For the past weeks, I’ve been rabidly watching as Bryan Johnson argued against Red Meat on Twitter based on correlational studies.
I ended up writing several texts and comments about it, some with other people replying. Bryan didn’t reply.
I have decided post a compilation of all these posts here, in hopes of helping anyone trying to decide whether or not to trust Bryan and his diet.
1
Hi Bryan, big fan of yours here, and carnivore advocate, I was also doing don’t die while you were still Mormon.
All those studies you mentioned are correlational studies.
Because we’ve been misled to believe in the pyramid food thing, and before that we’ve been misled to believe fat causes cholesterol causes heart attack (because the military needed to subsidize corn after ww2, and because Kellogg sponsored studies and only published those that exonerated plants) the elites, who have longer life strategies, better quality genes, exercise more, stress less, sleep better and have an overall better biological constitution have attempted to follow the food pyramid.
This breaks the correlations completely.
If you give some sausage and pepperoni to an unhealthy population with bad genes, and you give great plants and chicken to a great population with great genes, the great population will live longer.
This creates the appearance, but not the reality, that plants are healthier than red meat.
Evolution of humans is my area of doctorate. Though some human populations have adapted to eating some vegetables, the Scandinavians who became Mormons who became your genes today didn’t have much vegetable access in the last hundred thousand years.
You, specifically, are not adapted to eating plants as much as an Indian man of similar constitution.
Evolutionary pressure is strongest the younger you are. Vegetables are causing less harm to
@talmagejohnson_
than to you, because you’re older.
Agricultural revolution was not long ago and having a high percentage of calories from carbs is not something our ancestors have dealt with. They ate aurochs, mammoths 🦣, horses and whatever animals they could find. Our stomach acidity is carnivore, and we’re obviously designed to hunt.
These diseases of modernity may have a multitude of causes which are impossible to disentangle. Toxins, air pollution, stress, lights at night, seed oils, and processed high shelf life food are some commonly cited culprits in potential.
If red meat gave you excess iron, you can easily quelate for less than millions you already spend.
Brains prefer ketones.
About a million people became carnivore in the last 7 years. They cured anxiety, depression, arthritis and some auto immune conditions, became more calm and likely had longer nocturnal erections.
Only 3 that I know of left carnivores for health reasons.
Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of vegans are visibly harming themselves. Their eyes are sunk, skin dry with rashes and pimples, some have low muscle mass some are obese.
They often have brain problems, and chronic pain (which you yourself have), anxiety, depression and even suicidality, some women lost their period.
While you are obviously healthy for your age, your body’s ability to deal with oxalates, and inflammation from carbs is already deteriorating, as evidenced by joint pains.
You’re living an agricultural life, and your ancestors have only done that for a few generations, Darwin didn’t have time to work his magic yet.
If you were getting nutrients from fat instead of carbs, your aging body would be able to process it better, you’d need to do less exercise, and your mood and cognitive function would improve. You’d likely need to sleep less as well.
When using evidence to assess something it’s necessary to understand the origins of the populations you study, that’s what my field of biological anthropology does.
I would take a bet of 20k that a high fat carnivore diet is healthier for Caucasians of Mormon ascent like you than any vegan diet. Even yours. And yours is likely the best on earth.
You’re optimizing 2 dimensions at once by being plant based, this may cost you your life. Do you really need to be an ethical quasi vegan? Would you die for that ethical commitment?
Will you sacrifice an eternity of tomorrows for 20 cows?
1a
Might need some backup for my claims from chemistry specialists and carnivore doctors. Assuming Artificial super intelligence goes well it should happen within the next 20 or 40 years. Bryan will be 86 by then. At most, he’d eat 120 cows
. Then ASI will solve nutrition and no further cows need be slaughtered. Bryan can afford to offset this 100 to 1, he can easily buy or save tens of thousands of cows. Should he risk his life with a vegan diet, given his stated goal of not dying? Can he trust the correlational epidemiological studies? Why? Why not?
2
Thank you for engaging with our arguments, Bryan.
You have joint pains, your teeth are less than perfect, and you supplement several hormones.
You, individually, are healthy.
I also don’t want to die, I was the first Brazilian of 230 million to sign up for cryonics.
We’re both trying to survive until the singularity.
I still believe the carnivore diet is more effective towards that goal than your diet and certainly than other vegan diets.
You are giving a lot of value to correlational studies.
You had 1 or 2 weak epistemology studies on causal mechanisms.
It’s true that there’s few studies about carnivores, but those who manage to do it have seen INCREDIBLE, astounding benefits that would translate to a higher probability of not dying.
It looks crazy to you because you don’t know people who have tried, and you’re not good at epistemology.
This battle will continue because we’re right. Meat is healthier, I’m happy to bet 50k on it.
But the epistemology of learning that is hidden behind a veil of clouds.
Your apprehension is understandable, and while your markers do well, perhaps justified.
The older you get, the harder it will be for your body to keep processing all the plant junk and carbs.
You can fight the damage with exercise and millions, but you are swimming against the current.
You are wrong about this. You may die because you are wrong about this.
But it’s very, very, very hard to thread the data on this topic. And even a man of your stature could remain wrong for a decade.
Your methods of obtaining data for don’t die are bad.
You are wrong about this.
You are wrong about red meat.
You will find out because thousands of people care about you enough to fight against those with bad epistemology who have misled you.
Going public about it will save your life, because we’re here for you.
Your strategy worked.
The data will penetrate your shields and barriers, just like you abandoned mormonism.
And you will switch away from a vegan diet. Because above all, you want to live.
And you will succeed.
We are here for you, not against you.
And we’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after.
Until the evidence becomes overbearing.
We got your back.
@eladmallel
Thank you for your passionate posts!
You’re saying pro plants and carbs research was and is biased – likely true in my mind, not sure how to easily double check but nbd
You’re saying we evolved to eat meat – cool, let’s go with this
But how do you make the leap to meat makes us live longer?
Evolution did not pressure us into longevity. We just needed to live long enough to multiply.
And other than evolution, I don’t think you made another clear argument why meat should be healthy (setting aside the obvious benefits of protein and vitamins and minerals).
So what’s actually the strongest argument for meat and longevity?
Thank you 🙏
You’re right on all counts.
My main goal with these posts is saving the lives of people who would normally follow Bryan to the abyss. Secondarily, I want to save Bryan himself. I am here to stir doubt more than to solve health, which is above the scope of my intelligence and epistemology.
I don’t know if red meat actively increases lifespan. It’s possible some oils like coconut or olive oil don’t reduce lifespan (I have Bryan’s oil at home).
Sadly, as a species, we don’t know that yet. It’s also possible that which foods make you live longer is individual-biology-specific, or ethnic-group-specific. Indians could be more adapted to eating some plants than nordics.
I have watched about 500 hours of carnivore videos where people had bad, bad, bad conditions improve on a carnivore diet. The number of people who went carnivore is about 1 million, the number who left FOR HEALTH reasons is 3 AFAIK. Vegans is the opposite. Millions of vegans stop for health reasons.
It stands to logic that optimizing for sentient animals and for health at once will damage one dimension. Not eating animals damages health.
Is it theoretically possible that eating carb-based plants which evolved to poison us and we adapted for consumption only 15k years ago, which cause obvious rashes, weakness, malnourishment, low muscle mass, diabetes, indigestion and other problems is good for longevity? Yes. It is possible that eating something we didn’t evolve to eat, that visibly causes disease, stroke, bloating, skin problems, ugly eyes, hair loss, cavities, ostheoporosis, pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, depression, and anxiety is actually, deep down, good for us if we are only optimizing the dimension of existing until the singularity.
It is possible, but I personally don’t think it is very likely.
We will not know this before we have to decide. Because we have to decide now, Singularity is near.
The ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING preponderance of non-correlational data indicated that a carb-free diet (literally 0 or less than 1% carbs) is healthier than a diet with plants and carbs.
I will continue to try to eat carnivore until I get the hang of it, because I believe that is what will make me live longer.
If you don’t, you’re denying what your eyes and brain tell you about yourself and thousands of others, and you’re believing correlational studies about peperoni pizza are good evidence about tallow rib-eye.
It’s your life, and your choice.
I come in peace.
And I choose Ribeye.
NOTE: He posted a video of Larry Ellison looking not well (he’s 80, but he has rashes, sunken eyes, red ears and cheeks and many other known veg-eater signs of unhealthy) and praised it, to which I replied.
Big Epistemic Update:
I have reduced from 98% to 55% the probability that Bryan Johnson is completely well intentioned in his don’t die-ism and is actually trying to help others do the same because of this post.
Larry Ellison is clearly displaying several unlhealthy vegetable eater traits, like sunken eyes, less space above the eyes, rashes and redness to face and ears, excess inflammation.
Yet, of all 7 billion people on earth, that’s the one Bryan chose to praise, why?
“Ellison has been described as a “veg-aquarian,” consuming primarily vegetables, fish, and fruit. He reportedly avoids beverages other than green tea and water and refrains from eating snacks after 9 p.m.”
So Bryan is advocating for veg-heavyanism not only based on his own excellent markers, but based on someone else’s plant diet.
This is a strong indicative that Bryan is plant-based for ethical and not health reasons.
Which is fine to do for himself but is wrong to incite others to follow under the FALSE premise that it is healthiest and highest probability of Don’t Die.
I have kept it above 50% because Bryan is obviously a nice guy and a gifter and obviously wants to live a long time. But I think we should all be EXTREMELY cautious from here on out listening to him.
He didn’t pick Larry because he stops eating at 9. He picked Larry because larry doesn’t eat animals.
That means Don’t Die is not the only dimension he is fighting for. So he’s not being honest about your health. Maybe.
More as things progress.
Pavel Stankov
@Pavel_Stankov
3h
Does it not bother you that sentient animals need to be killed so that humans may eat their flesh?
Dr Diego Caleiro is excited about the future!
@diegocaleiro
Enormously. I’m a pluralist with a large 88% Utilitarian component.
Not just factory farming. Normal farming bothers me tremendously.
Wild animal suffering bothers me an amount you probably are literally incapable of conceiving.
There are trillions of beings suffering every day, and that has been the case for over a billion years. That has always been, and continues to be, the worst problem in our universe.
There is exactly 2 kinds of beings who can solve this problem, the two symbolic species on earth.
Humans
AIs.
Humans need to eat cows to be a peak shape, and AIs need to eat drill baby drill.
Extremely soon on a cosmic scale all of this will end. Either ASI will kill us all, or it will become a singleton, pause Darwinism, and end the slaughter.
We need humans in peak shape until that happens. Fewer than 300 billion cows will die until that happens.
Once we have a superintelligence, the liberation of all sentient beings into cosmic joy, meaning, purpose, fun, excitement, and glory is the main priority. We will all get to live happy lives.
Until that day comes, as one of the extraordinarily lucky 1 trillion organisms who may live to see this and become one of the chosen ones, I will not make any sacrifice whatsoever that reduces my probability of not dying by 1 in a hundred million.
Veganism reduces it FAR, FAR more than that.
We are at the last Blink of biological life. This is no time for half measures.
Eat cow.
Diego Caleiro (G Caleiro) 