Ancestors lazy about exercise

#里茲螞蟻批判性思考寫作專欄 #Alex專欄 #外師每週精選閱讀
 
Further examining the potential pitfalls in trusting the authority and insight of experts even when they are discussing their own fields, in this week’s article a professor of human evolutionary biology offers a somewhat unconventional approach in helping people who don’t want to exercise: encouraging them to not want to exercise even more. In first acknowledging the difficulty that people find in trying to maintain a regular exercise regimen, the professor seems to want to offer some methods for overcoming the bad habits and laziness of modern humans, perhaps by providing some insight into human evolutionary biology that could allow us to minimise our weaknesses or enhance our strengths. Indeed, he specifically says as much about his research when he claims “that these perspectives also provide useful insights into how we can do better during the next lockdown and afterwards” and again at the end of the article when he states that “I hope evolutionary and anthropological perspectives can help us find new ways to keep moving”. Unfortunately, any reader who came looking for any of these things, will be sorely disappointed.

After glossing over the history of human physical exertion, including making some dubiously tenuous and unprovable comparisons between modern hunter-gatherer societies and those which existed thousands of years ago in completely different regions and environments, he then states that exercise is actually predominantly a modern invention that has been commodified, industrialised, commercialised and “medicalised” – whatever that means. He finishes without providing any insight whatsoever from his data, research or field that could be helpful in motivating couch potatoes or lazybones to get off their derrières and exercise. Instead he contradicts almost everything he has said in the article up to this point by reassuring those struggling to find the purpose and energy to get fit and in shape that they are not lazy, that our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t really exercise much, and that there is nothing at all wrong with being overweight or lazy because just 20 minutes exertion a day is enough to improve your health, without even offering any details of what form of exercise or level of intensity would achieve this otherwise very specific goal of halving “your risk of dying prematurely”.
What really takes the cake for biased and inconsistent writing from an expert, though, is when he totally abandons any pretence of professionalism and digresses into his purely personal speculation, claiming without a shred of evidence to support his generalisation that “most people enjoy exercise most when it is social” and that “we evolved to be physically active only when it was necessary or fun”. Says who? Says an expert of course!
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/05/exercising-human-evolution-moving-covid-psychology
 
===我是分隔線===
 
💡這個專欄目的是訓練同學聰明閱讀。
 
上面的貼文內容是我們的實力派外師Alex，針對每週一篇英文文章閱讀後，親自寫出的批判性思考文（不是copy & paste的東西啊）。旨在讓同學知道如何用不同的角度來讀文章。你可以選擇先讀Alex寫的批判文，也可以選擇先讀本次的英文文章連結，但最好兩處都要閱讀才能達到最好的效果。
 
這是個訓練批判性思考的好機會，希望同學不要被文字牽著鼻子走，在閱讀時可以多思考。大家可以善用這個寶貴的資源～
 
舊文連結：
https://www.leedsmayi.com/alex-column
 
Alex是我們的御用老師，每週都會幫梅姨、托托、慕華上英文課。目前星期一晚上有開一班 #里茲螞蟻外師應用英文課程 ，程度高級，充滿知識性與深度。有開放單次付費上課。若你想學習用英文來深度探討各項主題，check it out！
 
Alex老師的應用英文課：
https://www.leedsmayi.com/applied-english.html