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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

People are different. For example, my fear of death is in the from existential dread. It's an occasional thing.

We should probably try harder to make people healthier in general. Much of the frailty of the elderly can be avoided with rigorous exercise. Maybe heart disease and dementia doesn't have to be your fate. I don't know how much longer people will be able to live if they optimize the hell out of their biomarkers.

But I do know...I don't want to be in pain and frail when I die. The best way to do that is making health my priority.

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Unfortunately, in the end, bad health is likely to come get you anyways, you just have a higher likelihood of more and more healthy years.

A good friend of mine lived healthy, and still went hiking in their 90s. Yet, they had a stroke and are now bedridden.

If you just drop dead after having had a nice live or go through months or years of frailty and bad health, it's all in the cards.

There's also the possibility that you can suffer from a long series of health conditions causing you a very reduced quality of life over a long period of time, have a stroke, and become bedridden. Perosnally I'd rather be healthy up until that particular time comes (if it indeed comes for me)

without disputing that there exists an optimal diet/exercise regiment for longevity and health, i very much doubt that we at present have a clue what it is. every day new science and medical evidence overturns old, and reproducibility fails.

optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go. (if you love exercise, it's not a loss, but in that case you would do it anyway even if it shortened your life because you love it, no need to spend time extolling its virtues)

i optimize for doing what i love to do all the time.

> optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go.

Pretty much all science on exercise's impact on both physical and health can be loosely summarized by "doing anything, anything at all is likely to have significant short and long term benefits". Similarly, nutrition can be summarised as "try eat a balanced diet, but at the very least just avoid hyper UPF, and don't eat red meat every day". You might decide that's worth it, but "walk your kids/dog/partner/self twice a day and only eat red meat on the weekends" is probably enough to make a significant impact for a very significant number of people.

Even if they don't enjoy working out, most people would probably enjoy living in a strong, healthy, good looking body. The hour of exercise makes every future hour of life slightly better, even in the short term (within a couple months of effort). Following pretty much any strength training program will also do a pretty good job even if it's not an optimal routine.

You don't need an hour. Fifteen minutes a day will make a very obvious difference. It's like you're trying to put people off!

Exercise done today improve health and well being. I would not consider that a waste.

Such a wrong mindset... but you do you, don't complain later when inevitable comes, its not like there haven't been hundreds of millions of folks who made similar life decisions and we can easily see what it leads to (or doesn't).

One example out of sea of examples - climbing. Indoor, outdoor, bouldering, long walls, doesn't matter. Its an amazing activity, every single person I know is doing it at least occasionally becomes much happier during&after a session. Massive health benefits could be just a side effect and it would most probably still be the best and most memorable thing you did on that day.

Plus people in community are generally very positive, welcoming, helpful and happy to talk to. Its sort of sport that changes you in many ways for the better (healthier, happier, better life perspective and so on). How much time it takes is sort of irrelevant, ie coming and commenting here costs you probably more time than continuous amateur climbing career would do.

Change climbing for many other sports and it would still be true.

It's curious how many athletic people fit this stereotype: they can't fathom that someone might not be like them.

For a great many of us climbing is utterly terrifying. Yeah, tried it. Yeah, aware that the belay rope is there. No, it still sucks and no extra happiness is anywhere to be found except happiness that it's over.

But more importantly the athletic people underestimate just how bad unathletic people are at exercise and just how much effort even something basic is for them.

Most people could not do the basic bouldering you are about to suggest to counter my point above: they don't have the arm strength. Building that strength would take at least 6 months of a dedicated workout program and a cure for whatever psychological issues are affecting their diet. Most will never get there and suggesting to them that they can sound like "just perform a magic ritual". Oh, and after 6 months of doing the impossible their achievement is "you can do the noob bouldering". Underwhelming to say the least.

But to you exercise is easy and fun and the opposite is inconceivable. And if we dare speak up - we'll be told we are our perspective, attitude, and indeed our very life experience are invalid and wrong. Go on, hit that downvote.

You don't need to be an athlete to experience physiological gains in health. Your health improves almost immediately no matter what exercise you start doing.

I don't get how people can't be kinda freaked out by the universe subjectively fast-forwarding to its end, to occur at any time between this second and a few decades from now.

Worse you won't see how it ends! I recently read a novel (this is a massive spoiler so I am not naming it) that drove this point home extremely well and has me thinking about it all the time since I read it. The book built up a number of enticing storylines. A huge mystery, various characters had struggles we wanted to learn about. However, the book resolves almost none of this because the protagonist dies and we just never find out. That's what death is. There is no debriefing. You don't find out how life continues for your loved ones you leave behind. You don't find out who wins the next election. You don't find out how your favorite tv show wraps up or what other movies your favorite director makes. You don't find out if faster-than-light travel will be achieved, if we'll one day inhabit Mars or if quantum computers breaking RSA will cause havoc. It just en

This is highly dependent on one's own belief system and theology, because beyond a certain point, we literally can't prove what happens to a human mind when the body dies, the existence or non-existence of a soul, etc.

Believe or disbelieve whatever you like, go on about a God of the Gaps, but that's why they talk about people's religious "faith."

You're right that there's no way of knowing, but there's no need to make up something from thin air and believe that somehow is true.

Who cares?

Sometimes, you don’t know everything, nor will you. You won’t be around for everything. This is the human condition.

It seems unwise to spend too many brain cycles worrying about this.

Of course we don't know everything and shouldn't care about everything. However, we have lots of things we care about for good and less good reasons. It's natural and good to care about your friends and family or even your country and maybe the future of humanity. We need to make decisions based on these factors. While we stop being able to influence outcomes, it would IMO be odd to simply not care what happens after.

What purpose would be served by freaking out? Would freaking out somehow help me to avoid death? Or at least prolong my life? Freaking out in fact shortens my (useful) life because now I've wasted time in some state of agitation that could have been better spent doing virtually anything else.

Hoping I get to see my grandkids. Hell, even see them start to marry off, come to that. But I'll spend what time I've got trying to enjoy the things that are here, now. You should do the same.

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