The author, an anthropologist, argues that the fads we see tech CEOs indulging in today (nootropics, intermittent fasting, weird diets) are similar to the practices used by shamans in hunter-gatherer societies to show how special they are, making them credible interfaces with the supernatural powers they claim to channel.
I've always thought of the intermittent fasting + "weird" diets as a way to extend life quality and reduce negative health exposures a la Peter Attia.
Nootropics coming from a combination of more readily available sources, community effort now that internet is available to share results and lack of scientific focus/studies + with I'm sure a healthy amount of marketing spend from nootropic manufacturers.
Yeah, if you're a person who'd invest a big chunk of your life into a zero-to-one effort, you're more likely than usual to think the health establishment missed some opportunities, and that you have better than average judgement of the apparent opportunities and their risk-to-reward. This should explain such people trying such things, without shamanism. (OTOH yes, the startup-CEO population includes mimics of this type of person.)
You can come to this belief through either actual discernment or entrepreneur personality disorder. Me, I at least agree that there's a health establishment that could be a lot better at settling on truth, and that discernment is a quality that varies.
Skimming the Wired piece, the closest to the above that I saw was:
> So are CEO-shamans putting on a show? People everywhere intuit that self-denial and other shamanic practices cultivate power. Being human, tech executives presumably draw the same inferences. At least part of their decision to engage in shamanic practices, then, might stem from a sincere desire to be special.
Yeah, but why do you need to extend your life? If you just wanna live long the stress of being a CEO will surely outweigh any benefits your creative dietary expression will deliver.
IMO many of the CEOs who do this do it more for social reasons than anything else.
There are two distinct concepts here - your life span and your health span. Your life span is the duration of your life, and you health span is the duration in which you are able bodied.
Some of us want to have a health span closer to our life span - and that is the goal of these "creative" behaviors. If you want to increase life span you have to get lucky, or find a way to stop the entropic degradation of your DNA.
> If you just wanna live long the stress of being a CEO will surely outweigh any benefits your creative dietary expression will deliver.
This is just a strawman.
> IMO many of the CEOs who do this do it more for social reasons than anything else.
You'll find that applies to literally any behavior.
It is not. Our career choices influence our life span. If your coal mining chain smoking friend told you they stop to smoke because they wanna live longer, you would rightfully think that if they wanna live longer they might want to switch careers as well.
Don't let the prestige connected to the CEO position blind you from the fact that leading that livestyle is not the healthiest choice you can make (mostly for stress reasons).
So if you as an CEO try esotheric and experimental health things the benefit those bring might be at odds with the rest of your life choices.
Many people in these circles do things like these more to create an interesting spleen (what I called "social reasons") which they can talk about with other peers or which can bring them into talk publicly.
Our coal miner that quits smoking does not do it for social reasons. He might have coughed up black stuff. and got legitimately scared for his chance of survival.
And I don't say this kind of contradictory (and therefore somewhat inconsequential) behaviour is bad or anything. Surely also a stressed out CEO should also look out for their own health. Surely quitting to smoke is always a good thing independent of your personal circumstances.
But if you use health choices to signal something to others you better make it consistent. If our coal worker chain smoker vehemently tried to convince his friends to go vegan "because it is healthier" we are not wrong to point out to him that this is at odds with his other life choices. How can we trust him that he cares for health if all other choices he made tell us otherwise?
If instead our friend wants us to become vegan because he thinks it is ethically wrong to kill animals, this would not be at odds with his other choices. You can lead an unhealth livestyle and think it is wrong to kill animals at the same time. No contradiction there.
If our friend goes vegan and doesn't tell anyone he is not doing it for social reasons. If a CEO makes odd experimental health choices and doesn't tell anyone the same is true.
I think that's the interesting part of it -- that there is a lack of definitive scientific work being done so people are experimenting with it. My feeling is Peter Attia seems to come at it with robustness though all of this stuff is so custom and I'm sure there's a world of COI in the background.
I do intermittent fasting for health reasons, not to impress people (that is what Archlinux is for). When I do it, headaches go away and I lose excess fat.
Breakfast was glorified in order to sell more cereal at the beginning of the industrial age, so perhaps what they call "intermittent fasting" is more like "returning to normal" in a society where everything is coated with dangerous amounts of sugar and salt. So I'd say take those anthropology generalizations with a grain of salt.
My dad was an old school bumpkin. Doesn't predate the industrial age, but lived like they'd never heard of it.
Anyways, he told me they didn't have a breakfast, but instead a big meal called dinner... apparently what we now call lunch. Then a midday snack, then a late supper that was lighter than dinner. As confusing as that was, he always called lunch dinner into the modern age.
They were much more active so didn't really get fat, so I agree sofar as to say the modern diet is likely too much. I may agree they helped push the 'breakfast' idea, but not people eating more often.
> As confusing as that was, he always called lunch dinner into the modern age.
This is still a thing in parts of the UK (and possibly other places):
"The divide between different meanings of "dinner" is not cut-and-dried based on either geography or socioeconomic class. The term for the midday meal is most commonly used by working-class people, especially in the English Midlands, North of England and the central belt of Scotland."
> Breakfast was glorified in order to sell more cereal
> "intermittent fasting" is more like "returning to normal"
Careful extrapolating what works for you to all of humanity. I agree that avoiding excess sugar is good, so I do really well with a light breakfast. That's not "abnormal" or a conspiracy by Big Cereal.
How about you? Do you think I should be careful because I called skipping breakfast "a return to normal"? What happens when I fail to be careful about expressing my observations? Get jumped by people who urge you not to make normative statements because the possibility of you getting anecdoted to oblivion gives them anxiety?
I think "careful" here is an idiom, it's not that there is some danger. You are not giving people anxiety.
I was merely trying to remind you that healthy people's food habits are varied. So that you remember it for yourself.
I'm not claiming to be right either. I've definitely been guilty of pushing my own stuff on others. We all do that. It's easy to do. So, humility is a good thing.
I think you might have some kind of hangup, sir. You're reading hostility where it doesn't exist. I've been there too. If it's tiresome, I hope you manage to get some rest.
I think there's room for both motivations, either in different people or the same person.
People seem to go crazy in healthy food discussions. I think one takeaway I get is that different people get by with different methods. People get very preachy about their own method, without realizing how unique it is to them.
I know this is a slight tangent but I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of (certain) nootropics. If stacked correctly, the cognitive benefits are great.
The author, an anthropologist, argues that the fads we see tech CEOs indulging in today (nootropics, intermittent fasting, weird diets) are similar to the practices used by shamans in hunter-gatherer societies to show how special they are, making them credible interfaces with the supernatural powers they claim to channel.