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 (
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.
The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
No Biological Free Lunches - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
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