Why I haven’t been writing more

Friends have been asking when I will write something again. There are two reasons I haven’t written much recently:

1. I don’t have much else to say on the subject of biohacking and personal optimization.
2. I have been focused on other things, and don’t yet have a sufficiently deep and coherent framework to share there.

On biohacking and personal optimization

I have covered most of the basics. Sleep, food, exercise, meditation, focus, tuning hormones, setting goals, optimizing social intelligence and the like. These have impact. And they exist in a coherent framework which I described in depth. The rest is detail.

I could start writing articles about the wonders of the Dexcom G6 CGM or on why Crestor is a better reducer of LDL-P in my case than Lipitor. But this is fucking boring for me. Minor details which have minor effects. I like large-scale deep frameworks for life where I get to add original thought which others will find useful. I have no interest in running a health blog.

So I am not writing on this because I’ve already written what I consider interesting and have nothing more to say here. And because I don’t spend much time finding new minor health or productivity hacks. I already covered my own bases in this area, and areas of high impact for me have changed.

My new areas of high impact

Here’s where I am digging now:

• I started a new ultra-long-term company aimed at getting us closer to The Singularity. It’s early to say much about it beyond “related to bio-nanotechnology, with exceptional scientists and investors.” In short, I’m moving from dreams to execution on this.
• How to build organizational culture which is ultra-long-term. Where people want to be forever, are obsessed with a meaningful mission, build deep relationships, are authentic, truth-seeking, growth-minded and are not concerned with their own personal ego or financial benefit. And how to make all these things deeply internalized values rather than bullshit self-serving corporate slogans nobody gives a fuck about.
• How to align humanity on the mission to build an amazing future for everyone. And to avoid both existential risks and a boring totalitarian dictatorship where those risks are prevented by enshrining the status quo permanently. There is a way for all of us to get all that we want. We’re just stuck in ways of thinking which blind us to this option.
• How t0 define the “self.” For example my own “Serge” productivity is already at its limits (hence my lack of interest in further self-optimization of the kind described in the biohacking article). Yet the productivity of groups of people I help bring together can be scaled massively. And it has become clear that the key to scaling larger systems is to think of the self as those systems. This is a highly practical action, as well as a core philosophical issue.
• How to think and interpret the world in a more sophisticated way. Including recognizing and integrating my own various drives (ex my obvious messianism); dealing with seeming contradictions (ex how do we simultaneously grow/change, and stay true to a deeply-held mission); noticing the myriad filters we use to make sense of the world and ourselves, and where they blind us. And many other questions of this kind.
• How to create deeply connected human communities. Over the last 2 years I’ve found an extended “tribe” of people who connect with each other in a deep, genuine and authentic way. This improved my life, productivity, empathy, happiness and many other factors in a way which is difficult to overstate. I am surprised at how nothing in society has ever suggested this is something which needs to be found, or can ever be found. And I see the vast majority of people in the world who are deeply lonely and alienated — stuck either in a tiny family unit, or a large city, without an in-between group of the kind our ancestors evolved in. There is something missing here.

Part of the above looks different from views I expressed in my prior articles. The reason is — all systems grow and change, including the author of this article :)

Anyway. These are some of the questions I spend deep time thinking of nowadays. As you can see they are complex, multi-faceted and not obvious. Part of the process of deepening ideas about such questions is discussing them with other people, and I prefer doing this 1:1 or in small groups. Public sharing is for concepts which are more thought-out, although they will still be imperfect as all ideas always are.

So I’ll write something new when I have something valuable to say to a large audience :)