Building in reciprocal altruism into exercise, via a nonprofit with a mobile app
Effective altruism
Regular exercise likely has a very large positive impact on health and well-being. A lot of Americans do not do sufficient regular exercise, which is probably a major reason for suboptimal quality of life and subsequently suboptimal productivity.
One reason why people don’t like regular exercise from going to the gym is that it feels artificial or unpleasant, and feels like a waste of time and energy. In a sense, this viewpoint is correct; moving heavy objects back and forth or running on a treadmill has no benefit other than via exercise.
Evolutionarily relevant foragers—and likely, most ancestral humans—do regular exercise, but for the explicit purpose of cooperative foraging. This is why their quality of life (in the sense of health) rivals or even exceeds that of many Americans despite their lack of access to modern medicine.
Building in humans’ tendency to partake in reciprocal altruism into exercise can have potentially high impact on quality of life and productivity. The idea is that a nonprofit can build an mobile app with ‘altruism points’ that can be exchanged for donations. Instead of going to the gym to exercise, you look at the list of requests on the mobile app to deliver groceries or food for people in need, or deliver essential objects to people who are busy with work when the store is open. After you fulfill the request, you get ‘altruism points’. You can then use ‘altruism points’ when you are in need of some delivery quickly. This is not confined to charitable giving/delivery (you can use your ‘altruism points’ for things like restaurant food delivery), but charitable requests can be requested to the app without donations (elderly people’s grocery trips during COVID, etc.).
The upside is that more EAs (and more people in general) will feel good about exercising, higher reciprocal cooperation and solidarity in the community in general, more enthusiasm/less guilt for saving valuable time via requesting help (e.g., ordering food instead of cooking), and less “deadweight loss” from moving heavy weights back and forth.
(A friend contributed to this idea, and I will be sharing the prize money with her if this idea is selected.)
Building in reciprocal altruism into exercise, via a nonprofit with a mobile app
Effective altruism
Regular exercise likely has a very large positive impact on health and well-being. A lot of Americans do not do sufficient regular exercise, which is probably a major reason for suboptimal quality of life and subsequently suboptimal productivity.
One reason why people don’t like regular exercise from going to the gym is that it feels artificial or unpleasant, and feels like a waste of time and energy. In a sense, this viewpoint is correct; moving heavy objects back and forth or running on a treadmill has no benefit other than via exercise.
Evolutionarily relevant foragers—and likely, most ancestral humans—do regular exercise, but for the explicit purpose of cooperative foraging. This is why their quality of life (in the sense of health) rivals or even exceeds that of many Americans despite their lack of access to modern medicine.
Building in humans’ tendency to partake in reciprocal altruism into exercise can have potentially high impact on quality of life and productivity. The idea is that a nonprofit can build an mobile app with ‘altruism points’ that can be exchanged for donations. Instead of going to the gym to exercise, you look at the list of requests on the mobile app to deliver groceries or food for people in need, or deliver essential objects to people who are busy with work when the store is open. After you fulfill the request, you get ‘altruism points’. You can then use ‘altruism points’ when you are in need of some delivery quickly. This is not confined to charitable giving/delivery (you can use your ‘altruism points’ for things like restaurant food delivery), but charitable requests can be requested to the app without donations (elderly people’s grocery trips during COVID, etc.).
The upside is that more EAs (and more people in general) will feel good about exercising, higher reciprocal cooperation and solidarity in the community in general, more enthusiasm/less guilt for saving valuable time via requesting help (e.g., ordering food instead of cooking), and less “deadweight loss” from moving heavy weights back and forth.
(A friend contributed to this idea, and I will be sharing the prize money with her if this idea is selected.)