In Metis and Bodybuilders, Scott Alexander argues that bodybuilding metis (the practical wisdom that comes from a tight-knit community sharing a common goal, watching each other succeed and fail, and passing wisdom down to the next generation) failed to arrive at the right conclusion about optimal rest periods before academic studies did. He interprets this as evidence that metis is inferior to academic science, at least for bodybuilding.
The problem with his criticism is that it assumes that metis and academic science are trying to solve the same problem. They aren’t, which means comparing metis to academic science on a goal that metis isn’t trying to achieve underestimates the effectiveness of metis.
Academic research in bodybuilding often aims to determine the optimal parameters of a workout program for achieving hypertrophy or strength gains. It tries to isolate variables (exercise choice, rep ranges, training frequency) in order to find the most efficient path to strength gains or muscle growth. Bodybuilding metis, on the other hand, isn’t focused on efficiency. It’s optimized for adherence.
Most people don’t fail to gain muscle because they rested 90 seconds instead of 180 seconds, or because they did 6 reps instead of 8. They fail because they never went to the gym in the first place, or they did go but stopped after a couple of weeks, or they succeeded in maintaining their gym habit but never increased the weight. It’s common knowledge that for beginners, as long as they train regularly and progressively overload, almost any routine will work. That’s why so many programs have loyal followings: people stick with them, and sticking with a program is what works.
This is what metis in bodybuilding optimizes for. It encourages behaviors that keep people going to the gym and pushing themselves harder each week. It doesn’t need to determine the fastest way to gain muscle; it needs to ensure that you’re still lifting a year from now. A slightly less optimal routine followed consistently for two years will produce more progress than a perfect routine abandoned after a month. In fact, several commenters on Scott’s post point out that shorter rest periods help them finish workouts faster. If doubling rest times causes someone to skip sessions due to time constraints, then the increased hypertrophy gains become irrelevant.
A useful analogy comes from Joseph Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success. Manioc is a calorie-dense plant that grows easily, and some indigenous Amazonian groups have developed a long, complex routine for processing it. The roots are scraped and grated, then washed to separate the fiber, starch, and liquid. The liquid is boiled, but the fiber and starch must sit for two days before they can be baked and eaten. The process is time-consuming; women spend about a quarter of their day on it. A well-meaning reformer might think they could simplify the process to save time, perhaps by just boiling the manioc, which is enough to remove the bitter taste. Unfortunately, manioc happens to contain cyanide, and consuming too much of it over time can make you sick. It turns out the entire process is necessary to remove the cyanide. In this case, the reformer assumed the goal of the processing was to remove bitterness and concluded that metis had failed, because they had easily found a faster way to achieve the same result. But metis was working toward a goal that the reformer didn’t know enough to pursue: removing poison from the food one is about to consume. In this sense, metis was wiser than the reformer.
Scott makes a similar mistake. He assumes that metis is trying to optimize efficiency (which, on the surface, seems like the most important goal), when metis is actually working toward increasing adherence (which is far more important). Then, when metis does worse on a goal it wasn’t trying to achieve, Scott faults it. In reality, metis performs better at what matters more, and so turns out to be wiser than Scott.