All true wealth is biological
What are the elements of a life well lived, overall?
Good health
A sharp mind
An interesting life, full of curiosity and complexity
Physical vigor and robustness
Fine meals, expertly prepared, with the freshest and highest quality ingredients
Robust social lives characterized by truly reciprocal love and devotion and mutual desires for well being and success
Thriving kids and grandkids
These are the things everyone wishes for themselves and their loved ones, and all of these things are biological, at the root.
I mean, imagine you’re rich, but sick and dealing with physical challenges and feeling bad every day. Would that be worth it? Or would it be better to be poor or median, but in thriving and abundant health?
Now imagine you’re rich, but lonely and reclusive. You never see anybody, you don’t have friends or family, you have no kids or grandkids. You just hole up in your nice house all day, staring at screens. Is that a life to envy? Would you actually want that life?
Another point of triangulation
Let’s look at a different layer - what is the ideal, historically? If you could choose a life to lead similar to one led by somebody famous throughout history, who are you choosing?
There’s a school of people who would go for great conquerors and unifiers - Alexander the Great, Qin Shi Huang, Cyrus the Great, Genghis or Kublai Khan, Napoleon
There’s a school of people who would go for great philosophers - Aristotle, Paracelsus, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein
There’s a school of people who would go for royalty - Louis XIV the Sun King, Queen Victoria, Peter the Great, King Solomon
There’s a school that would go for hedonic maximizers - Caligula or other Roman emperors, Catherine the Great, Louis XIV again, Casanova
And what do all these people have in common? Nearly all the things listed above - sharp minds, good health, curiosity, fine meals, robust social lives, a guaranteed good life for their descendants.
After all whats the ideal, historically? Royalty, living as gods. Successful warrior kings. Refined thinkers and gourmands. Long-lived intellectuals and aesthetes without any monetary concerns.
Let’s look at one more level - what’s the ideal today? What would you choose, if you could choose anything?
Or better, what would you choose for your kids?
If gengineering were a thing and you had a full menu of traits to choose from, or if you had some divine device that let you dial in whatever character attributes you wanted prior to birth for your kids, what are you choosing for your kids?
Personally, I’m going for the “Nobel Olympian.” I was an athlete, and I’m a big ole nerd - let’s max both those things for me / my kids. We’ve never had a Nobel Olympian yet.
The closest in terms of "both mental and physical excellence" that I can think of are probably Niels Bohr (Nobel winner whose brother won a Silver Olympic medal for soccer, and they used to play on the same team), Dolph Lundgren (Fullbright scholar at MIT, European karate champion, and famous bodybuilder / actor), and A.V. Hill (Nobel prize winner for physiology and how muscles worked in 1922, who ran a 4:45 mile when he was younger). Alan Turing ran a 2:46 marathon basically as an amateur, which argues that he had the underlying potential and that with more training he could have been a medalist. And last year's medicine Nobel Prize winner, Katalin Karikó, has one daughter...two-time Olympic gold medalist rower Susan Francia.
Why would the Nobel Olympian be ideal? Because they’ve maxed all the good biological stuff - their mental and physical machinery are both excellent, and they have optionality and the fundamentals for a really great life on just about every front.
Looking at all the above points: biology, I think we can agree, is the substrate on which all higher goals are possible.
It is the true fount and source for all that is good in life.
And yet, looking around, you’d think the opposite were true
People behave like they’re minds in vats, entirely divorced from physical reality.
Actually, this isn’t fair, they actually do have a consistent lean and bias - people behave like their bodies are their literal enemies, and they hate them and need to systematically wear them down and destroy them. Every single tiny action that could stack incrementally negatively? They take it, unerringly, repeatedly, hourly, for decades at a stretch.
As a result, 80% of adults are sedentary, fat, never physically challenge themselves at all, and are entirely reliant on technology and medical research for their lifespans and quality of life.
But bodies shouldn’t matter, philosophically!
Totally, I completely agree from an outside perspective. We’re made of meat and water, and it’s gross and crazy and inherently distressing, and a bad idea all around.
It’s the greatest injustice imaginable, and literally everything important is 60-80% genetic,1 so we’re all just literally hardwired and stuck with whatever we get, and it is in no way equal, or fair, or just. It’s a system designed and run by a wild-eyed, bloodthirsty fanatic who hates every living thing, or close enough, because it’s literally driven by continuous and 100% fatal competition between every living individual and group and species, and that competition has been running for billions of years now.
In the ideal world, we COULD live the life of the mind without worrying about bodies, and everyone would get a fully capable body and mind that isn’t subject to aging and death, and the content of their character and outcomes would be wholly determined by their choices alone rather than their immutable biology.
But that’s not the world we live in yet
We’ve got to play the cards we’re dealt, and most people aren’t doing that, they’re basically sprinting towards morbidity and lower quality of life as fast as they can.
Need I point out that this is a bad idea?
Particularly given that we’ve just established that nearly everything good in life is either straightforwardly biological, or at the minimum, is entirely dependent on a biological substrate?
If you’re reading this, and believe that’s true, you can do better.
What would that look like?
Our understanding of biology is pretty poor - but we do know enough to be able to say the following with some confidence.
First, definitely advocate for gengineering, because it’s basically the only way we’re ever going to do better than our current situation and reach that end state where everyone is fundamentally capable, so kicking it off as soon as possible is important.
Beyond that, we know the following:
Don’t eat fast or junk food, eat “real” food that you prepare yourself
Move your body regularly throughout the day (aside from exercise, as in taking breaks from sitting, using standing desks or treadmill desks, taking walking meetings, and more)
Push your body regularly, via moderate to very intense exercise like HIIT or lifting weights
If you’re a man, consider trying TRT / testosterone
It’s the single biggest quality of life intervention available to pretty much any man
Get 10-20 minutes of direct sunlight every day if you can
Because Vitamin D is important for health and happiness, but supplementing Vitamin D doesn’t really work
Surround yourself with beautiful environments and views as often as possible (ideally while getting sunlight)
Somers d and r of 0.3 - 0.5 for life satisfaction and positive affect
Cultivate a healthy friend circle and social life - with good advice here
We’re social apes, and the effect sizes are large - a 1.2 - 1.5x buff on all cause mortality, and an r = 0.3 - 0.4 effect size on quality of life and happiness
Get good sleep - this is mainly sleep hygiene
But also, if you suffer from insomnia and poor sleep even after doing sleep hygiene, CBT-i has a noticeable effect size for sleeping better and quality of life
Challenging yourself physically as well as mentally regularly
Because you only build resilience and greater capabilities via challenging yourself, because comfort makes you weak
Avoid plastics
Still largely an unknown-but-suspected area, so no effect sizes, but seems like a good idea
Notice that I didn’t put effect sizes on eating right and exercising? I saved the best for last.
Let’s consider 2,3,4 - a regular mover-and-exerciser with a good diet enjoys a 4 - 5.5x all cause mortality benefit over the standard junk-and-fast-food eating obese sedentary.2
That is an incomprehensibly massive effect size - more than smoking, more than a cocaine addiction, more than being an alcoholic. You could literally take up smoking AND cocaine and come out ahead if you ate right and exercised daily.
Above and beyond the mortality effects, there are massive morbidity / quality of life effects:
The above is from Harvard professor Dan Lieberman’s Exercised, which is the very best explainer on why you should exercise, starting with the paleoanthropological reasons and ending with things like the chart above - I reviewed it here. The chart above is looking at the morbidity difference just from either being sedentary OR obese, OR smoking, or about half of the effect size of being sedentary and obese.
That dark grey area is poorer health and poorer quality of life (as well as lower life span).
Which curve would you rather be on? It’s entirely up to you!
What’s the upshot?
If you choose to optimize and take care of your biology, ALL of the other good stuff gets better!
Everyone else is eating junk food and staring at screens for 7-9 hours a day like they hate themselves and think that their older selves are their mortal enemy, but this is a basic mistake you don’t need to make.
Imagine spending time with friends for 2 hours a day on average instead of staring at a phone for that time. Imagine walking in scenic natural beauty in the sun once or twice a day with your dogs and / or loved ones.
Imagine eating right and exercising and moving more and feeling great, instead of slumping into Wall-E-flavored sloth and mediocrity.
All of this is literally a choice.
You feel better, your mind is sharper, your energy is higher, you’ll enjoy your excellent meals more, you’ll have better sex, you’ll enjoy walks in the sun more. Literally everything important and good in life is made better!
Most people are really bad at tradeoffs that go “put in an hour of moderate effort today, and all the rest of your life this week will be 1% incrementally better.” But any rational person should look at that tradeoff and jump on it!
People think I’m crazy or overly devoted to fitness because I put in ~10 hours a week into training and meal prep, etc - but they’re clearly not doing the math.
Bitch, I want all the good stuff!!
How valuable is having a 10% sharper mind throughout the week?
What about 10% more energy to devote to your work life?
A 10% better sex life, with at least 10% more sex?
Enjoying your meals 10% more?
Making “being stuck in traffic” 10% better and more endurable?
10% more energy and time to devote to your hobbies?
Seriously, if you were rich, how much would you pay to be able to take a pill that gave you all that stuff? I’m imagining a pretty generous sum.
People don’t pay the equivalent of that sum in time and effort, because they overestimate the amount of work and effort, and underestimate the depth and breadth of return. But that’s exactly why I’m writing this post. The upsides are really big, and across a lot of areas of life.
That’s what 10% incrementally better means. It’s an absurdly massive benefit!
Imagine you could get 10% compounding returns on anything financial at the weekly basis. Completely absurd advantage. A 10% better “everything” operating continuously over a lifetime is a CRAZY large effect size over years and decades.
Imagine if you’d been 10% more motivated every week of your career, from the time you started. Think you’d be in a materially different place now? I don’t see how you couldn’t be.
Imagine you’d had 10% more energy, every week from your early twenties. Do you think you’d be farther long in your hobbies, and be skilled across more hobbies? That you would have taken on more projects, and completed more? Once again, I don’t see how this couldn’t be true.
You know what they say - the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is right now. You can get that advantage, starting now, just by changing how you live your life. They’re not even big / crazy efforts like week long silent meditation retreats or foregoing a modern life to study as a Shaolin monk for a couple of years - although the benefits are so big that it would be worth it even at those costs!
Because all true wealth is biological, because biology is the foundation for all other good things in life, if you optimize your biology, you optimize everything.
Imagine that writ not just over a week, but over months, and years, and decades.
Now wrap your head around the fact that habits become unconscious really quickly.
Especially compared to the months, years, and decades of better quality of life you can drive with these things. The effort is temporary, and the advantages years, decades, or lifelong. One of the primary points the (excellent) book Atomic Habits makes is that habits are forged by doing a sufficient number of repetitions - with consistent cues and rewards - that it eventually leads to automaticity.
The good news about all the things I’m suggesting here is that they should be occurring at the daily or the weekly level - that means you get a high number of repetitions really quickly, and are able to cram most of them into unconscious routines and habits in a relatively short amount of time.
And then the benefits start accruing quickly, and keep driving value for decades.
I literally attribute my lifelong fitness, movement, and diet habits to why I’ve been able to get so much more done in my life than most people. It’s because I’ve had a noticeable sharpness, energy, and motivation buff over most people, by dialing in the biological as much as I can, as consistently as I can.
You can do this too - the choice is entirely yours. Eat right, exercise, challenge yourself, choose to cultivate and regularly participate in a strong social circle, choose to get outside in the sunlight and surrounded by natural beauty.
You can literally make your entire life 10% better by doing all that, and that’s an impossibly massive effect size and intervention that isn’t available any other way.
It’s worth the effort.
What’s the key to a massive compounding advantage across all areas of life, again?
Don’t eat fast or junk food, eat “real” food that you prepare yourself
Move your body regularly throughout the day (aside from exercise, as in taking breaks from sitting, using standing desks or treadmill desks, taking walking meetings, and more)
Push your body regularly, via moderate to very intense exercise like HIIT
If you’re a man, consider trying TRT
It’s the single biggest quality of life intervention available to pretty much any man
Get 10-20 minutes of direct sunlight every day if you can
Because Vitamin D is important for health and happiness, but supplementing Vitamin D doesn’t really work
Surround yourself with beautiful environments and views as often as possible (ideally while getting sunlight)
Somers d and r of 0.3 - 0.5 for life satisfaction and positive affect
Cultivate a healthy friend circle and social life - with good advice here
We’re social apes, and the effect sizes are large - a 1.2 - 1.5x buff on all cause mortality, and an r = 0.3 - 0.4 effect size on quality of life and happiness
Get good sleep - this is mainly sleep hygeine
But also, if you suffer from insomnia and poor sleep even after doing sleep hygeine, CBT-i has a noticeable effect size for sleeping better and quality of life
Challenging yourself physically as well as mentally regularly
Because you only build resilience and greater capabilities via challenging yourself, because comfort makes you weak
Avoid plastics
Still largely an unknown-but-suspected area, so no effect sizes, but seems like a good idea
Nature vs nurture is basically settled, and it's ~70/30 "nature" for essentially any trait people care about.
The best accessible survey of the evidence is Polderman 2015 "Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies."
They analyze all the monozygotic and dizygotic twin studies they can and extract the genetic component of heritability, ending in an overall summary like this, showing the genetic component generally ranges from 60-80% for most things (and this is generally true across pretty much every characteristic people care about):
https://imgur.com/bWYVzlT
https://imgur.com/gJW4ehm
The next point of triangulation is the Bouchard (1990) summary of the Minnesota Twin Studies, where they studied twins separated at birth and raised in different homes, and the extreme similarities they still share.
Finally, Judith Rich Harris shows us that the 30% isn’t even anything like “parenting” or childhood environment, as long as you’re raising your children in a developed society. It’s (largely self-selected) peers and noise.
4-5.5x HR Triangulated two ways - first from: Khaw, K.-T., et al. (2008). Combined impact of health behaviours and mortality in men and women: The EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population Study. PLoS Medicine 5: e12.
“Four health behaviours combined predict a 4-fold difference in total mortality in men and women, with an estimated impact equivalent to 14 y in chronological age.”
The four behaviors are basically healthy diet, exercise, not smoking, and not drinking or drinking only moderately. This is without regard to obesity, and is purely behavioral. Obesity is a fairly significant all cause mortality bump (generally 1.2-2.0 RR), even for obese people who exercise, etc. So conservatively, the number for an obese sedentary person is somewhere around 4x-5.5x.
Second triangulation:
In Dan Lieberman’s Exercised, he has this chart comparing exercisers to sedentary people with a 4x all cause mortality difference between the endpoints. That was just referring to activity with no reference to weight - so if you consider a sedentary obese person with the same RR adjustments above, this would shake out to 4-5.5x also.
Ain’t nobody exercising the 30 hours a week at the end of the chart? Well, about 1% of US adults are (mostly professional athletes, a handful of military guys, and some triathletes and ultramarathoners), but sure, that does seem a tad unattainable - and it should be noted that the 650 min point (~11 hours a week - about what I do) is still basically at 4x.
But we can do better with a good diet. So the top quartile of ultra-processed-food eaters by percentage of diet have all cause mortality RR between 1.3-1.7x compared to the lowest quartile. But those guys in the bottom quartile are still eating crap! So then if you follow a good diet with lots of organic fruit and veg and fish and with junk or fast food less than 5% of your calories (ie the bottom 1-5% vs the bottom 25%), you get an additional .75 all cause mortality RR (a 25% bump). So plausibly you could cut end up at the 350 min a week point (~6 hours, or an hour a day with one complete rest day), and still have the 4x all cause mortality benefit. And at the 90 min a week point with a good diet, you’re still cruising at about a healthy 2x all cause mortality benefit!
I might add the genetic disposition to a sort of perpetual wonder at life, described by some of the commenters under Scott’s recent post: https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/the-colors-of-her-coat
It seems like there’s a certain type of person who spends most of their time living in extreme satisfaction. I bet this is negatively correlated with drive/ambition though, and maybe even intelligence, but I believe people when they describe their experience.
Well said. In my own worldview, biology is supremely important, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cui-bono/201610/biology-determines-every-thought-feeling-and-behavior