some of it off as hyper-specialization at the professional level, but that says nothing about small school single-a level competitors continuing to set new records in their respective sports.

throw4847285• 2 years ago

The Kardashev Scale isn't pseudoscience, but it is pseudo-psychohistory.

overgard• 2 years ago

I think the error here is assuming mind and body are separate things. In reality our body, even our gut bacteria, has a huge effect on how we think and feel. There's a reason why sensory deprivation or dissociative anesthetics like ketamine have such a huge effect on cognition. I just don't think the human mind is designed to be a brain in a jar through virtual reality or whatever. I think whatever attempts we make at doing that would probably drive a person insane.

skandinaff• 2 years ago

To that I can add from personal experience, that indeed cognitive capacity and muscular health are tightly linked. I remember that on the peak of my form in a gym, I was able to code better, longer, and keep larger mental models in my head while doing it. Compared that to the period after back injury, where I was unable to do any physically challenging activities, I noticed a slump in cognitive abilities as well. So I can't see, how evolutionary, population with weaker and weaker bodies can keep producing highly capable individuals. And yes, of course there are plenty of cases such as Stephen Hawking and alike, but these probably are exceptions that prove the rule.

naasking2• 2 years ago

Nah, moving up the Kardashev scale means more control over biology. "Workout in a pill" is not far off. Genetic engineering to retain high levels of fitness with little effort is in the realm of feasible too.

dpc050505• 2 years ago

Anabolic steroids already exist.

naasking2• 2 years ago

Steroids don't really help if you don't actually train. You'll also die a lot younger. Hardly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

m463• 2 years ago

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using.

mr_mitm2• 2 years ago

My father grew up while working as a farmer on the side, then studied engineering. He never did proper strength training in his life. I grew up studying full-time, have been working out on and off, more so in the last couple of years. And I still have a hard time beating him in arm wrestling despite the 40 years of age gap.

Arm wrestling is a poor indicator of strength. Technique and experience account for much more than most people would think. Compare bench press, squat, deadlift numbers instead.

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

This is a somewhat simplistic take. Yes, people worked with their hands, but there were also other factors in the mix:

* frequent starvation or food insecurity among anyone but the high class, not good for overall physique,

* high parasite load sucking you dry from within - read up something on how massive infestation with hookworm can sap big, adult men of power,

* infections like tuberculosis.

I would be surprised if a 16th century peasant had more muscle than a 21th century student who does at least some sports. They would be a lot more used to physical work, yes, but that is not the same as "our muscles have atrophied".

If anything, we might have weaker sinews, but not muscle per se, and our bones are almost certainly stronger, as we lack neither calcium nor important vitamins.

hoseja• 2 years ago

Muscle mass adaptiveness is an optimization for regular famine conditions.

We could choose to let go of it, like we recently chose to let go of ravenous hunger with GLP drugs.

zesterer• 2 years ago

Interesting blog post

No, no it's not. There is nothing redeeming to be found here, it's nonsense. It's historially ignorant trad-pilled vibes about the past combined with bizarre techbro mumbo jumbo about the future. Neither have any meaningful grounding in reality, nor anything interesting to say about the world.

debesyla• 2 years ago

Side-topic, but for Biomechanical Stages (BMS) author skipped from pure muscle to industry ignoring the part where humanity started using animals for heavy/hard tasks of pulling, carrying, pushing.

wcoenen• 2 years ago

Entanglement does not allow for "Zero-Latency Control". This is a common misconception.

See "No-communication theorem": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

Havoc• 2 years ago

I worry less about the physical muscles and more about the mental. Bit like calculators reduced people’s ability to do basic maths in their head - think similar will happen with AI.

I already find myself instinctively throwing any errors I can’t immediately figure out myself into a chatbot

UniverseHacker• 2 years ago

Modern technology and a sedentary job are what make it possible for me to do hard strength training 4x/week and eat a high protein diet. As an amateur strength athlete, I am almost certainly much physically stronger than any of my ancestors that didn’t have the luxury of eating like I do, or exercising specifically for strength. We have good ways to quantify this even because we have ancient stone lifting traditions- we know how strong the strongest ancient people were, and modern people that train for strength are much much stronger- we now have small women like Chloe Brennan that are as strong as word famous strongmen were a century ago.

Sometimes I hear people say strength is useless nowadays but I couldn’t disagree more. In emergency situations I have been able to push stranded cars uphill to a safer spot, carry injured people and animals to safety, move large furniture and car parts myself, etc. Being more attractive to romantic partners is no downside either, nor is being able to eat a lot and not get fat. Strength makes modern life easier and more fun.

mol0cule• 2 years ago

This makes me think that AI will never really take away our “purpose”. Machines have made most of our bodies obsolete long ago, yet we still find value and fulfillment in body building, going to the gym, strenuous physical labor. I believe this extends to intellectual effort and training as well. Even if memorization and most thinking becomes “obsolete” or subsidized, it will still have inherent value.

Avlin67• 2 years ago

muscle size is to heat the body, more than giving strengh. human muscles are inefficient on purpose

RecycledEle• 2 years ago

Why not build a user interface that keeps us at peak health by demanding physical activity?

Our muscles will atrophy as we climb the Kardashev Scale

Related Stories