Futurism’s blindspot 👀
Every now and then you have one of those weeks where you understand how largely irrelevant your life is to not only the rest of humanity, but also to the rest of the universe.
These are big statements you say? Depressing even?
I think that sometimes you need an injection of this kind of reality, because otherwise you get trapped into the drama that is the modern world. “Trump said this…”, “Teenage gangs are out of control..”, or “the government removed this…”.
When Neil deGrasse Tyson starts talking about how wondrous the universe is, multiple multiverses (forget simulation theory, this will blow your mind), or that not all life is dependent on energy like humans (in fact in environments that would kill us), you start to fully grasp how much of our lizard brain or amygdala can define your life.
It’s slightly relieving to find videos such as “Why Humanity Destroyed Itself”, pair it with Neil’s discussion and you have a recipe for snapping out of rotten funks to focus on the bigger picture.
As ever, hit reply and let us know what you think of this week’s morsels.
Futurism’s blindspot
You’ve just finished high school, or maybe university, and that dirty drunk family friend comes over and tells you, “one word: ‘Plastics’”.
We’ve all been there, every man and his dog thinks they know the future. Their core problem though is they never utilise probabilities to define that future. I.e. I think it’s 80% probable Donald Trump won’t get a second term because of X, Y, Z buckets — Z being the most important.
The most important bucket when it comes to Futurism (forecasting technology) is taking into account societal norms from NOW to THEN. If that perplexes you, perhaps ask yourself these quick tests:
- How much would I pay to see my favourite band/musician now?
- How much would I pay to see my favourite band/musician of 10 years ago, now?
I think this is a brilliant article for understanding the future, and having smarter conversations with those dirty drunk people in our lives.
Your movement defines your life
Dr Peter Attia is one of those doctors that I immediately start listening to when he starts speaking. He very rarely sends out a blog post to his subscribers, but when he does it often contains a juicy article that will be relevant to building your worldly wisdom. One of Peter’s core principles is ensuring both healthspan and lifespan are able to meet in the middle to enhance longevity.
Lifespan is essentially how long you can delay the onset of atherosclerotic disease (heart attack, stroke), cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. Delay the onset of these, and you live longer — because those are the four top killers in our society, as Peter puts it — “it’s a probabilistic truism.” There are countless pieces on his blog that explains how to go about this, most importantly though is diet — I encourage you to take a look.
Healthspan in its most distilled form, is about preserving three elements of life as long as possible to ensure that you have a quality long life.
The three elements discussed are:
Brain — how long can you preserve cognition and executive function
Body — specifically, how long can you maintain muscle mass, functional strength, flexibility, and freedom from pain
“Spirit ” — how robust is your social support network and your sense of purpose
Ask yourself the question; would you rather live to 95 but be bedridden with chronic disease for 20 years? Or live to 85 and die from a heart attack?
Body is where Peter’s article today is focused, I strongly recommend you not only have a read but subscribe to his newsletter.
Food is the motherload of bad science
Having food intolerances over the last few years has exponentially increased my knowledge of food science. What I’ve discovered over the years is that sugar is essentially a poison that creates conditions for disease in the human body over time. I’ve learnt about how it’s a toxic agent that creates disease (food science), why an individual becomes addicted (neuroscience), that scientists are calling for it to be treated as a drug, and that it’s now being dubbed in research circles as the cause for Type 3 Diabetes, aka Alzeimer’s.
Building this position through research over time is very hard. So this discussion between Gary Taubes & Joe Rogan is exceptional in understanding these new positions in food science, and generally how bad the science in food is.
He’s essentially one of the core reasons for the explosion in journalistic & medical investigation of the practices of the sugar industry. I strongly suggest you check this video out.
Which morsel was your favourite?
What lessons do you want more or less of? Let us know!
Just send a tweet to @Neuralle and put #MondayMorsels in there so we can find it.
Happy reading,
Jordan & team @ neuralle.com
Neuralle develops Human Intelligence (H.I). Human Intelligence is a growing field that uses Brain Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Biotech to improve our mind (software), body (hardware) and life.
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