Nicely put.
I used to wonder why other transhumanists seemed to neglect their bodies so much. All this talk about becoming perfect, immortal machines, yet aside from nootropics and the occasional trendy diet, hardly a one put any effort into optimizing what they had; even the really simple stuff, like maintaining decent hygiene and occasionally wearing things other than T-shirts with clever references on them, often fell by the wayside.
The answer, of course, was that the transhumanist identity for most of these people grew out of their geek identity, and that physical and social fitness were seen as threatening or at least alien for male, American geeks of that era: they coded as the domain of jocks or scenesters or boring preppies. I hadn't fallen into the same trap because I'd been disillusioned with the culture for a while by then, but perhaps another solution would have been to change the precedence of those identities.
Alternately you could try looking into the Quantified Self scene; I expect that might make the instrumental nature of e.g. weightlifting more salient.
I know it would be beneficial, but weight rooms are populated by people I dislike interacting with and do not wish to be like so that just sticking around takes extra effort. And AFAIK none of the programs like starting strength are the kind of thing you can do in your apartment with minimal equipment (if there is one, I can probably manage that).
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for March 16-31.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
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