Thoughts on Bryan Johnson
Thoughts on Bryan Johnson
It's more that just healthy living.
Not the singer from AC/DC, but the tech millionaire whose current personal brand is about promoting “science-based” anti-aging protocols and selling the food/supplements that go along with it. Framing it like that makes it sound more grifty and shady than I think it is; the fact is, I believe Bryan practices what he preaches, and his Blueprint Protocol (which is more than the supplements he sells) is what he actually follows himself. I also don’t think it’s overpriced when comparing it to other brands that sell similar items at a much larger markup. The point is, he’s not the Liver King.
He got some attention last year for a viral post about injecting his son’s blood plasma into himself for some anti-aging therapeutic benefit. My understanding is that he no longer does that because of shaky evidence as to any effect, but as a marketing move, it was genius. Inviting scrutiny brings not only attention to the self but also a focus on the ideas and products you are promoting. I think Johnson truly believes in what he is doing, and if he treats himself like an experiment or longitudinal study, it is because he wants the world to know if it all works.
To that end, a lot of what he says is worth considering. His routine is extensive and experimental, and it contains many things directed toward looks, but he makes a point of delineating the value of all the things he does. Some things are more powerful to health than others, which might be marginal or only help with cosmetics. Here’s a longer video for anyone who wants to dive into a longer-form video of his to see what I mean:
From this, he derives five “power laws” of health:
1. Don’t Smoke
2. Exercise 6 hours per week
3. BMI between 18.5 and 22.5
4. Blueprint-like diet
5. Little to no alcohol
There are more things he adds to this list, notably the importance of sleep, but overall, this list is non-controversial. In fact, I’ve seen arguments that most of the gain in life expectancy toward the end of the 20th century wasn’t from miracle drugs or cancer treatments but a reduction of smoking in the population. Most of the average life gain before that was apparently from sanitation, which should really hammer home the importance of preventing illness as being more valuable than treating it.
“Better whole than mended well,” as the saying goes. Bryan claims the power laws will net roughly 32 years of extra life. I’d like to add that because these are things that can prevent the chronic illness that not only shortens life but makes it more difficult, the time added (which you are not guaranteed) will be in better health than you might have otherwise. Smokers don’t just die early; they suffer in the years before death. I’ve known several people who had lung cancer, and it is a brutal illness.
Exercising and maintaining a low body fat will keep your heart functioning well and help prevent things like type II diabetes, a condition that massively affects wellness, especially in advanced stages. Alcohol can have many negative effects on the body in large quantities or with consistent use. Studies have continued to find that while the antioxidants in red wine might be beneficial, drinking as a habit is not. It disturbs sleep and can tank your sex hormones as a man. It also has a lot of empty calories, making it harder to be lean.
This is why I gave up alcohol in my late 20s. I was already bored with binge drinking, but I still had a habit of having one or two drinks a day. I wanted to be leaner, and I knew that it would be much easier without the extra calories and with my testosterone levels at a more naturally optimal level. I felt better immediately, and my workouts were better. I got stronger and faster, and my mind was sharper because I slept better. Hangovers also suck, and I don’t miss them.
The Blueprint-like diet is a trickier point to tackle. There are many diets in the world, and not all of them will be tolerated by every person. “Blueprint-like” can mean a lot of things. Diets often have specific purposes to them, like losing weight and helping with metabolic disease, gaining muscle, etc. People aren’t one size fits all. Personally, when I look at Bryan’s diet at
https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/#step-1-meal-prep
, I am not enthused to change what I already do. My guess is that most people would feel the same. However, it might get you thinking about the food you are willing to eat and why Bryan includes most of the things he does.
The supplement part of the protocol is also very interesting, mostly in that it includes small bits of many things that are normally found in food, for example, pea protein and garlic. Presumably, you could eat those things in your food, but I understand including them in a supplement stack if you are on a highly restricted diet or under strict calorie restriction. If pizza is bad for you, what else are you going to eat that has garlic in it? Are you going to eat it every day? I take krill oil for this reason – I don’t eat fish every day, but omega-3 fatty acids seem to have health benefits. Personally, I would be more inclined to add the Blueprint stack to my usual diet just to cover all bases and stick to the food that I know I can tolerate.
Now, let’s talk about the problems with all of this.
First, there is the obvious stuff. We don’t live the life of a FIRE tech millionaire with adult children or minor children who live with our ex-wives. We have jobs, some of which have erratic hours. Young children keep us up or wake us up. We have goals in life that extend beyond getting a good night’s sleep and a good workout—labor and time-intensive things like making art, earning degrees, saving for retirement, or serving the needy in our parishes and communities. While I am an advocate of not trading your health for short-term productivity (prolific creation is a marathon, not a sprint), I also acknowledge in my creativity manual that you must be willing to endure short-term discomfort at times to get projects completed. Bryan knows this, as he sacrificed a lot to build Venmo so that he could sell it.
Doing all the things that he does for his health is just not possible for most people. To his credit, he talks about the power laws and does not say his protocol is the optimal path for everyone, but we have to be realistic with each of us as to what we are willing and able to do for maximal health relative to our other goals and obligations. You are not likely to get Bryan’s results because chances are you cannot adhere to his protocol. He is honest about this often. Genetics also plays a factor. We shouldn’t all expect to look or feel like him just by buying supplements.
There is also the problem of reducing health to “biomarkers” and assuming that values in tests that are somehow optimal will translate to longevity, and even more than that, longevity that exceeds normal human limits. If you have intercellular levels of NAD equivalent to an 18-year-old because of supplementation, what exactly does that mean? Does that mean you are healthier or will live longer? Are there downsides? There is also the problem that many treatments, including various kinds of supplementation, are directed toward the ill, not the healthy. It is easy to end up in the Statin drug problem described by Nasim Taleb in Incerto. A therapy that helps those who are very sick may harm those who are well—or may do nothing and yet cost money and time and create a cognitive burden. The mistake is believing changes that happen at the edges of distributions will also happen to the center. I know some other people have addressed this.
There are also his beliefs regarding AI. Like most people touting AI (and whatever you choose that to mean) over the last few years, they operate under the assumption that the “Line always goes up,” which I have discussed in-depth before. Technologies inevitably plateau or even decay.
These are practical objections, but they do point to the deep, underlying ethos that drives Bryan, which is transhumanism and Scientism.
If you watch him, you will notice how often he appeals to “Science” and even uses terms like “science says,” which is nonsensical as science isn’t even a knowledge area but an approach to gaining knowledge, that is, a process of natural philosophy. Science cannot speak; only people can speak. Only people can “say” that something is good, bad, optimal, unhealthy, etc., as all of these things are qualities and not quantities. They have meaning only because we give them meaning. “Science” itself doesn’t even have a consistent meaning. What I think Bryan means with the term is the general results of peer-reviewed research studies, but as discussed here before, 50% of published research is false. That’s not a very strong record for an authority, especially one to whom you are committed to managing decisions that affect your health or life.
Scientism is then a faith or a religious sentiment.
Johnson has a motto: don’t die. I prefer something more like “live long and prosper” because “don’t die” implies that there is a possibility that you won’t die. I will burst that bubble right now. You will die. Moreover, the belief that “science,” that is, scientists gaining knowledge and sharing it, will massively extend the human lifespan or erase death when nobody has managed that before, is a faith-based position. It is one where one god is replaced by another, more nebulous god that seems somehow more tangible because his priests (scientists) are gaining new knowledge rather than attempting to maintain orthodoxy.
Bryan used to be a Mormon, so he is an example of what I frequently see with people who apostatize from their religion: they replace their old one with a new one that they don’t recognize as such. For lots of atheists, it becomes the state. For Johnson, it is “Science” as an entity or egregore. His vision of the future is one where people evolve into something else, though he doesn’t know what. That is a form of transhumanism and, again, is not based on evidence. It is a point of faith.
One of his main talking points is that he took his decision-making away from himself and gave it to an “algorithm” based on “Science” to maximize his health. He created a new god in the form of a machine to tell him how he ought to live, a god that makes better decisions than he could as a flawed, fallen person who gives into temptation (for example, by eating the wrong things—the vices of “evening Bryan”). The machine’s abstraction of scientific conclusions becomes his god, and it dictates his rules for living. Maybe it improves outcomes, but we must be explicit with what he means by all this. It is religious.
Since we are talking about religion, there are far more witnesses to an afterlife than there are to not dying. Bryan’s new faith is closer to a blind hope than real faith as practiced by religious men and women. This is an invitation to think more deeply about what that hope—that people might live extremely long lives or perhaps forever—really is. This isn’t just about the physical state, but that is a good place to start. Long life is only appealing when it is in a state of health, not sickness, and most people, as they approach extreme old age, live in various states of infirmary. My grandparents lived well into their nineties (they did not follow the power rules, by the way) but suffered various physical and mental ailments in the last few years of their lives. They were very healthy for a long time…then they weren’t.
But if they could have had good health for longer, that would be good, right? Yes, but at what cost? Bryan Johnson lives what I would consider an acetic life. Most people do not choose an acetic life for various reasons—but mostly because adhering to that discipline is very difficult. St. Anthony the Great reportedly lived to be 105, which is quite the age considering he lived in the 3rd and 4th centuries. If you had to live in a crack in a rock in the Egyptian desert to reach 105, would you? I doubt it. What about eating disgusting food every day for the rest of your life? There are real costs besides 800 dollars a month for the Blueprint Protocol (or 100,000 dollars, as Bryan did it), including opportunity and experience costs that might not be apparent to Bryan but would be very apparent to people in less comfortable circumstances. To Bryan’s credit, he encourages people to do what they can.
Lastly, I’m going to personally get religious and invite you to consider that eternal life in a fallen state is Hell. I don’t mean just like Hell. It is the experience of Hell. It’s not just the burden of our failing bodies that makes the release of death a correct ending to the earthly life; it is the mounting burden of sin. If wealth, health, attractiveness, and devotion from other people were enough, musicians like Chris Cornell would still be alive. Loss of joy can happen to those we envy the most, as can overwhelming despair. What Johnson quests for is the hope of the resurrection here, on this fallen earth, by perfecting our fallen bodies, but that hope will only be tolerable when we have been cleansed of sin. It is only through our knowledge of death and the hope of the Lord that joy and suffering have meaning anyway. Even Christ died—a truly human condescension.
Bryan Johnson is a new Numenorean, unhappy with the limits placed on him, even when he is at the height of power, health, and wealth of all mankind throughout history. There are definitely elements of wisdom in what he says, but what he hopes for will not be given to him—a new Babel, a desire to wrest eternal life from the gods, is doomed to failure because, in the end, we are our bodies, and they are still of the matter of the earth, a place where nothing lives forever. So, for me, it is “Live long and prosper,” not “Don’t die.” We can live our best lives, but know that there is a threshold we all must cross, and focusing too intently on our bodies here may leave us unprepared to cross that last gap. We also may find that threshold sooner than we wish.
That is the other side we, as individuals, must consider. Bryan has humanitarian goals that grow out of his religiosity—I don’t doubt that. He witnessed great poverty as a Mormon missionary, but the experience of the decadent first world exposes the reality that material comfort and even secure health do not create joy. We must worry not just about the health of our bodies but the health of our souls, too. Otherwise, long life will not be a boon.
Bryan is a very interesting person with a very interesting vision. Discarding his pseudo-religion of Scientism and the hopes that follow it, there is still loads of value to what he says. I think the religious sentiment helps sell the package. It gets attention and challenges people to think, even if they start with hate and dismissal. You can see with your eyes that at least part of his approach must work. So, we should consider it. At the very least, think about those power laws: no smoking, little/no alcohol, a good diet, low body fat, sleep, and exercise.
These are not new. Philosophers and saints wrote about them. All of them point toward the virtue of temperance and away from classic vices like sloth and gluttony. So, they are points of wisdom. If you want to take Bryan’s more quantified and specific approach, then go for it. Just be aware that the far-reaching goals that his protocol points to are religious, and many of the things he does point to vanity—a vice. We are our bodies, and it is good to care for the body, but that is not all we are, nor are we destined to be in this state forever. Death comes. Let us live well so that we can do the good work of the soul for a long time.
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