This is something that I always found weird hanging out with LWers, how people almost take pride in being anti-sports. I’m not athletic at all and yet I play a dozen different sports and watch everything from figure skating to college football. Is this because the nerd/jock dichotomy actually happens in American schools and not in movies? All my friends from the math club in high school in Israel played soccer several times a week, every chance that we could.
I encourage everyone to try playing a sport, if you’ve never tried then something like ping pong or even throwing a frisbee around can be good entry level activities for people who think they’re horrible athletes.
In Vienna there was once a LW meetup in a gym. Another rationalist teaches Salsa dancing. Ivan from Bratislava always rides to Vienna meetups and back on a bike. -- None of this is the kind of sport that the article describes, but seems to me they are in the same cluster.
Speaking for myself, I have always avoided all kinds of sport (including chess), because to me they felt extremely boring. Now I guess my objection was mostly that I am super picky about people I spend my time with; I probably would have enjoyed sporting with fellow rationalists. Recently, inspired by the LW meetup in the gym, I started exercising heavily at home; and I lost 4 kg in a week.
I have already heard people speculating whether the fact that some rationalists seemingly don’t put high enough priority on their health is a specifically American thing (or even less charitably, a specifically Eliezer thing). On the other hand, for example Valentine from CFAR has a black belt in Aikido.
This is something that I always found weird hanging out with LWers, how people almost take pride in being anti-sports. I’m not athletic at all and yet I play a dozen different sports and watch everything from figure skating to college football. Is this because the nerd/jock dichotomy actually happens in American schools and not in movies? All my friends from the math club in high school in Israel played soccer several times a week, every chance that we could.
I encourage everyone to try playing a sport, if you’ve never tried then something like ping pong or even throwing a frisbee around can be good entry level activities for people who think they’re horrible athletes.
In Vienna there was once a LW meetup in a gym. Another rationalist teaches Salsa dancing. Ivan from Bratislava always rides to Vienna meetups and back on a bike. -- None of this is the kind of sport that the article describes, but seems to me they are in the same cluster.
Speaking for myself, I have always avoided all kinds of sport (including chess), because to me they felt extremely boring. Now I guess my objection was mostly that I am super picky about people I spend my time with; I probably would have enjoyed sporting with fellow rationalists. Recently, inspired by the LW meetup in the gym, I started exercising heavily at home; and I lost 4 kg in a week.
I have already heard people speculating whether the fact that some rationalists seemingly don’t put high enough priority on their health is a specifically American thing (or even less charitably, a specifically Eliezer thing). On the other hand, for example Valentine from CFAR has a black belt in Aikido.