Will Prowse developed erythromelalgia (burning of the skin) after wearing a cast for his torn plantar fasciitis muscle.

He became permanently disabled and homeless as a result. His mother in and out of jail; his father, absent in his life.

He managed to get an RV from his mother and because of all his injuries, couldn't use his limbs properly.

He dealt with crackheads often. People who would regularly stab and steal (he's not fond of abusive homeless people).

All the while the pain devoured him.

Apparently COQ10 is not just effective for recovering from statins, it also helps with gum disease.

And tastes spicy. Like chili peppers.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… One interesting question is whether gum disease depletes COQ10 levels or whether it's just a consequence of constant inflammation.

@Bwhoopee From what I understand about the Buddha, he saw how his fellow monks were suffering and wanted to free them from their suffering.

So he designed a cognitive protocol called Buddhism that helped reduce the amount of suffering in your life. @Bwhoopee It works by altering your emotional reactions to events, slowing down the number of thoughts you have, and distancing your mind from events, so that you appear like a Witness to your soul, rather than a tragic victim of circumstance

Alright, I've been throwing this idea around in my head for a bit and I want to put it out there in the world to play with it some more.

I'm not entirely sure if it'll work. I noticed I get so excited about an idea, I never stop to consider whether it can work. A couple days will pass, and then I find some reason why it won't work, or I simply lose interest and can't figure out why.

So I've been trying to change the way I conceptualize my ideas.

Every To Do app makes the mistake of assuming humans make decisions based on time.

They’re wrong though.

All of them. Most humans don’t decide to do something at 3:14pm.

They do things out of habit.

And depending on the context.

“I have my gym shoes on. It’s the evening. Time to go to da gym.”

I'm struck by the strength of the mind.

I had insomnia for 10 weeks last year.

What most people don't know is that insomnia is largely a mind problem. It's a perception problem.

What do I mean by that? Last year I took medication that made it difficult to sleep.

Even after I stopped taking the medication, I continued to have sleep problems.

I thought the medication had possibly damaged my brain.

I wasn’t sure, but it was a lingering thought I carried with me.

I was watching a prison show today about a convict locked up in segregation.

Apparently he had picked up an interesting nickname for himself while in general population. He had beaten the shit out of a prison inmate—enough to spill a lot of blood.

He then took a bunch of the blood, smeared it on his face, and yelled,"DARK SIDE!"

Some highlights from a book I'm reading.

Reading Sapiens.

I have a feeling humanity's transition from forager to agriculture farming was captured by the Biblical story of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden of Eden. Man's knowledge of farming transformed his life into a state of backbreaking labor.

Life was easier as a forager—less of a burden.

It's a beautiful story actually.

Last January I experimented with a book recommendation service.

I wanted to find a way to discover better books.

I found out that if you wanted to recommend nonfiction books, you needed to identify local problems. What do I mean by local problems?

People seem to prefer nonfiction books that solve their problems (even if they're not aware of the problem).

You hear about this all the time. People accidentally stumble upon a book that changed their whole perspective.

Notes from Skin in The Game Avoid asymmetry—don't participate in transactions where one party has more knowledge/risk than the other.

You don't.

Too many people on the planet.

Human teachers can't scale to meet the demand.

Technology will have to intervene here.

Most teachers should lose their job.

Most of them are terrible.

Instead take the top 20% and scale them to the rest of the planet.

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @samharrisorg view original on Twitter

YouTube is a great example.

Jordan Peterson teaches more practical knowledge than most high schools do in four years.

YouTube allows you to scale to meet the demand.

You can create as many videos of Jordan as you want.

And it only cost like a dime an hour for electricity.

It's a shame Peter Thiel keeps his most controversial ideas to himself.

I've listened to about ~13 interviews—he rarely deviates from the script.

He really is like a chess master, planning his moves several steps ahead. That being said, he does make mistakes.

I've tried to track them.

1. Peter Thiel believes evolution is false.

To be fair, from what I can gather, Peter likely believes certain evolutionary parts but seems to be skeptical.

I don't know what he's specifically skeptical of.

I do not believe we will solve problems by linking people to good doctors.

There are too many people.

We’re at 7.6 billion.

Instead we’ll link people to apps that solve their problems and guide them.

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @spencervincent view original on Twitter

You would be surprised at what you could solve for free.

Acne, obesity, and diabetes can be solved with nutrition.

Muscle pain can be solved with massage and strength development.

I think it's because you can plan for general things. You can create a curriculum and observable metrics.

And that allows you to make a business.

Every individual is different enough from each other that they'll probably have different interests. You can't make a business around something as nebulous as that because it isn't clear when your knowledge starts and stop.

You need discrete packets of knowledge that can be summed up in a class syllabus.

Personally I don't believe a person should study computer science, mathematics, and philosophy wholesale.

I think it's a waste of your time. It's a waste because when you pick a discipline, what you're really saying is,"I have no idea what I want to do in the future and this just a way to keep my options open."

The medical industry has a major problem.

They treat health solutions as if they only have first-order effects.

Let's take heel pain as an example.

Heel pain is a consequence of having weak foot muscles.

Wearing shoes with soft soles can cause it. Over time other muscles will compensate.

Those muscles weren't designed to support the extra burden though.

Eventually they're maxed out and pain sets in.

Doctors recommend ibuprofen and soft shoes to alleviate the pain.

Then cortisol shots, and after some time, surgery

General doctors go to medical school for a few years so they can develop a broad and shallow understanding of many diseases and health solutions.

For the most part then, relative to the effort they put in, their output is relatively worthless. A doctor's job is build a network of biological cause-and-effect events so they can quickly diagnose problems and provide an entry-level solution.

In practice, they just order a blood test and throw ibuprofen at you.

Pain isn't a proxy for tissue damage.

If it was, you wouldn't be able to walk for a couple of days after banging your knee because the severity of the pain would indicate massive tissue damage.

But usually (after a couple agonizing seconds) people just walk it off. Pain is a proxy for expected damage.

Pain is your body making a prediction about the future.

Banging your knee is agonizing, because if you break you knee, that meant you wouldn't be able to walk.

And if you can't walk, usually you'd starve to death.

The point of a to-do list isn’t to reach the bottom.

Your brain can hold at four chunks in working memory. Five if you’re lucky.

The brain didn’t evolve for Information Age. Four wont cut it anymore.

Our minds become fractured simply by existing in the West.

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @unfinishthought view original on Twitter

You could argue,”Maybe you should try doing less stuff”.

But unless you live in a monastery, I don’t think that’s possible anymore.

A to-do list is a representation of your intuition.

Much like how a piece of paper lets you solve a math problem or explore an idea.

People believe a schedule means imprisonment.

A good schedule does not mean you're a tyrant to yourself. A good schedule is a question that asks,"How would you like to spend your time?"

You sit down, and clarify what's most meaningful to you.

And if that changes, then you change the schedule.