Fake Fitness

Earthhorse

I was reading through this year's Edge's World Question Center answers when I came across this answer (around half way down the page), from Geoffrey Miller who uses the idea of fake fitness to explain Fermi's paradox.

The idea of fake fitness is pretty simple. Our technology has essentially evolved to the stage where we can simulate success so easily that it removes any incentive to actually succeed. So rather than join the local football team you stay at home and guide a team to Europe on your console.

Rather than get some exercise or meditate, as a way of achieving well being, you take drugs and produce similar results. Sure, you could do it the old fashioned way, but if you know somebody who can hook you up why would you? It's just so inconvenient to sweat your way into a different state when you can snort or swallow something to do the same.

Even our need to form relationships can be affected by fake fitness. With online instant access to porn one of the incentives (lust) towards forming relationships is taken away. It doesn't replace relationships by any stretch of the imagination but it takes the edge off one of the driving factors, perhaps the main driving factor, in their initiation.

So, what do you think? Are we living in an age where fake fitness is having adverse affects on society? Or even on you? Is it really a problem at all? If the feeling of completing a computer game matches, in some way, the feeling of doing something similar in real life then where's the harm?

(You should probably read Miller's explanation of fake fitness in the link. He explains it better, though I think I've made a fair stab at it here).

MrJoeSoap

Very interesting topic. The football part might interest me the most, especially in terms of the Irish league and peoples preference of watching foreign football at home on television rather than actually going to local games.

Do you have any more links or books on this, I'd be interested to read some more on it.

Earthhorse

Unfortunately not. On the link I've given if you click on Miller's profile you will get other articles and interviews with him but there aren't many and they're not very long.

Miller also has a book "The Mating Mind", though I haven't read it having only discovered him lately.

Seraphina

Earthhorse wrote:

Rather than get some exercise or meditate, as a way of achieving well being, you take drugs and produce similar results. Sure, you could do it the old fashioned way, but if you know somebody who can hook you up why would you? It's just so inconvenient to sweat your way into a different state when you can snort or swallow something to do the same.

i do both, i feel it makes me a good, well rounded individual

muesli_offire

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard
And my sig

Earthhorse

Seraphina wrote:

i do both, i feel it makes me a good, well rounded individual

You exercise and meditate?

Good for you!

Muesli - thanks for the link.

Khannie

His article is, well, somewhat flawed. For starters, his fermi paradox explaination is, well, lacking. Also, the majority of stars do not host life possible planets (at least not life as we understand it. The question is a good one though.

Instead of playing real sport competitively, I for one play a lot of online games (at a reasonably high level of competitiveness...to the point where I train). I've never been very sporty, so perhaps this replaces the need. I've certainly felt very boxed in since I lost my broadband (playing online games does give the sensation of being outdoors, in the sunshine, etc.).

There is one thing that he said that I'd really question though:

Actually colonizing the galaxy would be so much harder than pretending to have done it when filming Star Wars or Serenity.

I think mankind likes discovering new things. A massive amount of money is spent studying the stars / space every year. Enough to save a lot of lives on earth, but we choose not to, because we like the idea of travelling to far away places, and I don't think that virtuality could reasonably replace that inbuilt desire.

AngryBadger

I think it's equally valid to say that the only pwople who will use "artificial alternatives" such as drugs, porn, computer games, ad so on, are those who already suffer under a mental/emotional imbalance.

I just don't think the simulated alternatives compare to the reality, which most people have experienced at one time or another. Even though, for example, I can happily explore an entire universe with games like X3, or watch Angel Long engage in all variety of sexual deviance from the comfort of my leather chair, it simply doesn't compare with getting out there and doing it myself.

Blub2k4

Load of horse manure, it has tipped over to the point where laperoscopists (keyhole surgeons) are getting better and learning the skills faster because of their skill on nintendos. Same with military, soldiers now train on sims on pc, Americas army anyone....and targetting systems are all based on pc gaming concepts these days too.
It is most definitely not an "ersatz" for the real thing as it has in some cases replaced the traditional methods, but it is not leaving us poorer (methaphorically) than not using the technology.
With regard to meditation vs drugs, you will always have people who will take the traditional path as people understand that drugs dont offer an alternative to the real thing, just something similar.