arcticorangutan on Nostr: Tim Ferriss is not a scientist. He’s a self-proclaimed human guinea pig. His study ...

Tim Ferriss is not a scientist. He’s a self-proclaimed human guinea pig.

His study of the human body may not be rigorous, but he and others who self-experiment and introspect still offer valuable insights. Their experiences can help us understand health and wellbeing more completely, and they deserve a seat at the table.

Last month Tim posted an insightful article (https://tim.blog/2024/02/02/no-biological-free-lunches/) about his perspective on the project of physical performance optimization in humans.

The basic premise: there are no biological free lunches. Most optimizations of one trait come with a non-negligible trade-off in some other trait.

I would go further than Tim: I believe his premise expands beyond just performance optimization to almost every aspect of human health.

Look at his first three heuristics:

1. Assume there is no biological free lunch.

2. Assume that the larger the amplitude of positive effect of *anything*, the larger the amplitude of side effects.

3. Don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.

If you agree with these, why shouldn’t they apply to almost every pharmaceutical, or in fact every exogenous compound?

Which brings me to the title of this post: Ozempic. Ozempic is proving to have enormous positive effects on the dimension of human weight loss. The barber recommending the haircut, Novo Nordisk, is now Europe’s most valuable public company.

I predict that we’ll find out that what looked like a biological free lunch was too good to be true and that Ozempic will follow in the footsteps of other biological free lunches before it.