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Comment by oskarpearson | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me, or have some of the comments here missed the point of this entirely? This isn't about MVP or Lean Product Dev.

It's about doing the things that are "worth doing". And about doing them yourself, instead of outsourcing them to someone else. Take responsibility for doing the things that are difficult but worth doing.

Things that people outsource:

Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal Trainers.

Their health - to "the professionals", be those Doctors, vitamin salesmen, or chiropractors.

Music - to professional musicians.

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>Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal Trainers.

Um, what? Your personal trainer doesn't go to the gym in your stead, they advise on how best to use your time there.

In this case it's more about where you get the knowledge. To parallel the motherhood example FTA:

> She does what she does not because she is going to be paid for her services and not because she is the most highly skilled, but because she wants to do it. And she does “the things worth doing,” which are the things closest and most sacred to all of humanity – nurturing a baby, teaching a child the first things, and, in fact, all things.

You're not doing the exercises that are being chosen by the expert who is telling you what to do because you're paying them, you're doing the exercises you want to do purely out of self-interest.

But the fact that having a personal trainer improves things a lot. For example having a psychologist. She doesn't do anything, she just makes comments.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys also don't "do anything" except just "make comments". For that matter, neither do presidents or professors.

I think he meant "you shouldn't skip gym just because you don't have a trainer. Gym is worth doing, so it's even worth doing badly (without a trainer)"

I agree with this idea but if you work out badly enough you can seriously injure yourself.

You're probably over analyzing this. I don't need someone to tell me how to run if I want to go for a run, regardless of my experience level. But sure, having a personal trainer is important for certain types of workouts.

I agree for a one-off.

But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently running without getting advice on how best to do it.

You don't need a personal trainer for that. But asking someone "to tell me how to run" ain't a bad idea, even if it's a question on a running board on the Internet.

"But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently running without getting advice on how best to do it."

The people who read running boards all the time roll their eyes at stuff like this. Saying that running will hurt your knees is the running equivalent of "The GPL will infect your codebase." It's not true, but it sounds scary.

Usually, if you ask runners how to run, they will say something like, "It's not that complicated. Run more miles, slowly."

For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/wi8zq/want_an_easy...

Interesting - thanks!

OTOH, "Runner's Knee" does seem to be a serious condition affecting a lot of people (much like "Fencer's Knee", which I'm more familiar with). From the same subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/3hx43k/how_i_cured... https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/26jaax/3_years_ago... https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1gdw5l/can_i_fix_m...

And a number of people, when discussing the problem, reference bad technique as a causative factor.

However, you're absolutely right that it seems there's little evidence for permanent damage. I found this thread particularly interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1fehx2/wife_trying...

I totally get your point and I agree. I think fundamental point is not to use such things as excuses not to do things at all.

If you work out with the vast majority of badly trained, non-scientific, fad-chasing trainers, you can seriously injure yourself too.

You can injure yourself even with a good trainer.

I trained with one on the Starting Strength lifts for 4 months. Made crazy gains, but I ended up stopping after an injury. I was not listening to my body the way I would have if I hadn't had the trainer.

I'm starting Crossfit now, and my number one goal is zero injuries. I like that it's more of a class format than it is a one on one training format. I can go at my own pace.

Crossfit is a dangerous joke because they prioritize massive sets over safe and correct form.

https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec...

I used to think the same way. But gyms vary widely in quality and culture. And you can go at your own pace, nobody is going to make you do more when you're ready to stop.

I personally would prefer to just lift. But unless you're pretty lucky, or are willing to invest the time and expense, you won't have access to a gym with decent equipment. Since convenience is a huge factor in lifestyle choices like working out, you need to choose amongst the activities that are close to you. Once I graduated from cardio at Planet Fitness, the only place to go really is Crossfit.

Allow me to please add another dimension to this discussion. First a couple of facts, South Africa is in top five set of unequal societies in the world (the rich are really rich, the poor very poor). Less than 1% can afford personal trainers. Obesity related illnesses now take up bulk of health budget. Not to discount the value of personal trainers but in certain countries/scenarios it is just best to get on with exercising.

That is also due to South African culture, and not necessarily just wealth inequality.

People have been working out without "professional trainers" for millennia. Yes, you can be injured occasionally (but you also can with a trainer), but if you don't overdo it you'll be fine.

Perhaps this is more about surrendering responsibility/ownership to others.

I have seen many people give that up upon getting a trainer. Suddenly they only exercise at trainer appointments.

I suppose the real question is then "How do we decide what is 'worth doing' ourselves?"

I think it's fair to say that abolishing all division of labor doesn't make much sense. So what makes some activities different such that they should not be subject to division of labor? Outsourcing work to personal trainers, doctors, and musicians seems like a very good idea to me.

Let's say you got a date with a girl. Instead of a date you could have been programming making $100 per hour instead. The date costs you money. Would you outsource the date to your friend who will go in your stead with the girl, so you can be more productive?

No way, the date is worth going in and of itself.

Same logic with raising children.

You're going to to look back on the experience with nothing but fondness. The experience of raising your child was valuable in and of itself.

Life is not about maximising productivity, you know.

I don't think your example of dating is a very good one. You're changing the functional nature of the date by having someone else go on it. That's like saying you can't outsource hair-cutting to a barber because it would be equivalent of telling your friend to go cut his hair for you. Clearly you need to be participatory in some degree for the activity to retain it's functionality, but that doesn't mean you can't outsource the hard parts to someone else and have everyone be better off. (Maybe it's unrealistic, but personally I think we do need a bit more outsourcing in dating. We don't need to have everyone muddle through it by themselves, we can have skilled people help educate and guide us in how to find healthy meaningful relationships.)

And honestly, I simply can't help disagreeing with the idea that everyone should raise children themselves, just because we will "look back on it with fondness". That seems to me to be the equivalent of saying (pardon the awful analogy) that people should kidnap women off the street and rape them because they find the experience "pleasurable". The way I see it is that by raising a child you are forcing your will upon them, they did not ask or consent to it and have no say in how it is done. And yet, child raising must be done somehow, and therefore you have a serious responsibility to try to ensure that it is done as well as it possibly can. You have no right to force poor parenting onto a child simply because you had a "nice experience".

I realize my views on this may be a bit unusual, but I think it's worth considering.

Do you have kids? I would hardly say every parent I know looks back on it with "nothing but fondness". Some would even say that on balance, they would have rather not had children at all.

I should have rephrased it to include only people who enjoy raising children. For those people, it's OK not to be maximally productive. It's ok to not want to outsource raising a child by strangers.

> "How do we decide what is 'worth doing' ourselves?"

Another way to phrase this: "How do we live a good life?" People have been asking this for thousands of years. It's one of (or perhaps the?) central question of humanity.

I think there's two branches:

1) Things you do because you love doing them. Like spending time with your kids - it's not about doing it as-best-as-is-possible, it's just about doing it because you love doing it. It's worth doing for you, so you don't have to worry about how well you do it.

2) Things that are outcome-based. When it doesn't matter if you're the right person for the job because you're the ONLY person for the job and the job needs doing.

>I suppose the real question is then "How do we decide what is 'worth doing' ourselves?"

Well that's the thing, Chesterton gives advice on that in the quote:

Is it worth doing even if you're doing it poorly? Then it's 'worth doing'. Is it only worth doing if you're doing it at a high/professional/competitive level? Then it's not 'worth doing'.

Of course as pointed out in every third comment, take Chesterton with a grain of salt. Chesterton never said anything that he didn't later contradict, and assert that contradicting himself was in fact proof of the ultimate correctness of both statements.

As a poster points out below, as originally written by Chesterton, this is "about" opposing the education of women in order that they might remain angelically primitive and unspoilt in their leisure activities.

It is absolutely not about taking things like the gym seriously. Chesterton would argue for physical leisure (for men), but only in a fundamentally amateur fashion. Cricket on the village green, "jumpers for goalposts" football, that kind of thing. It's very English (upper class) and not at all Californian.

(Chesterton was a tremendous writer, one of the greats of the English language, but should not be taken as a guide to living one's life in the present day without a pinch of salt)

While this isn't about MVPs or programming, this is Hacker News, so it's destined to be interpreted in that light once once posted here. I sympathize with your overall point, but reinterpretation contributes to timelessness.

> reinterpretation contributes to timelessness

I really enjoy that turn of phrase

In the United States, the recent legal trend toward strict originalism in interpreting the Constitution has created a widening disconnect between what was written in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and what the US needs today.

This dogmatic refusal to reinterpret the Second Amendment, in particular, has created a profoundly bizarre (to this Canadian) situation in which the US has a rate of gun death - not just murder, but also suicide and accidental shooting - that has no comparison anywhere else in the developed world.

In respect to outsourcing our health to doctors, that is for very good reasons. People are shown to be completely deficient when trying to look out for themselves in this regard.

A doctor can't keep you out of dangerous situations that are hazardous to your health. They can't exercise or watch your weight or quit smoking or take your medicine for you. They aren't there to notice the first symptoms of a disease. And you'll get worse results if you don't describe your symptoms accurately.

Of course they'll still do the best they can for people who don't do any of these things, but people who take care of themselves (or have other people - amateurs - to advocate for them) are going to get better use out of the medical system.

You still need to take overall ownership. Get second opinions. Do some research on use that not as the basis of making some sort of self diagnoses, but as to have a frank discourse with your doctor on your condition. Prevent the need for acute treatments by taking preventative measures that have broad scientific consensus (good diet, exercise, safety equipment, etc...). Do you have a living will and advance directives? Check to see if generic prescriptions would save you money. Proactively ask about different drug formulation if you anticipate or identify side-effects. Get justification for suggested remedies. Ensure your records are transferred or up to date when changing providers. Proactively inform your doctor of family history or environmental conditions regardless of any relevancy you expect - let them make the call but give them all the data. Research providers and providers networks, not just for expertise, which is really hard to judge, but for things like: If I call on the weekend who picks up? Your GP on her mobile? Whoever is on-call? A nurse? A referral service from the local hospital? It is wise to outsource expertise you don't have, but not management of that expertise if you can avoid it.

For an alternative view, read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Antifragile" where he writes about iatrogenics.

People are shown to be completely deficient when trying to look out for themselves in this regard.

jacobr1 is completely right thought, YOU have to take ownership of your health situation. No one can do that for you. Your doctor has hundreds of patients to think about, and only so much cognitive energy available to burn. How much time per month does he/she spend thinking about you specifically? And note that your GP/PCP is likely not up to date on all of the cutting edge research coming down the pike. I'm sure they take their continuing education credits as required by the AMA or whatever, and some probably read a few journal articles and what-not, especially in an area of particular interest. But if you have some uncommon condition, do you think your doctor is on pubmed all day researching every study published on your condition, looking for that one extra bit of knowledge that might make a huge difference. Nah, they're playing golf. Or playing with their kids. Or any of the myriad of things normal people do when they aren't working.

And what if you have, FSM forbid, two (or more) doctors. Maybe you have a GP and a cardiologist or an endocrinologist you see. Who's responsible for noticing and directing attention to conflicting instructions between the two? Who's responsible for making sure each knows about all the drugs you're prescribed by the other? Etc? Yeah, you are.

Of course lay people shouldn't try to be their own doctor, but saying that you have to take responsibility for your health care is totally accurate.

Yes, absolutely. HN has a natural tendency to make everything about startups. Where this does overlap is the passage about child-rearing which posits that amateurs are more suited than professionals due to the breadth of skills necessary. This correlates nicely with startups, it seems, where being able to do a lot of things "badly" is more important than doing a few things "well." Foxes vs. hedgehogs.

I should have read the comments first. That's the article in understandable.

imo stuff like gardening, landscaping, training a pet also falls under this category!

Everyone else is just overanalyzing everything :)

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