The Biohacker

Optimization: A Fairytale Part 1

Dear Friends,

Our good and true instincts towards betterment, our natural desire to improve ourselves, get a better job, and take care of our family have been twisted and distorted by the optimization mindset.

Optimize /ŏp′tə-mīz″/: The goal of making as fully perfect, functional, efficient, or effective as possible.

Optimization encourages us to pursue the fantasy that we will eventually achieve peak self, optimal progress, and perfect balance, and that by committing to ‘always better,’ ‘always faster,’ and ‘always more,’ we will attain the Good Life for ourselves and our loved ones. Optimization wants to recruit us, like in the U.S. Army ad, to Be All That You Can Be. And more.

But optimization offers only false promises, and pursuing it leaves us less fulfilled, less connected, and less excellent - all the while blocking us from the things that are most important to us and that make life worth living. Optimization puts us at high risk of ending up on one of two extremes: living life on a hamster wheel of achievement or falling off the track completely and giving up. The more optimization prevails, with efficiency, productivity, and progress the ultimate virtues, the more broken we feel and the more intolerable life becomes.

The optimization mindset is expressed in a set of archetypes that have seeped into our collective awareness. The most optimized of the archetypes is the Biohacker, who believes progress is the ultimate goal of life and the greatest virtue. We can achieve these heights only through absolute control of our bodies and minds through perpetual measurement and protocols of intervention. Yet, when we hold ourselves to the standards of a machine, we are sure to come up short. Modeling ourselves after this archetype isolates us and drives us towards burnout and obsessive-compulsive strivings that are sure to backfire.

In this piece, I tease apart the Biohacker ideal by starting with a fictionalized inner dialogue based on a real-life biohacker.

This is a longer, weekend-read-sort-of piece. I hope you enjoy!

All My Best,

Tracy

It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.

~ Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle

Bryan

Looking back on my life, it all seems so clear. I’ve gotten to where I am today because for most of my life, I found it hard to be human.

I was born into a world of conformity, into a faith that I was expected to never question. Growing up, I was poor and fat, but I was also nice. I cared about people. I still do. But I didn’t feel like I fit in. I felt different - in some bad ways but also, in retrospect, in good ways, too, because I suspected that I had something special to offer. No one in my town tried to be different, so I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I was taught that the world was predestined by God, but that it was our responsibility to exercise free will - as long as we played by the rules. If we solved this problem, this seeming paradox, we would have a good life. So I had to figure it out.

I first figured it out by becoming strong. As a fat kid - husky, as my mom used to say - I was big. So I lifted weights and turned that size into an asset. Fat turned to muscle and I joined the football team. I loved being on the team, and I was good at it. Every game was warfare, and I was winning - at the game of football, yes, but also winning at getting recognition. For the first time in my life, I felt valued. And I valued myself. That was the beginning of my remaking.

As a teenager, I decided to serve mission and I was assigned to Ecuador, along with other Mormons from around the world. I felt it was important work, but it was a miserable two years. I couldn’t eat. I was sick all the time. My face became a network of acne and sun rashes. I became emaciated and by the end had lost 60 pounds. There was no one who could help me, but I persisted through as I did my duty and tried to help others by bringing them to a good and true faith.

It was afterwards, once I got home, that everything started to change, and I began the most transformative period of my life. This experience of serving mission and following all of the rules despite every adversity, and suffering terribly because of it…Well, it got me thinking for the first time in my life that maybe we don’t have to play by the rules. Maybe we could make the rules and become the author of our own lives.

It didn’t happen all at once. After returning from Ecuador, I married and had my first child at 24. Still playing by the rules. But I loved being a father, and with the responsibility of fatherhood, I started looking at life differently: I worked on rebuilding my relationship with my own father; and I took health and nutrition more seriously. It was then that I became an entrepreneur. I wanted to build something and I saw right away that digital technology was the most powerful force in the universe. I built a mobile and web payment company because I saw the need, the gap, and knew I could solve for it.

Over 8 years of highs and lows, the cliched blood, sweat, and tears, I sold that company in 2013. For the first time, I had money. Real money. Hundreds of millions of dollars of it. I had played the game and won. Nothing was ever the same again. It wasn’t that money fixed everything, or that this level of success got me pretty much anything money could buy. Yes, that was different, but what really felt new was the nagging feeling of ‘what next’ and ‘what is this all for?’ Money, success, power. I had been working tirelessly for it so it all must mean something, right?

But it didn’t. I was in a deep depression. I was in pain. I was trying to get out there and LIVE LIFE. I even climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. It wasn’t working. I was desperate to not be conscious. I look at pictures of myself from that period - I was smiling for the camera, especially because everyone wanted my opinions now that I was rich. But I look at my eyes in those pictures, and they show the truth. I was dead inside.

It was time to remake myself again. The fat kid had to become the football hero. What was different now is that I knew I didn’t need to play by the rules. I was out to create them myself.

I started by putting my money to work. I invested in companies that thought about the future like I did. These companies were working on technologies and ideas that people in the 25th century, looking back, would think, ‘Even with their primitive tools, they could see what was coming? Amazing!’ They would be impressed with us, just the way we are impressed with scientists, without the right knowledge or even proper microscopes, who realized that there must exist some biological entity so small that the human eye can’t see it, and that these invisible, unknowable things must cause disease and death. Amazing.

In the 21st century, we’re way past discovering microbes. The bleeding edge of the future is making the world controllable and programmable. We already have the tools of creation in hand - coding. We can program atoms and genes. Soon, we will program whole organisms and build any world we imagine - growing trees into homes, muscle and tissue into vehicles. I invested in companies who would make programming the world as easy as programming a computer.

But in this mission, in this proselytizing, I was a hypocrite. Because while I was supporting these companies I was destroying myself. I was overweight, dull, and exhausted. I was still in a deep depression. And I had a serious goal alignment problem - the warring selves within me were keeping me from optimizing my life. At perpetual odds with each other, they could never efficiently and effectively work together. That’s why I was a mess. Evening Self, who wanted to overeat and stay up late, completely hijacked the goals of Morning Self, who wanted to sleep well and get up refreshed and prepared for the day. The list of conflicting selves was endless, and constantly out of sync: Out-With-Friends Self, Will-Power Self, New-Years-Resolution Self were, more often than not, bickering. None of them could agree and none of them could prioritize important goals over their own immediate desires. The result was failure and guilt. So, I stopped putting faith in the self, in these mercurial desires and emotions.

I had to ask myself: Do I really think that I can live my best life on my own? No. No, I can’t. I just don’t have what it takes.

I needed an augmentation. I sidestepped my limited self and put my faith in data. I let my body’s data manage my life protocols. What and when I eat, where and how long I sleep, the amount and type of exercise I do. To get these data, I have to become my own experimental subject. I measure and modify everything - my cholesterol levels, how much I sleep and my percent of time in REM, my body fat, my lung capacity, routine MRIs for brain function, ECGs for heart, daily blood and stool samples. I perfectly control my inputs and outputs - an unwavering protocol of exercise and meditation, 100 supplements a day, and an unvarying vegan-based diet, coming in at 1,977 calories. I have become the most measured human in history.

I’m proud of my discipline, of my remarkably low body fat, my beautiful musculature. I’ve turned back the clock and my 46-year-old organs are operating at the capacity of an 18-year-old. My workouts and hikes leave my teenage sons gasping for breath, and I have to slow down so they can catch up.

This all sounds vain and selfish, I can see that. But this is not about me. This is not about my life maximization. This is about species maximization. That’s why I’ve committed to one, singular goal: Don’t die.

People think I’m insane, I know. But the future can’t be imagined. Just as we might whisper into the ear of people hundreds of years ago - there are these things called germs, and they’re killing you, and you can make medicine to live decades longer. They would have thought us insane. Future people, people in the 25th century, if they could whisper one thing in our ear to set us on the best path to the future, it would be ‘Don’t die.’ Because when we believe death is not inevitable, we don’t kill ourselves. We don’t kill each other, and we don’t kill the planet. We’ll make sure to align the coming AI superintelligence with don’t die. The superintelligence will be orders of magnitude smarter than humans are, just like we’re orders of magnitude smarter than insects. Don’t die is the ultimate goal alignment. It’s the rallying cry of human evolution. It shatters what we thought we knew about life and death. It forces us to question everything and walk into the future with confidence.

The only way to realize the promise of ‘don’t die’ is through data. It is through data that superintelligence will be born, dwarfing the limits of the human mind. It will be through data, through measuring our own minds, that we will push them to evolve further. If the human lifespan is to evolve, the human mind must evolve with it.

So I exercise my free will - the will to live; the will to do; the will to exist. I have taken my life in my own hands, not beholding to any authority - not God, not my parents, not my investors and shareholders. I’m playing for the first time in my life, remaking myself, getting closer to perfect health, reaching peak life experiences on a daily basis. The clarity I’ve gained since I committed to not dying - it’s the greatest joy I’ve known. If I were told I was going to die in two years, I’d stick to my protocols all the more. I love my protocols. They give me meaning and value. They make playing the game worth it because, with them, I’m winning. I’m living to be admired in the 25th century.

I never wanted life as badly as I do now. But I’m not just remaking myself. I’m maximizing myself to show the way to the next evolution of human being. The reason I exist is to discover how to program our existence and maximize all of humanity; it's to point the species in the direction of ‘don’t die’ so that this part of the galaxy can flourish. Since Ecuador, I’ve spent 25 years trying to do something for the human race. My fight against death, my belief that some day, death will not be inevitable, will usher us into a new era.

Our Lady of the Perpetual Biohack

This is the fictionalized inner dialogue of tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, based on lightly interpreted or even verbatim accounts from his writings, videos, and interviews, including his explicit goal to become the “next evolution of human being” and his rallying cry of “don’t die.” To these ends, he has devoted himself to an all-consuming health regimen costing millions of dollars each year and led by a full staff of round-the-clock doctors in his home medical facility. He has put himself very much in the public eye with his endeavor, and readily shares his experiences, philosophy of life, and of course, his personal data.

Bryan has been mocked for this, criticized as just another selfish, narcissistic centimillionaire. Immersing yourself in Bryan’s world, you also sense his utter commitment, his unwavering belief, his hope, and his desperation. He wants to be the architect of his own life, a harbinger of the optimized future to come. Perhaps even more than that, he wants to be responsible for shifting the very paradigm of what we believe is possible for humans. He takes the critiques, and even mocking, as proof that he is on the right track. Scorn only seems to encourage him. Genius is often ridiculed, he argues, rarely understood in its own time.

Bryan Johnson embodies, in the most literal sense, a fundamental archetype of optimization - the Biohacker. In the choice between wishing to live as a machine or as a creature, he has come down firmly on the side of machine. An a well-oiled machine, at that. For him, body and mind, healthspan and longevity are like machinery on the fritz. They must be persistently assessed and fixed. Through blueprints and protocols for health, he controls and regulates, becoming his own machinist, the true architect of his existence.

Bryan is not alone in these aspirations. Among his community of tech entrepreneurs, and beyond, biohacking has been elevated to a moral imperative, almost a holy sacrament. It holds dear the fundamental tenet of the optimization mindset: Progress is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself. Progress is a moral imperative. That’s why human enhancement is so fundamental to the biohacker world view. Biohackers believe that people should strive to transcend the physical limitations of the mind and body in order to progress. The goal is to be more than human, even god-like.

Biohackers wear many guises. They are self-quantifiers, biopunks, transhumanists, and techno-progressives. Some seek enhancement through non-digital means, like supplements, diet, and exercise. Others implant microchips in their brains, headphones in their ears, and vibrators in their pelvis to become cyborgs, the integration of creature and machine. Biohackers are scientists, self-engineering their DNA using gene therapy to enhance and extend their life.

Optimization is the credo of the biohacker, and progress is the goal. The greatest good is to expand the boundaries of human perception, thought, and performance to be as efficient and effective as possible. Through this transcendence we progress, and that is the ultimate form of freedom. Evolution is not to survive. Survival is to evolve.

The philosophical roots of biohacking go deep. It starts with the hacker ethic, originated at places like MIT in the 1950’s and 60’s. The founder of the Free Software movement, Richard Stallman, describes hacking as playful cleverness, but goes on to define the hacker ethic as the belief that, “...knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted."

Knowledge, information, technologies, and resources. In this data-driven ethos, right and wrong aren’t really the point. The point is, according to Kirkpatrick's The Hacker Ethic, “exceptional single-mindedness and determination to keep plugging away at a problem until the optimal solution has been found…” and ultimately, achieve hack mode, “... a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic).” The Problem is the point and it’s the hacker’s raison d’etre.

This single-mindedness, the elevation of The Problem, reflects a broader wish among hackers and biohackers in particular to achieve freedom and transcend boundaries - of obstacles in the world, our bodies, our minds, and our basic biology. Feminist theorist Donna Haraway became an influential figure in the biohacker movement after writing the "Cyborg Manifesto." She uses the concept of the cyborg to critique and question traditional categories and identities, like that between human and machine or male and female. She rejects these boundaries, writing, “I would rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess.” Goddesses are defined and limited by their own female biology.

The biohacker archetype teaches us that the ultimate goal of existence is progress. To achieve progress, we should persistently and cleverly solve problems. Transcending boundaries and categories is good because they are progress limiters and blockers. With the right problem-solving tools, technologies, algorithms, and protocols, life becomes programmable and controllable. Even the holy grail of everlasting life is within our grasp.

In other words, The biohacker teaches us that optimization is the path to enlightenment.

All of you who are in love with hectic work and whatever is fast, new, strange - you find it hard to bear yourselves…

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Trickle Down Theory

If the biohacker's true dream is constant progress and the ability to wield absolute control over body, mind, and spirit, you might be thinking - This has nothing to do with me. These guys are nuts. Do biohackers dream of electric sheep? Perhaps, but mainly when they’re in cryotherapy-assisted slumber.

Yet, the practices and attendant beliefs of the biohacker have already infiltrated our lives and shaped our views about the nature of wellbeing. Let’s start with some of their favored experimental health technologies.

No longer just for the tech titans and nerds, cryotherapy has arrived in a neighborhood near you. In my neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, a Restore treatment center opened up in 2023. It advertises hyper wellness + cryotherapy: restore, do more, do more, do more, do more….You get the picture. For a couple hundred bucks or less, you too can submerge yourself in a cryochamber cooled to freezing temperatures with liquid nitrogen. It’s not just the hypochondriacal Howard Hughes types treating their imaginary illnesses, either - it’s your sister, your best friend, and your finance bro next door neighbor trying it out to reduce inflammation, do something about their chronic sore back, and finally beat that lingering depression. It’s poorly regulated, so it’s unclear how many have tried it. What is clear is that there’s almost no evidence at all that it helps.

Then, there’s self-tracking. Bryan Johnson might be the most measured human in history but he’s not alone. In 2010, I attended a Quantified Self (QS) meetup. Back then, meetups were a popular way for people to connect in person and have fun. This meetup felt a bit more like an academic conference - graphs and mathematical formulas as far as the eye can see, and a steady murmur of jargon and technical talk. The motto of the Quantified Self movement is ‘Self-Knowledge through Numbers.’ To the QSer, self knowledge isn’t a result of introspection, philosophy, or life stories. Self-knowledge is data. Fitting their bodies with sensors and keeping scientifically precise logs, they record heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature; they track physical movements, sleep patterns, thoughts, and emotions. They represent these data and analyze them with charts and predictive statistics. All this personal data serves as a record of their lives as well as a map of the future.

The practices of this community, at the fringes a couple decades ago, have gone mainstream and led us to our current era of day-to-day biohacking - no multi-million dollar health regimen required. Our personal data, like GPS location, number of steps, facial features and fingerprints, have become fundamental to how we interact with our ubiquitous smartphones. Fitbits and other wearable fitness trackers measure heart rate, sleep, oxygen levels, blood pressures, steps, calories, and temperatures. These aren’t the tools of an obsessive subculture. They’re holiday presents for our 12-year-olds. The concept of personal data no longer needs explanation. We’re already figuring out how to monetize it, owning and selling it to achieve ‘data dignity’ so that corporations aren’t the only ones benefiting. We have acquiesced to the idea of data as identity. My data, my self.

It seems like all this is fundamentally about control. We all crave control, perhaps more than ever. Websites that track the frequency of words identify ‘control’ as a top 300 word (wordcount.org ranks it at 294). To compare, the word ‘love’ ranks at 384.

The seductive promise of control might be why measurement has also taken over the business of happiness. Pop onto the app store and you will encounter not hundreds but thousands of ‘tools’ giving you the power to assess, schedule, and optimize your moods. Whether it’s Apple’s built in Health app, or apps like Happiness 360° and the Happiness Planner, happiness doesn’t have to be left to chance. When you can objectively measure it, you can deliberately control and create it. Belying this obsession with data, however, the best guess of scientists is that most of these apps are snake oil. Scientists have provided free, public reviews of their scientific basis, but we can’t keep up. This is big business, with no end in sight to the innumerable apps, how-to books, online courses, and wellness products.

The biohacker archetype keeps us very focused on the promise of brain training and neuroscience. The entrepreneur, speaker, and ‘brain coach’ behind Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life, Jim Kwik, says “change your brain, change your world.” Kwik teaches us the equivalence, “brighter brain, brilliant life” and that we can be the ‘B.O.S.S.’ of our brains to remember things better by controlling our beliefs, observations, strategies, and states. These paeans of control and brilliance are just a few of the dozens of aphorisms, acronyms, and mnemonics that have made him an in-demand speaker, podcaster to millions, and coach to the rich and famous.

The ideas of measurement and control are right on-brand for the wildly popular Stanford neuroscience professor, podcaster, and social media influencer Dr. Andrew Huberman. Daily, to his millions of followers, Huberman elucidates health tools, minutely detailed health protocols, and biobehavioral processes through which we can manage every aspect of our stress, benefitting even at the cellular level. That’s why, as he says, ‘I love mechanism.’ He’s even a proponent of optimized procreation - through controlled medical procedures like IVF, not the old-fashioned way, thank you very much. One can exert more control when procreation involves a lab. Huberman shows us that science is indeed the new rock ‘n roll. His legion of fans and followers, including ‘Huberman Husbands’ (men who optimize) and (mostly female) TikTok users who tag him #DaddyHuberman, are swooning in their seats.

It’s not just Huberman. There’s a whole ruling class of biohacking influencers on social media, all dudes who teach their gazillion followers how to shoot for peak performance on a daily basis through practices like food-refusing soylent chugging, punishing exercise routines, and spartan lifestyles - all while giving you 20% off on Athletic Greens! Their love language is that of metabolic health, nutritional biochemistry, and centenarian decathlons.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of these guys are sweethearts. Take Rich Roll, the former entertainment attorney turned ultra-endurance athlete and ‘full-time wellness & plant-based nutrition advocate.’ His motto is ‘unlock your best self’ and he spends a lot of his time evangelizing about the benefits of plant-based living and the dangers of ultra-processed foods, lack of healthy gut biomes, and Big Pharma. Amen, Rich. And I like your salt and pepper beard - nice aging gracefully!

The problem is that these influencers are driving the optimization into dangerous territory: instead of persistence, they model obsessive striving; instead of growth, they model absolute control and progress for progress’ sake.

“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn

Here’s the point. The biohacking archetype doesn’t just affect the online followers of neuroscientists-turned-social-media-influencers, neo-Stoics, and lifestyle Spartans. It’s for all of us, whether we’re working moms who life hack with magic mushrooms or any of the dozens of people you know who are the first in line for the newest dermatological treatment, lip plumper, hair extension, or GLP. Biohacking comes in many shapes and sizes. Their shared belief is that wellbeing is the result of control over the body and mind and that a Good Life is one that is measured and fine-tuned to be as efficient, effective, and frictionless as possible.

Yet, we’re finding that achieving this level of tracking, measurement, and control is coming at the price of the very thing we’re chasing after so desperately: a sense of wellbeing.

In my next post, I’ll pick up from here to discuss why tracking happiness will (almost) always backfire.