Health and fitness learnings for December: Eat more cheese, meat, and beans to fill “dopamine pool”

I’m publishing a list of the different health and fitness notes that I accumulated over the course of the month. Here’s November.

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A week of sleep deprivation can lead to profound insulin resistance

Activity — staying physically and mentally active — is most powerful cure against diabetes

To increase water in your “dopamine pool”: Eat more cheese, meat, beans (Huberman)

Sizzling Sunlight: Bask in both morning and evening sunlight. Even if it’s cloudy and cold. It’s not just about Vitamin D; it’s about regulating your natural circadian rhythms

Dark chocolate is good for leaky gut (Ben Greenfield)

Cold Plunge Mornings: A lot of people have “mental battles” in the morning and low energy but the cold plunge does the trick – after three minutes, there’s a rush of endorphins happening enabling you to train right after

The average American goes their entire life without fasting for a day.
Kind of wild to think about. Every single day for their entire life, food goes in. This was certainly not true for our primal ancestors and I struggle to think we were meant to operate this way. I still remember waking up the morning after my first fast and thinking the entire nutritional system was a scam. Constantly told we had to eat breakfast, eat 3 square meals per day, etc. Merely a marketing ploy (@DickieBush)

“By looking at sunlight through a window, it’s 50, five zero, times less effective than if that window were to be open.” – @hubermanlab
(This is because windows filter out wavelengths of blue light)

When body composition is considered more precisely, fat mass increases mortality and fat-free mass decreases mortality (Chris Masterjohn)

Positive social connections and good social interactions are number one predictor of longevity (IG prof)

All human studies included in the review were randomized controlled trials mainly conducted in high- to middle-income countries which highlighted that both oral and topical collagen supplements help to delay the aging process, with no differences arising between the two types of collagen. The evidence from the reviewed studies suggested that both collagen supplements improve skin moisture, elasticity, and hydration when orally administered. Additionally, collagen reduces the wrinkling and roughness of the skin, and existing studies have not found any side effects of its oral supplements. (paper)

And even when I’m intently concentrating on my computer, it’s somehow nice to be outside—and, yes, it seems to have made my resting heart rate go down. (Stephen Wolfram)

Learning ergodicity with ChatGPT and an amusement park

I was reading this book, a compilation of essays about bitcoin and capitalism, and I was struggling to understand the concept of ergodicity.

So I asked ChatGPT to explain it with a simple analogy, and I thought the explanation was good enough to share. If it’s wrong in some way, let me know:

Imagine a vast, sprawling amusement park with many different attractions and rides. Each ride represents a different state or condition that a system (like an economy, a molecule in a gas, or even a person’s life) can experience.

Now, imagine two ways to experience this park. One way is as a single visitor: you spend the whole day going from ride to ride, trying each one. Over time, you experience everything the park has to offer. Your single journey through the park represents a time average; that is, you’re sampling all the possible states over a period of time.

The other way to experience the park is by looking at a snapshot of all the visitors at one moment. Instead of one person experiencing all the rides, you see thousands of people, each on a different ride. This snapshot represents a space average, where you see all the possible states (rides) at one instant through the experiences of many different visitors.

A system (or park) is ergodic when the long-term time average (your full day at the park) is the same as the average experience of many people at a single moment (the snapshot of everyone). In other words, what you experience over time is the same as what everyone experiences collectively at one point.

In practical terms, if a system is ergodic, studying a single part of it over time can give you a good understanding of the whole system at any given moment. If it’s not ergodic, then the individual experience might be quite different from the average experience, and more complex methods are needed to understand the whole system.

I like to ask ChatGPT to generate simple analogies and metaphors for complex concepts, because I find them easier to grasp and if needed, explain to others. This method misses some details and nuances, but 75% understanding is better than whatever it was prior…

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get dalle3 to generate an appropriate corresponding image (though that capability *has* to be possible in the near future). Midjourney was slightly better so I’m including here:

Rollercoaster Ergodic Ergodicity

“Our true nature is probably slightly evil as well”

I am endlessly fascinated by the idea of entropy. It suggests that not only is the universe indifferent to our presence, it is at least mildly hostile to it. We are low-entropy creatures trying hopelessly to swim upstream in a universe that’s gradually winding down towards a maximum-entropy heat death. So the universe itself is, in a sense, Slightly Evil. So by some sort of fractal logic, as little subsets of the universe, our true nature is probably slightly evil as well

Rereading this essay from Venkatesh Rao and it definitely makes you think. I’d wager that humanity collectively is slightly “good” on average, but perhaps the average individual is a tiny bit “evil” in a holistic sense

Happy holidays my friends

23 quotes for 2023: How can he be happy that cannot abide in happiness? – Boethius

You will never outperform your self-image. Whoever you think you are deep down, you will never climb higher than that.

“In January 2012, I beat Nadal in the finals of the Australian Open. The match lasted five hours and fifty-three minutes. Many commentators have called that match the single greatest tennis match of all time. After I won, I sat in the locker room in Melbourne. I wanted one thing: to taste chocolate. I hadn’t tasted it since the summer of 2010. Miljan brought me a candy bar. I broke off one square—one tiny square—and popped it into my mouth, let it melt on my tongue. That was all I would allow myself. That is what it has taken to get to number one.” – Djokovic

In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again – Maria Popova

Inwardly, psychologically, be a nobody. – Bruce Lee

Biggest regrets I have are almost exclusively things I did *not* do. — Sam, 47

I was always destined to be that one warrior. Content to be the motherfucker who sharpens his sword alone. — David Goggins

We’re bold people, aren’t we? That’s the beauty – Peaky Blinders

You can make magic by going farther than most other people think is reasonable. When Warren (Buffett) was asked, “How’d you do it?” He said, “I read a couple thousand financial statements a year.”

All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is. – Jiro

I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary. I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness. – Georgia O’Keefe

Always remember that at 42 years old, Lee Kuan Yew was sobbing live on television as his life’s work collapsed into ruin: Singapore had been expelled from Malaysia. It is never over.

Cut it out with the introspection. The mind is a den of scorpions better left running from, not towards. – Vigilante

Every time I work I know I’m going to experience an ungodly amount of humiliation. It’s just how it’s gonna go. There’s no way I can get through it without being humiliated. That’s part of like…letting go in some ways. – Joaquin Phoenix

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. – Jordan

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine – Picasso

In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable. – Rob Arnott

Rather than steering your life to avoid surprises, aim directly for them – Kevin Kelly

One sign that determination matters more than talent: there are lots of talented people who never achieve anything, but not that many determined people who don’t. – Paul Graham

I would say being able to stay present in the work…is probably the most important part of it. – Rick Rubin

A vibe is an emotion pretending to be an explanation – Venkatesh Rao

I think I could potentially train harder, because you wanna be as close as possible to being injured, without actually being injured. And I haven’t pushed it as far as being injured yet, so, maybe I haven’t pushed it enough. – Magnus Mitdbo

How can he be happy that cannot abide in happiness? – Boethius

One lesson I’ve learned is that if the job I do were easy, I wouldn’t derive so much satisfaction from it. The thrill of winning is in direct proportion to the effort I put in before. I also know, from long experience, that if you make an effort in training when you don’t especially feel like making it, the payoff is that you will win games when you are not feeling your best. That is how you win championships, that is what separates the great player from the merely good player. The difference lies in how well you’ve prepared. – Nadal

From the seed-bed
The Dharma raises flowers.
Yet there is no seed
Nor are there flowers.

Another Bunny banger: “modern US war accomplishes little, wasting trillions and US lives in the process”

However, modern US war accomplishes little, wasting trillions and US lives in the process. Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria. What objectives have been won here? How much did it waste in this futility? These are not exceptions, ineptitude is a verifiable trend now.
Combat is now a hybrid of 4th and 5th-gen warfare: which is to say guerilla war and non-kinetic, manipulative psychological games. The US/NATO does not have a global monopoly on this kind of warfare, in fact they’ve shown to be pretty maladroit about it. And this is basically how wars are fought now

https://backthebunny.substack.com/p/the-us-dollar-a-proof-of-violence