Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42796867

Points: 17

# Comments: 0

I get that they're trying to go with "done does not need to mean perfect", but this way of putting it is too aggressive and I don't feel like it'll have good outcomes.

They're sending pretty much everything BUT audio.

Main reason is that audio is just tremendously inefficient compared to other signals. It's large and expensive to store and process and doesn't really give you that many bytes of information you can't get elsewhere for how expensive it is to handle.

But why would a company say they do this? It's because so many people believe that this happens anyway that there's next to no cost to them in saying it - and the buyers for this kind of technology think of this as a good thing.

It might be fake, but people being scared of your powerful technology is good for sales.

AI labs do the same thing by actively courting fearmongering.

These companies are most likely lying or exaggerating their capabilities. Since so many people believe in audio eavesdropping anyway, it's in their interest to make the buyers of their software believe they're much more powerful than they really are.

It's the same as how it's good for AI companies to talk about how AIs are just on the verge of ending the world and must be regulated at any cost - more people believing that what they're selling is absurdly powerful is good for sales.

[0] https://urbit.org/

This is clearly a man who wants a cult-like mentality to form around him.

If he were just going ridiculously in-depth with his self-research and being open and honest about this, I'd actually admire him a lot, but it's all the grandiose talk about "Zeroth principles thinking" and "Aligning with what the 25th century would want" together with implying his detractors must be weak, scared and lacking in self-control that turns me off heavily.

How does that background translate to any kind of scientific competence? Because his website is heavy on the buzzwords and the Silicon Valley "glorious future"-talk and remarkably light on anything resembling responsible science.

He clearly doesn't want to advance knowledge about longevity, he wants to be the world's top longevity marketer and salesman. It's just a business long shot to him. And yes, that is perfectly congruent with his background.

His website is full of "look at my amazing results!", which makes for good marketing talk but does not good science make and is not good nor helpful for people who are trying to separate what works from what doesn't - but is great for Mr. Johnson' budding supplement business's baseline.

1. First of all is that he talks significantly more about the supposed results of his program than he does about why his program is like that or even what does his actual program consist in. You will notice that nowhere at all is the actual "program" explained or even described in its entirety. As has been mentioned, all of his content is about "wow, look how amazingly strong I am" or "wow, look at my amazing metabolism" but none of it is actionable content beyond telling people to buy his shit.

2. Speaking of "telling people to buy his shit", once you get beyond the amazingly extensive wall of "wow, look how amazing my results are", his website looks remarkably like every single other unproven supplement peddler out there. I am looking at his website right now as I write this and the number of supplements he sells himself has, in fact increased greatly. He has gone from the $60 olive oil which was his original product to a branded line of spreads, drink mixes, and whatever else to the point that he's starting to look a lot like the Liver King (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKpmAGZQetc), if more "creepy 50 year-old trying to look like a teenager" than Liver King's "creepy 50 year-old trying to look like a jacked piece of salami"

3. While I admire Mr. Johnson's willingness to self-test unproven treatments supposedly in order to figure out if they actually work for himself, his website is remarkably light on warnings on which treatments are actually unproven and which might actually carry some level of danger. The amount of warning on unproven and unlicensed therapies in his website amounts to a single footnote very well hidden under a gigantic wall of "wow, look how amazing my test results are and how impressive my wall of supplements is!"

4. Speaking of his test results, early on Mr. Johnson actually used to talk about challenges, things that went wrong or even just "not so great". As time went on, it's all rah-rah "look at how amazing I am! My measurements are better than an Olympic athlete!!". And while I truly do hope Mr. Johnson's (unexplained, just-so) protocol is just that great, it does seem a lot like peddling his olive oil and whatever else would suffer if he were to say that anything he did was anything beyond perfect.

5. Oh god, the "philosophy" parts. I really want to talk as little as possible about this one, because it's all vapid bullshit and even talking too much about it helps it spread - in fact Mr. Johnson is well-known for actively courting Twitter drama as a way to strengthen his brand. (It should be a well-known fact by any human being living in the 21st century that controversy will make grifters stronger in the short run). His rant on how he is somehow going from "First Principles thinking" to "Zeroth principle thinking", which is "the base of genius" can compete with anything written by any "motivational guru" who talks about "quantum healing" to large audiences... Including a part where he says that anyone who doubts him and his protocol must be weak, miserable, scared of being left behind, afraid of change, and lacking self-control. Wow.

6. Now, let's look at what all this high-minded philosophical talk builds up to. Well, it seems that somehow Mr. Johnson's protocol will help you resist "corporate profiteering at your detriment" and also stop us from "destroying the biosphere" by "aligning us with what the 25th century would value". Huh. Ok, seems pretty great. How can we get there, Mr. Johnson?

    It would have been hard to predict the books that would be written with the introduction of the printing press; or what the internet would enable. The same principle applies to what the human race can become when paired with the torrid wave of technological and scientific progress. We can take baby steps as we work on stretching our imaginations: 

    Week 1: drink the Green Giant (GG) daily.
    Week 2: GG + Super Veggie (SV) daily.
    Week 3: GG + SV + Nutty Pudding (NP) daily.
    Week 4: GG + SV + NP + supplements daily.

I rest my case.

Because it is of course completely obvious that collusion among very large, very complex competing entities is a very easy proposition, you just need a magic algorithm to do it! /s