I walk slower and talk slower than I used to, and do both way slower than people I interact with.
I can appreciate things better by moving slowly, with more intention, conserving my concentration and energy for matters of substance.
Why must moving slowly be stigmatised?
I am surrounded by people talking at such a high rate, they start responding before the other person's sentence or thought is completely expressed.
My value at work has become disentangling messes made by people failing to communicate effectively, and the first step in addressing that problem is always, slow down.
You will not get 10% further in life by going 10% faster. People moving quickly, failed at planning.
The entire mystery of the universe is accessible to you in your current location.
I don't think it should be "stigmatized", but I will say that walking slow actually hurts me. I love museums, but that slow "museum walking" will leave my back feeling extremely sore by the end of the day.
I feel like even if I covered the same distance (or longer) walking quickly, it wouldn't be nearly as painful.
I used to get lower back pain standing in concerts. For me, the pain had a lot to do with not properly engaging my glutes and core while standing still or moving slowly.
Yoga was very helpful--it taught me to use my muscles to carry my body rather than letting myself sink into my joints.
Yeah, I can walk at a moderate pace literally all day with no problems and be fine the next. Plodding for a couple hours brings pain and a lot of general discomfort, and I'm very patient in general - I would love to take my time with such things, but I can't. Gotta take breaks to walk faster or jog or something to recover.
My wife knows me well enough to know that sometimes I'll walk fast to the next exhibit and wait for her; I'm not trying to rush ahead, it is just easier for me to do that than the slow plodding you usually do at museums.
I fully agree with you about communicating, but I’m not persuaded that translates to movement or is required for wisdom, which I think you’re broadly describing.
Physical movement can be joy. Dancing, running with children, playing sports with friends, and even just taking care of errands like cleaning so we can get on to enjoying our spaces with our friends and family are all benefits from being able to move and react faster. And I imagine any number of things will slow me down as I age, so I’ll take a +10% wherever I can get it!
There's a lot of truth in what you say but I think the conclusion you landed on is too broad.
There will exist people moving quickly who have failed to plan, but a lot also incorporate moving quickly as part of their plan, simply because that's how they prefer doing things.
It's true that this kind of planning is vulnerable to unexpected problems - a missed connection, a queue, whatever it might be - but over time it can still work out rational if you accept this risk and just want to spend less of your time in aggregate in transit, with spells of over-provisioned waiting time, or just prefer the experience of moving quickly (there is much said about the benefits of slowing down, less said about the equally valid disposition of finding flow in the act of moving quickly, which many people also experience).
Years ago I joined a spiritual workshop called The Art of Living in San Francisco. There was a lot of mindfulness, and the instructor followed the curriculum, except for one particular exercise.
The exercise was 2 parts. First, you put away your mat slowly. Second, you put it away quickly.
I immediately thought, oh wow this is interesting. We've spent all day on slow stuff, but now the curriculum has varied to show us that speed can also work when required. I began to think there was more depth to the workshop than I originally thought.
But she ended the exercise as soon as we did the 2nd part, and she clearly didnt like the exercise.
I don't personally believe that everything is better done slowly. A lot is, but there's no reason to banish speed.
If you intentionally walk and talk slower than you used to, because of considered reasons, this article isn't about your kind of slowing down. It's about the involuntary kind, which isn't stigmatised any more than the mere act of acknowledging any other physical symptom.
> Second, why are we rushing everywhere? Why can't we just take it slow?
I assign _zero_ value to walking between the train and my house. When I get home I can play video games / make food / read a book / play music / whatever. Every minute spent commuting is a minute of enjoyment lost vOv
> Second, why are we rushing everywhere? Why can't we just take it slow?
Because the trains and buses don’t run at 5 minute intervals, they run at 20+ min intervals, so missing one can mean a minimum of a 20+ minute delay, if you can fit onto the next one. That is the best case scenario if you do not have a connection to make, where delays can compound even further.
Walking at a regular pace helps slow my brain down so that I can think more effectively. My favorite hobby right now is hour-long walks with my kindle (I walk in places where there are very long uninterrupted stretches).
When I read at home, I fall asleep in 2 pages. I have to be moving around. I have a bunch of "flashcard" like stuff on my kindle related to coding, interview prep, etc. The only chance I have is doing this while walking.
I have always found those that move and talk slower tend to be the ones that are more considered. They are not in a rush so they get it all done right.
I always found it funny the speeches of Alan watts is just how slow he generally talked, and yet that didn't mean the message was slow.
I also find it funny that there are loads of AI copies of him and they are all racing through the script as they cannot grasp his slower cadence.
Being mindful is great. The article is just saying it's a health indicator:
> So why does walking speed even matter? It’s considered an important indicator of overall health. A hale and hearty speed signifies that your body’s systems—including your heart, lungs, muscles and nervous system—are working well together. “We call it the sixth vital sign”
The fact of the matter is that other people are likely annoyed by your slowness, and probably think lesser of you as a result, even if it's unjustified, and even if they're just doing it subconsciously. Sounds like you're aware of that and think it's worth the tradeoff. But you're probably not going to make much headway in destigmatising it. You're literally jumping in a bucket full of elderly people.
Unless, you do it on purpose for reasons parent described. Stupid teenagerish kneejerk reactions are common, as are ego moves like comparing against each other (frequently done by deeply insecure individuals), that doesn't mean they are a smart long term approach to life, regardless of age.
I am old enough to know they aren't. That doesn't mean I don't like walking fast if situation allows, but thats part of my continuous training, injury recovery, or active rest.
There certainly won't be anything spurious about this correlation, even if there's no causing that can be proven. It's almost axiomatic that one comes along with the other.
Peak HN to link an article about "spurious correlations" (and not even replying with a well thought out point yourself, just the article link) in response to a claim that slowing down is associated with aging and diminished capacity.
In any case, you think what I posted is "peak HN", seemingly as a derogative comment. Then, you say I did it "in response to a claim that slowing down is associated with aging and diminished capacity", without noticing that said claim had been done in response to a person saying they intentionally slowed down.
Not due to diminished capacity. Not due to aging. With thoughtful intent.
Then asked why slowing down must be stigmatised, and GGP answered with this correlation, which clearly doesn't track in this case. Is that not a spurious correlation? And one that leads to preconceptions and stigma nonetheless.
Why does the fact that a all people slow down with age mean we must stigmatise slowing down?
What other conditions that correlate with old age must we stigmatise?
You literally linked to a website that overlays two unrelated graphs that look similar on top of each other. And now you're blaming others for coming to the obvious conclusion that you think "moving slower" and "growing older" should appear on that website.
It is not a spurious correlation, the two statistics are causally related. However, individual cases may vary, which is a problem with looking at aggregate statistics in general, and which is not addressed by your spurious correlations accusation.
Fair point. I still imagine there's a larger deviation between the aging population and the slowed down population than most people think - and especially large enough to dispel the idea that we must stigmatise people who slow down because of it.
Being slow at times is a good thing and a freedom everybody should give themselves at times.
That being said, some people don't like being too slow. I have a collegue who is clearly too slow for health reasons (overweight/unfit). When we are walking to lunch too fast for him, his excuse sounds a lot like what you said, while clearly out of his breath, because of a lack of stamina. So he frames it as a choice where we are wrong, while he is out of breath on a medium tempo walk after 100m. When I know from personal talks with him, that he dislikes being the slow one.
The human body is built to move. A lot more than most modern people move during their typical days. Not moving it, or moving it in ways that avoid effort has serious health effects. That doesn't mean we have to move fast always, but if your reason for not moving fast is an inability to do so, that is bad both for your body and for your mental capacity.
Moving slowly can be very exhausting. Try holding out you arm in front of you for a minute. So for many this isn't about moving slowly, it is about moving lazily.
Talking about responding too fast: Yes listening is a key skill many people fail to deploy. Yet effective communication sometimes works way differently than just listening to the words someone said. Here I have to think about another friend of mine. She talks very slowly and has the habbit of talking in circles. Meaning if you won't eventually interrupt her, you will hear variations of the same thought that has been expressed in the first 10 seconds spread out over minutes. This happens even with things where the first thing she said was a yes/no question you could answer in a second. A surprising amount of people will just talk until you interrupt them. In fact they want you to interrupt them, it stresses them out if you leave them hanging to fill more time. Those people would just have to get to the point, but they seem to have an inability to do so.
Effective communication after the sender/message/receiver model happens if the receiver can quickly decode the original thought encoded into the message (=words) by the sender. Old couples for example will not have to say many words in order for the other to understand what they feel and want to express. It is like they read each others mind, because communication isn't about reading the message and interpreting the words objectively, it is about decoding the thoughts, feelings and intentions encoded in the message made in the circumstances it was made.
That can lead to complications, if person A understands person B quickly, but person B doesn't trust person A to do so. Then person B needlessly insists on elaborating until the point is reached where sufficient information has been packed into the message to get the thought across. That means person B has a mental model of how person A may understand certain words that is way to pessimistic. For bad communicators that mental model is overly broad and unpersonalized ("throw words at the other side at some point they will understand"), while good communicators can quickly form and refine their understanding of how the other side receives messages. In the best case that works like with the old couple. In the worst case someone convinced themselves they can read minds, while all they do is guess and interrupt.
That means being interrupted can mean a person thinks they understood what you were saying. If this happens often and the person opposite gets it right, that is a sign they understand you well. If it happens often and the person opposite gets you wrong, either your thoughts feel more complex to you than they are or you need to work on the way you encode the thoughts into words (e.g. lead with the least obvious thought to avoid them hooking onto the first thing).
But those public institutions only give power to individuals. Bad actors are gonna orbit to those positions and abuse them as much as they can.
Private security is a different thing, as the power given is just wages in exchange for a good service, so individuals seeking power wouldn't want to "just have a job" at those.
The president of the United States sets the tone that hated without reason or explanation is the way the system works now. Belligerence and power are the currency.
Speaking to people's better angels as if it has a chance of influencing Trumps behaviour is a fool's errand. It's not derangement. His word is worthless.
...and when your labour, and the labour of 90+% of all humans on the planet have no economic value, we'll do what?
Continue to avoid exploring obvious solutions because certain words have been made into epithets, or failed previously because they were solving future (now imminent) problems?
If we don't fundamentally change our economic system its simple, we're all screwed.
If we have a system depending on trading our labor for money to pay for stuff, and the value of our labor goes to zero, we need a different system.
We can't paper over that fundamental crack by giving governments even more power to decide what every person "needs" and send out resources accordingly.
There are so many problems in that system. How do we actually decide prices when every consumer has the same base level of money to spend? How does the government decide what we all need or deserve? How do we avoid the corruption taking over that massive power granted to dole out resources? Are we just living in a feudal state again? Does the government need to control the means of production to keep such a system stable?
Nope. Humans are statistically fallible and their attention is too valuable to be obliged to a mundane task like executing navigation commands. Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around. Also personal agency limits public transportation as a solution.
> Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around.
The US already did it once (just in the wrong direction) by redesigning all cities to be unfriendly to humans and only navigable by cars. It should be technically possible to revert that mistake.
Unlike autonomous driving, public transit is a proven solution employed in thousands of cities around the world, on various scales, economies, etc.
> Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around.
We have been redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure since we had cities. Where I live (Seattle) they are opening a new light rail bridge crossing just next month (first rail over a floting bridge; which is technologically very interesting), and two new rail lines are being planned. In the 1960s the Bay area completely revolutionized their transit sytem when they opened BART.
>> In the 1960s the Bay area completely revolutionized their transit sytem when they opened BART.
66 years later we see California struggling terribly with implementation of a high-speed rail system -- where the placement/location of the infrastructure largely is targeted for areas far less dense than the Bay Area.
I don't think there is any single reason why this is so much more difficult now then it was in 1960 -- but clearly things have changed quite a lot in that time.
Yes and no - you need to check whether each individual politician, not just party, is taking money from said global corporates, because they have a lot of money and UK politicians are cheap.
Not to mention the opaque mess that's Reform UK financing.
Many of these governments are directly funded and directed by said corporate fascists. The opposition is hardly much better. There’s no good guys at the state level here.
The "coordinated corporate fascists" (your words not mine) are providing a platform where I can challenge the the state and be seen by potentially millions of people.
I don't doubt this description of what happened, but the sad irony in a company whose product was producing tools to generate archival copies of images, not recognising the value of retaining archival copies of images... facepalm.
I can appreciate things better by moving slowly, with more intention, conserving my concentration and energy for matters of substance.
Why must moving slowly be stigmatised?
I am surrounded by people talking at such a high rate, they start responding before the other person's sentence or thought is completely expressed.
My value at work has become disentangling messes made by people failing to communicate effectively, and the first step in addressing that problem is always, slow down.
You will not get 10% further in life by going 10% faster. People moving quickly, failed at planning. The entire mystery of the universe is accessible to you in your current location.
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