Transcription
What do you think is currently ignored by the media but will be studied by historians? You're asking me that question right now. What do I think is ignored by the media but studied by historians? Well, I mean, the media is only focused on very timely things, right? So it depends if you want to talk about timely or timeless, right? But as a simple example, if I just look at things that maybe the next 10 years that are going to make a massive difference that people are not focused enough on, um, and I think within two years this will be obvious. So, like, I'm not making a prediction, and predictions are tough, but you're going to have to eat it in a few years. Yeah, I'm going to have to eat this in a few years, so I'm probably wrong. But, uh, two things that I pay attention to, um, that I don't think a lot of people do pay attention to—well, there's a couple. One is, I think just how bad modern medicine is. I think people just put a lot more faith in modern medicine than is warranted. Our best ideas for a lot of things are surgery—just cutting things out, right? Uh, treating things that are extraneous, like, oh, you don't really need a gallbladder; you don't really need an appendix; or you don't really need tonsils. All that's false. Every surplus requirement—the human body is very, very efficient; all those things are needed. Um, you know, so I think I think the state of modern medicine is still pretty bad. We don't have many good explanatory theories in biology. Um, we have germ theory of disease; we have evolution; we have cell theory; we have DNA genetics; morphogenesis; embryogenesis; and not much else. You know, there's not much else. Everything else is rules of thumb, memorization: A affects B, because B affects C, affects D, but we don't understand the underlying explanation; it's all just words pointing to words pointing to words. So biology is still in a very sorry state. And because we are not allowed to take risks that might kill people, um, we just don't experiment enough in biology. So a lot of treatments are just outright banned by large regulatory bodies, so we just don't have the innovation. So I think we're still in the Stone Age when it comes to biology, and we've got a long ways to go. Uh, and I think people will look back aghast at this. And I think this is Brian Johnson's point: He's like, you know, let's be more extreme; let's try to live forever; let's be more experimental. And I'll start as n of one and start experimenting on myself. And um, but even there I disagree with Brian in many things, like, you know, taking huge amounts of supplements. I think we just don't know—supplements outside of their natural context, like, just eat liver, man, right? Um, but it's fine. And and I wouldn't be vegan either, but you know, it's it's I I really appreciate that he's experimenting; he's good-natured about it; he shares everything. So we need more people like that. Um, so I think the state of biology—people will look back and say, wow, that was in the Dark Ages.
I think another another thing that we'll look back on is I think we we still continue to underestimate how important drones are going to be in warfare. The future of all warfare is drones; there will be nothing else on the battlefield, um, because I think of the end state of drones as autonomous bullets—not even guided, autonomous, like they're self-directed. Uh, and so if that's the future we're headed towards, and that's a—is just—why would you have an armed force that's—there's going to be no there—there's going to be no aircraft carriers; there's going to be no tanks; there's going to be no infantrymen; there are just going to be autonomous bullets. Autonomous bullets against your autonomous bullets; whichever ones win, the other side just surrenders; it's over. Um, I think that's a second piece of it. I think a a third piece that is going to be uh kind of unexpected is the GLP-1s, which I know you and I privately discussed before. I think these are the most breakthrough drugs since antibiotics, um, probably more important than statins. They're sort of miracle drugs. They seem to—there are downsides, but the downsides and side effects are so minor compared to the upsides, beyond just weight loss. Um, they also seem to be addiction breakers; they seem to lower many kinds of cancer; they almost metabolically reverse aging up to a certain point. Um, and I think they're going to bend the curve on health care costs. And the big question people are going to be asking over the next five years is: Why are Americans paying thousands of dollars a month for this when people overseas are getting them for free, or I can order them from China for free, or whatever? Um, and maybe it—like, if I were Bernie Sanders, the platform I would be running on is I would say, okay, we're going to pay, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars to Novo and Eli Lilly, and we're just going to make these free. Or there's hundreds of analogs of these things that work; these are not going to be, you know, limited to just the few that are that are being used today. Just take one of them or two of them and make them free, and I think it'll make a big difference. And uh, as you and I were discussing earlier, uh, this does bend a lot of people out of shape who got there the old-fashioned way, and they want to see obesity as a moral failing on people's parts, and it lowers their status if they—the signal is less of a signal.
Absolutely. Yeah. So so they're incented to say, oh, well, you don't know the downsides; you know, it's irresponsible; it's going to cause cancer; have fun losing bone and muscle mass, by the way. None of that stuff is really true. The cancer stuff is actually beneficial. On—I know people who are now taking these things for anti-aging reasons. Um, they're already fit, but they just want to age better and have a strong insulin metabolism. Um, and there's evidence now these things are, you know, they put off dementia, Alzheimer's, colon cancer; it's insane; cardiovascular disease—like, the list of benefits is insane. There's no free lunch, but this is a class of drugs that prevents you from taking other drugs into your body; it prevents you from taking uh, you know, too much sugar, too much too many calories; in an era of abundance, prevents you from smoking; prevents you from even—there's an organization called Casper that is now doing a study on heroin addictions, and they're showing that this can lower opioid overdoses and heroin addiction. So there's a lot of overwhelming medical evidence coming out, and I think I don't I don't know the exact number, but I think something like 10% of the population might now have tried these things. I I think that's the number that I've seen as well. It's massive. I think it's about 50% of the population say that they would like to try it. Exactly. So uh, I think the body positivity movement is dead, and we always kind of knew it was a scam. It's I mean, it's dying very, very quickly. Yeah, equipped—like, you can never be too rich, too thin, or too clean, right? And immediately like a whole bunch of people went—No, I mean—like, what do you mean too thin? And what about the hygiene hypothesis? And you know, obviously there's always exceptions, but people want to be thin and fit, and people want to be clean—back to the pathogen discussion that we had. Um, so I think overall that there's going to be huge demand for these things, and our modern medical system is not built to supply these well. I'm not I'm not I I don't hold it against the farmers; I think the farmers did their job by creating the thing, but I think next we need to step up and figure out how to make it broadly and cheaply available as opposed to just milk it for only for, you know, people on obesity who can get Medicare to sign off for it or people paying out of pocket at very, very high prices. Yeah. Um, the the benefits of societal distribution of the safer GLP-1s is so large that whichever politician tackles that is going to be richly rewarded. Well, obesity is the number one source of malnutrition worldwide; there's twice as many people that are obese than are starving. So about half a billion people are starving, and obesity—so many problems are downstream of that—like, you know, look at how much of the federal budget goes into dialysis because of kidney failure, and why is that? It's because of diabetes, right? So so many of the problems that we have in modern society are downstream of obesity. And you know this—like, fitness is so important. Uh, and yes, there's in some people these things called—cause muscle and bone loss, but not in the people who are eating high protein and working out hard. So it—they can be taken in a way that's safer, and some versions of these, like L-glutide, the original one, they've been around for decades, and the others have been around for about a decade. So and we already have, as you said, 10% of the population taking them, so they're already quite widely distributed.
Good sample size. Yeah, it's a great sample size. What more do you need? Like, if you if you have a bacterial infection that's eating you, I don't say, oh, I have this antibiotic, but it's going to raise your blood pressure; it's like, no, take the antibiotic. If you're going to kill yourself, I say take this anti-psychotic and stay alive a little longer and solve it. I don't say, oh, it's going to, you know, cause your heart rate to go up by three beats a minute; I don't worry about that. So similarly, if you're poisoning yourself with toxins and overuse of substances that you shouldn't be using—either heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, or just sheer calories—um, take this GLP-1. Uh, they also improve digestion; you just have less calor—just less food matter going through your stomach; they lower cancer risks across the board; there's quite a few cancers are lower; cardiovascular—I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. I've been very surprised by the negative reception whenever you have a conversation about GLP-1s, and I think a lot of it may be people who—well, think about how many sacred cows are being gored, right? All the people who are basically saying, uh, you should work harder; you should be fit like I did, right? It's lowering their status. Think about all the nutritionists and doctors and trainers who are now being, you know, it's too easy; they're being put out of business in a way, right? Uh, it's it's kind of like: Why does the American military keep buying aircraft carriers, right, in an age of drones? Um, there's an incentive bias; it's a very strong motivated reasoning, uh, but it doesn't matter; 10% of people are on it; everybody wants to be fit; it's going to spread like wildfire. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. If you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help. Just add an Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra to your mattress like a fitted sheet, and it will automatically cool down or warm up each side of your up to 20°. It's got integrated sensors that track your sleep time, your sleep phases, your HRV, your snoring, and your heart rate with 99% accuracy, and it even starts cooling or heating your bed an hour before you get into it. That is why Eight Sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep up to one hour every night. Best of all, they've got a 30-day sleep trial, so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights, and if you don't like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now you can get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra by going to the the link in the description below or heading to 8sleep.com/wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's EIGHTsleep.com/wisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that clip with Naval, just a mere taster, the full-length episode is available right here. Go on, watch it.