The only chore machines will never do for you

I am a student of Y Combinator Startup School. This write up was triggered by a question on SUS forum: “What do you think so many users download fitness app but find it hard to stick with those programs ? or just go as far as signing up ? Why do they have the same problem as gyms, meaning people signings up but hardly showing up to workout?”. This article sums up my thinking on the subject, and aggregates most of the comments I made on that forum.

We, humans, are tool makers, Steve Jobs famously said. He labeled computers being “bicycles for our minds”. What he meant is that we are not efficient runners, condors are the best, but when we are on a bicycle bests everything, including condors, in locomotion efficiency. Just like bicycle amplifies our moving ability, computer amplifies our mental ability. But that was way back in the 1980s.

Nowadays machines are not just assisting humans. They are increasingly replacing humans. Computer controlled robots do more and more manual tasks, and do that on their own. Some of it is available now. Roomba vacuums my floors already and does it well enough. This may not be the best example as I have to clean it myself, and sometimes it malfunctions. But the rate of progress is such that soon Rumba will be self cleaning, and then it will wash and then it will paint and then it will do god knows what wonders in my household. Robots will pick apples regardless of the weather, tireless. Autonomous cars will drive you around, cheap, fast.

Computer programs can do ever increasing number of computational tasks humans used to do. Some claimed software might replace radiologists for reading medical images. Then some counter, no it won’t, anytime soon. The article linked gives an example of auto-pilots that made flights safer, and air traffic increases and now there is not enough human pilots. Great argument. In case your time horizon is the next 5 years, that’s it. Whenever you look at technology, it initially always assists humans by taking over some simpler, tiresome, not creative function. Then it gets more sophisticated, and takes over another, less simple function. And human efficiency goes through the roof. One human being armed with technology can now replace 20. And then at last even that one becomes unnecessary.

But it doesn’t even matter if it happens. It is already clear that whether or not machines will replace all humans doing chores, they will replace most.

I have no doubt it will happen. Eventually. May be not as fast as some believe. But there will be time when machines, with or without a handful of humans mixed in, will do all the unpleasant things you wished you would not have to do.

Except this one.

Machines will not work out for you. This is something you still will have to do, if you value your health, good looks, lucid mind, elevated spirit, and sense of life being great.

Right, you might say, machines will not eat for you as well. Correct, I counter, but eating is a pleasure. Having sex is a pleasure. Your body rebels if you neglect these needs long enough.

Exercise, on the other hand, is a chore. It is something we do not naturally enjoy. Exercising we are working against nature. To get it done we have to apply willpower.

Or else we trick ourselves.We are creating props for it. Some apps or websites or organizations get peer pressure or trainers involved. This will not make exercising pleasure. What it does though is making social obligation override the dislike of working out. There may be other motivations. I have seen a startup that makes your exercising generate a crypto currency for you. I have seen an insurance company reducing your premium if you stay fit, so it is a direct monetary incentive. Gyms are based on the same premise. Some people pay in order to create an incentive not to skip sessions.

Motivations vary, but the first principle remains intact. Exercising without it serving an immediate vital need (e.g. running for your life, or chasing lunch in the shape of a rabbit that runs away fast) is unnatural. So we contrive incentives to overcome it.

Not that it is bad, in principle. What is bad, really disastrous, is that we are failing at that. Despite all the effort, the results are laughably inadequate.

The modern technology relieve us of our duties that force us move. And we failed to find a substitute.

This USA Today article (2018, but still relevant I guess) claims 23% of US adults are getting enough exercise. Yea some people claim they love running. I call bullshit on that. There is some serotonin being generated, sure, but mostly they are loving the sense of achievement for overcoming their natural laziness.

So what do we do, given that machines are of no use, next year or the next 100 years, and whatever we tried so far did not work? I do not know.

What I do know is this. If you don’t invent that self driving car, someone else will. It is a solvable problem. It is just a matter of time until someone, probably more then one, will.

But if you don’t solve the working out problem, there is no guarantee at all that someone ever will. I love quotes from “The Silicon Valley” about making the world a better place. We all make the world a little bit better, sure. But, being serious for a moment, those who try to figure fitness thing out are the ones who aspire to make it not just better, but as close to perfect as it can ever be