Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Building Broad Sporting Foundations and the Armor of Critical Thinking
Discover the secret Scandinavian approach to nurturing young athletes that's outperforming the rest of the world, and why WNBA prospect Caitlin Clark's diverse sports background might be her golden ticket. This episode of Mind Muscle with Simon Devere isn't just about the physical - we're here to flex our philosophical biceps too. We're unpacking everything from the hidden perks of golf for high school athletes to why philosophy is crucial for dissecting today's tidal wave of information. Get ready to challenge the early specialization dogma and find out how a broader foundation in sports could be the key to long-term success.
Have you ever questioned the flashy claims of the latest "scientific" products? Hold on to your seats as we expose the "magic pixie dust" of consumerism and science, sharing tales from the trenches of personal experience and learned skepticism. We'll navigate the realms of superstition and science, reveal how philosophical thinking can sharpen critical analysis skills, and explore the importance of nutrition critiques without falling prey to the latest fad. This episode is a masterclass in transforming your approach to new information and redefining your understanding of risk and control.
Finally, join me as we champion philosophy's place in the modern world, comparing its understated importance to that of carbohydrates in a nutritious diet. Engaging with philosophical texts isn't just an intellectual luxury; it's akin to developing mental muscle to ward off today's craftiest charlatans. We're bridging the gap between mind and muscle, ensuring that our journey towards intellectual fortitude is just as robust as our physical one. Dive into a world where skepticism is wielded with precision, not as a tool for denial, but as a means to cultivate informed beliefs and personal growth.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. Here's your host, simon DeVere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today I am Simon Devere and there's nothing new except all that has been forgotten. All right, so on the docket, today I want to run down talk about the best way to develop young athletes according to science, and then I do want to make a defense of philosophy in general versus its most qualified detractors, which there are many in some of the best scientists actually. But yeah, I know that that one's probably not the most tempting to most people out there. So there actually will be a really pragmatic takeaway in nutrition from all of that. It's not going to be a pie in the sky sort of discussion. It's actually going to be a lot more pragmatic nuts and bolts than I think most people think of philosophy as being indulgent. So, anyway, that's got a lot of my or kind of showing my hand for the defense I'm going to offer, but I think it can be a tool that can help us work on some really pragmatic problems, not just, you know, some big pie in the sky stuff. But no, I really liked an article I came across this week about Caitlin Clark, one of the most exciting prospects to come into the WNBA in quite some time. But it was actually focusing on what she had done as a youth athlete and the article obviously started off with a discussion. I guess her dad clearly gets the question a lot what did you guys do? Clearly gets the question a lot, what did you guys do? And you know so. He actually had Caitlin Clark engaging with as many different activities as possible. He said sports or otherwise. So beyond basketball and soccer, she was doing piano, softball, tennis, track and field, volleyball, volleyball. And he feels, looking back on it now, that all of the activities that she had done have elevated certain skills that she now uses, both mental and physical.
Speaker 1:What was interesting about this to me is, I think, that this is a surprising story to some people. I think most people think that you, or that these athletes that you know, achieve a lot of success in a sport that they have specialized and really gone after that sport for their entire lives and like, at least in America, consider that, like the Tiger Woods model, or maybe the Williams sisters model, or maybe the uh, the william sisters. I think people think of those um in in kind of the world that's actually more considered like the soviet model, where you identify people very young and force them to progress in a single sport. Um, and there have been studies on you know the the different, you know athletic development models. We have the Olympic Games, which is a pretty objective test. You can run this back versus, obviously, population wealth. You can control it for a lot of different factors, so you can kind of tease out which methods are working better than others. And so there's actually a lot of data showing that the Soviet model, if you will, or the Chinese model, is not as successful as the Scandinavian model, particularly when you get into a per capita basis. So obviously Russia or the former Soviet Union, china, these countries have good aggregate medal counts, but when you get down into how much of a population that they get to draw on for a pool of athletes and how many medals they win, there's countries that are doing a lot better on a per capita level In general.
Speaker 1:Consider the Scandinavian model, because that's the part of the planet that seems to adopt this model of development. So it sounds weird to Americans because actually, in spite of the science, we haven't really adapted this model in our country. Yeah so, and actually, if you think about it, we do it obviously differently than the Soviets did because we have markets underpinning it. But whether it's the markets underpinning the development or an athlete or the government, it, but whether it's the markets underpinning the development or an athlete or the government, when you are striving and organizing for athletic success through identifying and funneling talent early, this, just in general, doesn't work out well. There's a few highly available success stories that are going to immediately come to mind that you'll think will disprove it, but there are far more burnout and injury stories that no one thinks about because they're stories that never get told, but they're just the careers that never did launch. So what you find when you look at the numbers is countries that adopt that model of early funneling and talent selection on a per capita level don't produce as many medal winners as countries that do the talent funding and selection later. So the Scandinavian model one sports don't serve economic interests or, I guess, the interests of the nation state for bagging rights, of the nation state for Braggins and Wrights. Participation and fun are priorities. Costs are kept low or optional. They want everybody doing sports and there is actually no rankings at all until the age of 12. The goal early on is just to develop a broad base of athletics, again, at the early stages of athletics. You're just not doing any funneling or talent identification or specializing in sport. That is going to happen, but that'll happen later on.
Speaker 1:Medal winners and I just keep hammering that because I know how different it sounds to people's ears even hearing like that you know, sports for kids are focused on participation and fun. Because I, you know, I think participation trophies have kind of gotten sucked into our culture war. I'm not even defending them because, you know, kind of against the culture war narrative, I didn't play in any leagues with participation trophies. So it's one of those things that I do know exist but I don't have any of them myself. I mean, well, I have one. I got a finisher, you know, in a triathlon that I did because I didn't place top five placed, I was seven. So you know, I do technically still have the finisher thing. But admittedly it is funny to me as a, you know, lifelong competitive athlete that that is my only technical participation trophy.
Speaker 1:But many of the people that I've heard give really, you know, very uh, I don't know, just emotional um tirades against them. I don't know if I would, I don't know if I think they could even finish like a triathlon or an Ironman or something like, and maybe we're thinking of different participation trophies. But again, I always say it, but I played varsity. I don't know what people are talking about, or maybe they're just counting things that I didn't count or think about. But yeah, I was born in 1985. I never got anything except for finishing a triathlon, which, if you want to make fun of me for keeping that one, you better be able to finish the race yourself.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I do think some of this is going to sound kind of foreign to our ears and I think, because we have a set of debates going on that, you know, might sort of skew people's priors, I think that it's a little bit counterintuitive that Caitlin Clark's path to the WNBA is actually generally considered like the best practice for developing a young athlete, at least according to the available science. And you know also shouldn't pitch that. The Scandinavian model certainly isn't, you know, perfect. There's, you know, definitely issues there, but just in terms of again being, on the per capita level, the thing that produces the most Olympic medal winners, that much is pretty clear and so anyway, all that, just to say that you know, caitlin Clark's path to the WNBA can sort of seem surprising just from the fact that she didn't specialize at basketball at a young age, but you know again, that's actually the more common path. So if you are a parent coach, anything like that, this is something that I actually think that we do have the ability to really improve on what we're doing for our young athletes. I have, as you know, five-year-old so many times. People are just coming up and asking me and my assumption is they're assuming that I have her in leagues right now and I don't.
Speaker 1:I'm certainly not opposed to it, but we're just having enough fun doing the stuff that we do going to the beach hiking we live in Southern California, I have a gym in the backyard that we do. Going to the beach hiking we live in southern california, I have a gym in the backyard, um, and yeah, frankly, you know, getting to a sports league right now, just in terms of driving around, the time it would take, that's probably the main reason I'm not doing it right now. It's definitely not that I'm opposed to it, um, but yeah, we've got a basketball hoop in the backyard. Of course we do that stuff, but I'm not really doing sports. Specific training um, we uh, if we got to call it something, I guess it's mixed modality, but in a sense it's probably easier. Just call it play. Um, we just play around in the gym, we play around in the yard, we play around in the parks. We play around, we're hiking For an athlete my daughter's age.
Speaker 1:I kind of think that's the Well, just think in terms of this way, that's all you need to be doing. Don't feel like you're falling behind. If you don't have your kid going in a league, you might even go out to parks and I do see this. I have seen kids my daughter's age getting put through cone drills, stuff like that. Again, I don't see any harm in it. I just know what the parents are expecting, that are putting their kids, you know, out there and just for them. Just don't be surprised if the result you're expecting doesn't happen. Cone drills at five and seven are not going to guarantee that your kid makes it to the nfl. Oddly specific, that's what I see, at least in park.
Speaker 1:We got some young guys working on football and again, I I think it's great, but just, I just hope dad knows that that doesn't mean that they're they're going to the league by any stretch. Um, but yeah, if you are, you know, coaching or developing young athletes like I, I think that you know what they've been doing in the scandinavian model is a pretty decent rule of thumb. Um, just in terms of specialization, even um 12 might be the the time. Um, again, it's just been changing so much even since I left high school. Um, uh, basketball was what I played, but, but. So now it just seems like most people have gone round to year round traveling. I was kind of in the last part of playing varsity. It was generally the highest level. Playing for state championships, things like that were generally considered the biggest things. Now there's going to be AAU championships.
Speaker 1:Frankly, pay-for-play options that if you're not involved in that, you're not really competitive in the sport anymore. And yeah, I think we kind of saw it as like an arms race or an advancement, but ironically it was actually pushing way that you can, you know, not overuse a joint or you know anything too early. You see this the most in baseball, really, with the rise of Tommy Johns. But I think a lot of that really can be attributed to the fact that, you know, oftentimes parents are seeking out specialized training at ages that are probably a bit too young. And just you know, if the athletes don't burn out mentally a lot of times, the body just physically burns out ahead of when it should. So, yeah, all that. I think that 12 is a decent marker.
Speaker 1:Like I was saying, putting your kid in a sports league is. I'm not saying that's a bad idea at all. All I'm, you know, pushing against is the idea of just specializing in one thing. If you're going to do that, pick a few different things, rotate them. The seasons can be a great reminder to switch it up and do something different, get a little bit of variation going.
Speaker 1:But for the young athletes sensitive to all this, just because obviously I have a kid, so it's just something I'm talking about, thinking about. I know other people are too, but that you know that's what we're doing and anybody who asks me that that's essentially what we always talk about is you know early on and again, I don't really have none of this for me is coming out of that like participation, trophy discussion. I'm just in a completely different world. So if I have to use a couple of the same words, just excuse that. But yeah, at this stage, like you actually want them to, you know one, develop the broad base of athletics so that they have all the athletic abilities to draw on balance, strength, agility, speed, just as we don't really know how their body is going to develop yet. So just build up all the aptitudes. Once their body grows and matures a little bit, we've got a better idea of what they might actually be good at, um, and obviously anybody with a kid. You see, this growth isn't linear. So you might think you have a basketball player one day and then figure out that, uh, actually you have a weightlifter who just shot up before the other kids. So for so many reasons, I just don't think it makes sense to specialize until you really know what you're working with. While you're in that period where you're figuring out what their body is best suited for, the best way to cover your base is just by developing a broad set of skills. You work with a broad set of activities. You also learn different mental skills.
Speaker 1:Ironically, I played golf. That was one of the sports that was my spring sport in high school and, honestly, what I liked about it was I got to use different muscles literally To play basketball. You had to do some fall sport and the basketball coach was also the track coach at my school. So running track was a way that you could kind of ease your transition into basketball and basically if you didn't run in the fall you probably weren't going to get through hell week and our coach also was just going to hold a bias against you for not having played a sport in the fall. So you just probably weren't going to make the team. I don't that wasn't like a hard rule. I just don't remember anybody actually making the team who didn't run in the fall. So maybe it was a rule for all I know, but no, that to say, obviously.
Speaker 1:So golf looked really different when you would go from track to basketball to golf. That didn't make sense to some people, but obviously golf is a very mental game to me. So I got to practice a lot of pressure situations and then also I just had a season where I was just outside walking carrying a golf bag, which obviously wasn't using any of the movements and things that I was doing in basketball or track, so it was just giving those joints a chance to have a break. You don't think about that at all when you're a kid, but now when I can see the toll that sports has had on not only my body but, like my other One time we were putting on our cleats, my flag football team and then another buddy of mine next to me who had also played a significant amount of sports Somebody was commenting basically on how ugly our feet were, and then I just kind of connected it then that, oh like, if you play enough sports you get dinged up, you've got the injuries, and so, yeah, I just had a theory that you're not going to find many guys who have played college sports that can be foot models. I just don't think that that's a good, probable outcome. So anyway, I can only imagine how much worse it would be had I never had a season to give running a break. I already did enough damage, as is, and the evidence is there on my feet, but yeah anyway. So that's kind of it, my thoughts in general on.
Speaker 1:I know that Caitlin Clark, when this article popped, some people found her path surprising. I just don't think this should be surprising. I hope this becomes common knowledge because it's been the direction that at least the science isn't pushing, but again, we haven't quite adapted it. So anyway, if I can bore you guys just for a little bit. I actually want to make a little bit of a defense of philosophy, which I actually feel. You know. Get it back at least. Analogy in my field carbs right now, because philosophy isn't popular, and not just with people that don't want to read.
Speaker 1:Stephen Hawking had declared philosophy dead. Neil deGrasse Tyson says it doesn't contribute to scientific discovery and that it encourages unproductive debates. Richard Feynman believed that it complicated straightforward empirical study and so, yeah, these are really smart people and I actually see it in a different way than they do, and admittedly, I don't think I'm smarter than they are. So I do think I'm just looking at this in a different way. But I have read their arguments. I do see what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:I actually think there's a far bigger problem of people lacking philosophy than that there is. You know too much, you know, and I guess we'll get into these in detail, but I think scientists at that level, what they see of people mostly doing with philosophy is probably casting doubt on scientific consensus is using what I almost consider well, they're not just elements of philosophy, of science. To try to cast doubt on a scientific consensus is using, but what I almost consider. Well, they're not just elements of philosophy, of science, to try to cast out on a scientific consensus, you know, which probably comes up when you know science gets into, you know, anything with a political component, like climate change or the pandemic, for example. Scientists have had people in their fields that they don't respect use these arguments to try to cast out on consensus. So I do understand why they would feel that way, or at least why they're not interested in philosophy after encountering those arguments, and I also think that most of the people that they would talk with in their daily lives, in their research and in their fields, probably already understand everything that I'm going to say. But so my point, in a way, is that it's actually not important for them, perhaps, but I think it's really important for the general public, and I actually think I have concerns on the exact same issue of people not being able to, you know, just figure out what's going on in the world around them. Quite frankly, and I actually think a little bit of philosophy for the general public not necessarily for scientists, but for the general public it could definitely help, because I think it would help them spot when people are using certain techniques to try to muddy the water in a scientific discussion Offline.
Speaker 1:I was having a discussion with a friend just about. In some ways it does feel like it's the best time ever for grifters and and, and I do. I think it's just because of the technology. It's nothing inherent in human beings, we're still the same, but we, we have powerful tools that we've never had before and, you know, the snake oil salesman used to have to leave town and now on the internet, the options are just endless and no one's coming with pitchforks to your house. So, yeah, just in so many ways, it just seems like it is a golden age for grifters, and I do think that philosophy is, you know, maybe one of the best tools that people have, because, again, I'm not seeing philosophy as you know, just people sitting on a pillow and trying to think profound thoughts.
Speaker 1:I'm actually thinking of it as just a critical process and basically a set of asking questions that, when done correctly, you know, doesn't threaten science at all. Obviously, science is built on well, a philosophical position by Francis Bacon in one regard. But no, what I was going to say was that it's built upon an iterative process. So, again, having a critical set of questions that one asks, being trained in. That to me obviously just has benefits, not only for science but for every single domain, literally anything that you could be working on. I think it has a very nuts and bolts pragmatic benefit and you know, thankfully, you know, I feel like I'm actually not the only person seeing this One of the. You know we've already talked about it here, but I think one of the technologies that is helping people see that there actually might be a point to philosophy has been the development of AI. Like, oh, my obsession with philosophy might actually have some practical purpose because it was basically engaging with the machine.
Speaker 1:I was realizing that not all prompts were created equal, that sometimes, if I would take on different roles and personas with the AI, I could get different output from it. So, anyway, I didn't want to talk too much about my experience, but actually what I saw was Harvard Business School had an article they put about why engineers should study philosophy. This was echoing some of the things I was seeing, but I actually want to focus more on what HBS put out than my experience for now. But yeah, the reason Harvard wants engineers studying philosophy is they're saying that understanding the why before you start working on the how is an increasingly important skill when working with AI, particularly for coders, and the issue they're noting is that code that is created by an AI can be correct syntax and semantically correct, but not functionally correct. So it'll work well, but not at what you want it to do.
Speaker 1:Like I've been saying for a while now, a model's output is very sensitive to the way a prompt is written, and if you miss the mark on a prompt, then the AI is going to produce code that is plausible but probably incorrect. This when they're using it for language tasks, when you are generating hallucinations. A lot of these instances, at least as I had seen them covered in the popular media, were kind of generated to show like oh hey, look at the limits of this AI system. But in my experience using them, oftentimes if you are getting a lot of hallucinations in your prompts, it's probably because your prompts are not very clear. So, anyway, this is something that even Harvard Business School is starting to note and that whenever engineers are managing teams, at least from the study Harvard Business School, one of the most important issues was knowing how to ask the right questions. This is very, very similar to working with AI Knowing the right questions to ask can really make the difference between having usable output or error-ridden.
Speaker 1:And obviously, as we come to rely on ai systems more I'm not somebody who has the not on the doomer end of the spectrum, but I understand their arguments as well and that's where these errors can become, you know, kind of a big issue. Um, could, could become dangerous if, if you don't have people that have the right skills, that know how to prompt systems to get them to do what they need to do. The the main skill I think that we can actually get and again, this is just, it's a pragmatic nuts and bolts skill that you will just get from studying philosophy, any philosophy, it doesn't matter who you read. It's not like a body of knowledge you're trying to inject into somebody, but you're going to learn how to just basically have crisp mental models around a problem and learn how to break that down and deconstruct it Logical steps that you're going to use to be critical of anything, and obviously I talk about this all the time. But this is a skill that I know I use as I am combing through health and fitness studies. Through health and fitness studies, you don't need to have like a PhD in philosophy and have studied a specific school of philosophy. I just think it's a good idea that you have engaged in the pursuit and just kind of learned how to be critical of things, because you will be able to take and adapt that and use it to the problems that you actually engage in your real life. And you know, and obviously any of the scientists that I mentioned at the top of the show, they already know this. So, again, I don't think any of my comments are going to help them out on any of the stuff they're working on, but I don't know if the public that again gets, you know, not only fooled in the big and this is again why I almost want to leave aside, like the pandemic and climate change, because I know people are bringing in deep priors that I don't even want to touch on.
Speaker 1:The number one realm where I actually have seen this come in and this is why I think it's relevant here is, you know, quite frankly, supplements. Most of us, when we get into supplements, we're probably reading some, you know scientific study and then making a choice to go purchase or not purchase. And actually, let's be honest, that's probably even, you know, some of the more informed supplement consumers, if you will, because some people are just looking at the ad and if they like the picture and aesthetic elements of the advertisement and then they're making their decision to purchase. But then there's a set of consumers that are actually going to go out and look at the studies, or they're listening to a podcast, like this one, and they hear about a study and they go seek out a supplement that has the thing that they heard about. But if we don't have the ability to ask the right questions about the studies we're seeing so many times, we can and will be misled.
Speaker 1:I myself have done this far more times than I can count. And so, again, this is why I almost had to learn this rule, or I just had to put in, quite frankly, a heuristic to just doubt or at least go look at the criticisms because I have bought too many things, because I have bought too many things, I have just fallen for magic pixie dust too many times in my life. And so, yeah, I obviously I'm going to still stay open, knowing that maybe there will be a new discovery one day, maybe there will be a big game changing thing, but I'm still waiting as of now, and I've fallen for it a lot. So again, my critique on that we need a better understanding of science for the layman, I think more so than some of the best scientists in the world, Because it has to do with the fact, too, that most of us in the real world we're not participating in research studies and things like that.
Speaker 1:The questions we ask aren't actually. Because it has to do with the fact, too, that most of us in the real world we're not participating in research studies and things like that. The questions we ask aren't actually scientific questions. And you can try to train people to ask those types of questions, but the reality is people are still going to ask things like what's the best diet? What should I do for a workout? That's how people talk, and those are technically not scientific questions.
Speaker 1:So people aren't going to be able to turn to studies. People talk and those are technically not scientific questions. So you know, people aren't going to be able to turn to studies and if they do, they're not going to find answers. They're going to have to learn another set of skills One, just to get their question into a scientific form so they can go and map it up, but two, if you actually have to go work on a problem that there hasn't already been studies done on.
Speaker 1:If you actually have to go work on a problem that there hasn't already been studies done on, this is again where it's going to be kind of necessary that you have your own process that you're able to run. You've got to have some critical process and even as I've combed the literature and tried to be an informed consumer in my own, I clearly have made tons of mistakes with supplements over the years. The truth is, even though I like to think of myself as an informed consumer, is that most of us, without a critical process, we're actually just going to default to superstition and placebos, maybe in the instance of supplements. But there was a great article in Scientific American kind of, about why and the reason I wanted to highlight this is I think that there is even a taboo or stigma was positing that the role of superstitions were actually, you know, basically just because human beings had to deal with a lot of unknown situations and rituals linked to certain actions could actually decrease stress. Yeah, so yeah again, it was just making me think that if we don't have a critical process, we're probably just going to default back to superstition, and not because we're dumb.
Speaker 1:We all intend to be informed, but no, we're kind of hardwired that way. There's in this proverbial state of nature that philosophers love to try to imagine that doesn't exist at all. But no, you can obviously imagine that before, at least societies that had abundance and security, that risks certainly should be more salient in your mind than they would be today, because you know there really were, you know things that could kill you right around the corner, quite frankly, and most of us have kind of been able to remove a lot of those obvious risks from our life. So, anyway, all that to say that when loss aversion we know from behavioral economics is a feature of our psyche, we strive very, very hard to avoid losses, more so than we do to set ourselves up for benefits, or we don't feel the impacts of benefits as much as we feel our urge to avoid losses. Our urge to avoid losses, all of that again, I think, just comes from the fact that we evolved in an environment where you needed to respond to risks and it was okay if you were wrong when you responded to a risk, and so, anyway, that's again a roundabout way of getting that.
Speaker 1:That's kind of almost how I see superstitions functioning, these rituals, that they don't actually work, but they give you a feeling of control and even if they don't work 100% of the time, they only have to work once or twice in a high stress moment to become something that can calm you down. Hence the lucky sweaters. If that worked, the 49ers never would have lost a Super Bowl. On the one hand, I literally know that it isn't true. On the other hand, I still try changing influence, the outcomes of sporting events, although now, as I say that, obviously the Niners suffered a pretty tragic for us loss this year, and here I was at home, not being superstitious and not doing anything. Maybe that's it, maybe I just got outworked by the Chiefs fans this year. So I don't know, maybe superstition is back, but no.
Speaker 1:What I wanted to point out, though in a serious note, is that they again. The point of people falling for superstition isn't that they're stupid. I think it's probably something that can alleviate stress and help us deal with uncertainty. That being said, they do have some costs, and what I essentially there? It's just wasted energy, wasted effort. If it really isn't working or doing anything, then it is technically harming. So, again, this is now why it's so central for me to avoid taking on new supplements, where I do see people that are more interested like I was at another time at trying every new thing that comes out. I can justify it because I used to do it myself. There you can sort of think that there just isn't a lot of downside, that if I can try this and there is an edge, then cool, I've uncovered something.
Speaker 1:But more I've actually just gotten into that. Your resources are technically not unlimited. So even if it is something that you're price insensitive to, you technically still could have done something else with that money. Still could have done something else with that money. And then you know also, as we get you know older, frankly, just health kind of gets to be a little bit more important. So for me anyway, with the performance supplements, that was something that the algorithm and the calculation just kind of you know, keeps changing. If I introduce something and I don't know all the side effects and you have a kid, it's just a little different than when you're just 18 to 20 and you're chasing after some goals.
Speaker 1:But yeah, just kind of can't get around the idea that there's so many other interactions and things going well in my body that I want to be able to take credit for. But you don't really know why it's working. So adding anything new in the mix can tend to disrupt things that you don't understand, which, again, I just sort of started to realize with age. There's a lot that I don't understand. So when things are going well, sometimes you just don't rock the boat with new things. When I was younger I was much more willing to try it and I felt like it was staying up on the cutting edge in a sense. But yeah, now I'm meandering.
Speaker 1:That again, is where I think that we actually do need a little bit more engagement with philosophy. I felt that I was being scientific by taking all of the latest supplements, and at least I was to an extent. Because I was being scientific by taking all of the latest supplements, and at least I was to an extent because I was at least disciplined when I would take them and I kind of was running little trials. But also that's how I discovered so many of them didn't actually work. You know, had I had all of these successful trials, that would have been great, but it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 1:But yeah, one way that I actually think that this can, or just a little engagement with philosophy is very necessary is in nutrition. If we just break in nutrition down to what we can know about food through science, that's a paradigm, that that has been coined nutritionism, and you know essentially what I mean. There is that if you think food is just the the named vitamins, nutrients and other components, that that I still used to talk about food, but that's all there is to it. This, to me, is one of the biggest problems that I see in nutrition. Just got done talking about we don't like supplements, but this is the result of thinking that food is just merely the sum of the named nutrients is that you start to believe that you can go out and make supplements. You can identify the good nutrients, the bad nutrients, and and to an extent you can.
Speaker 1:But I just think it's pretty fair to say in our modern paradigm that I think we do a little bit too much of this. This is also the same thinking that got me. You know, antidepressants and things like that is identifying a neurotransmitter, let's say, and then you know, designing a drug to increase that neurotransmitter, let's say, and then designing a drug to increase that neurotransmitter that you see as low. There's other ways that we can go about addressing problems. And again the issue because I don't want to be somebody who's this is where we get into the issues. I guess, and probably why scientists don't like the philosophy crowd.
Speaker 1:Some people have used some of these same techniques that I'm going to basically be using here or asking questions to disprove or to try to cast out or muddy the waters in things where there's a broad scientific consensus. So that, to me, is kind of the important bit that I'm going to highlight here, because I'm not using these little philosophy of science games to cast doubt on something where there's broad consensus. I'm using these in a realm where actually the consensus is not that it works. So we've talked about this a lot here. But when we look at the studies that have been done on multivitamins, they're not good. You're not going to go like seriously, do this. I'm not just saying this like Andrew Huberman like actually go look for some studies and see if you can find one that says that multivitamins are efficacious in humans. And seriously, if you find one, that would be great, because I wasted a lot of money on them.
Speaker 1:But reductionist nutrition thinking is what gives you a multivitamin. In theory that should work, but it doesn't. So again, all I'm showing you is that I'm not using this to cast doubt on climate change or whether vaccines work. I'm not trying to take up a position where I'm all by myself and then I get to appoint myself the expert of this thing and then also I'm going to get increased search relevance because I'm the only person saying something different. No, I mean, obviously, in the field of nutrition, it actually is not accepted that we can make and reduce food down to pills and introduce them or sorry, and just ingest them rather and get all the nutrition that we need out of them. Again, though it's mixed, most of the scientific literature, even these reductionist studies, actually tell us that whole food nutrition is superior. So you know, again, I'm just pointing out, I'm not going to go and use a philosophy of science, if you will, to try to go out on my own and carve out and make a name for myself and my own lane and go against the scientific consensus.
Speaker 1:I think it's fair to criticize the field of nutrition, that maybe we don't have all the right answers. We can look at the shifting nutritional guidelines. It's fair to ask a lot of questions in this field and, again, I actually think that a little bit of philosophical training can actually help with getting you to ask the right questions. And you know, like just that one you might want to be thinking about, like you know, we have these studies that say and admittedly I don't have the answers to any of this, I'm just the guy asking questions, but not like like tucker carlson, like where I have an agenda and I'm asking a question. I'm literally asking a question that I don't know the answer to. Um, but no, there you, you see that there are these studies that say whole food nutrition works and you see these studies that say that multivitamins don't. So it just kind of begs the question well, what do we not know? That there must be interactions or context within the whole food that we just haven't named or don't know or I don't actually know. But this is all I'm pointing out to is that we can't actually answer all of the questions that we have, because a real question people are going to ask you they're not going to formulate it scientifically, they're just going to say what should I eat? You're going to have to come up with ways to communicate that so people can actually do it. People can actually do it, and this is where I think that we actually do need a little bit of philosophy.
Speaker 1:I think it was Thoreau which is funny because he probably wrote this while he was sitting in Emerson's yard. I like to make fun of him for that, but I think it's still a good line. He said something like to be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts but to solve some of the problems of life, not theoretically but practically. So it's really in that vein that I'm trying to sort of push people in the direction of philosophy. I'm not trying to push you into any specific camp. And then I also want to be clear, too, that I'm definitely not advocating against science or the scientists that I mentioned in particular. More, what I'm reacting to is it just seems to me that philosophy is really out of fashion. Some of my favorite conversations, by the way, are some of the scientists I get to talk to.
Speaker 1:But I just have noticed when I bring up any of the philosophy I read, I think it's kind of viewed as something indulgent and silly, and I do respectfully disagree. I think I got most of that out already. But yeah, I still am just a trainer, so I'm still going to run with the narrative that, like philosophy right now to me is a bit like carbs. It's just something that is in need of a defense. And then, if I can because I am a trainer push my macronutrient in a metaphor further, I'm still saying that we need our protein and fat. So that could be. I don't know your science and other, I'm just defending carbs. I'm not saying that the other things aren't important.
Speaker 1:And carb metaphor is still working for me because you're going to run into people today a lot of them, like maybe the keto community who say that you can survive without carbs, and they're technically correct, who say that you can survive without carbs and they're technically correct. You could go your whole life without reading or doing any philosophy and actually you wouldn't die. But I don't actually think that you would thrive that way, just like if you chose to never have carbohydrates. One, carbs are tasty. That's not really an enjoyable life. Two, they have a lot of benefits with muscle building and performance. So you're just not going to convince me, keto community, that though you can technically live your life without ever eating a carbohydrate, that that would ever be something you would want to do, sort of like Socrates the unexamined life is not worth living. But yeah, you guys are not going to convince me that. You know, peeing on keto strips and reducing my life down to whether I'm in ketosis or not is a meaningful life. I kid you guys a little bit.
Speaker 1:I actually have used keto as a weight loss tool, so that's not a shot at the keto community at all. But again, it's a personality, or sorry, it's a tool, not a personality. Got that backwards? Yeah, unless they've updated the Myers-Briggs or something, just use your ketogenic diet as a tool. This doesn't have to become your whole sense of being.
Speaker 1:Clearly, too, I'm not against science at all. I look at studies all the time. I am trying to use that to inform myself. But again, I'm just speaking that reality that that's not the only thing that I do. I don't go and read studies and adapt my behavior based. I do think that I've actually learned most of that just through, frankly, just through engaging with philosophy. And again, that to me is the point of reading these texts. You don't go read a philosopher to go get a new personality. What you should be doing when you're reading a philosopher again is asking do I think any of this shit is true? How does that hold up.
Speaker 1:What I think a lot of philosophical tests are going to force you to do is just make you do that self-examining, and I literally don't know where it will make you end up. This isn't the point. I'm not trying to indoctrinate you that this is fundamentally different. It's fascinating because I have no idea where you'll go. We could read the exact same book by the same philosopher and go completely different directions. That's actually what happens to a lot of people when they engage. That's why we have different philosophical schools and there's a timeless and vibrant discussion around all of these issues. A, you know, timeless and vibrant discussion around all of these issues.
Speaker 1:The point to me isn't the beliefs that you'll have and what you'll argue for. The point to me is that by reading these texts and engaging these texts, you're going to just get used to asking those types of questions all the time. So again, when you step out of your indulgent little hobby of reading philosophy, maybe those nutrition studies won't hit quite the same way, maybe some of these ads won't hit quite the same way. Maybe you'll just start intuitively asking some of the same questions that you kind of feel that you have to ask when you're reading a philosophical text. But you know I do want to. There's something I want to push back against a little bit, because I know that there are some people who have used you know particularly those who are using these things to push against a scientific consensus. I want to put some distance between what I'm saying and what they say, but also I'm clearly not in support of them.
Speaker 1:I actually think that the best way for people to be able to suss out who those people are would again be with just a little bit of philosophical training, because, almost like parlor tricks or moves, if you play video games like I remember Mortal Kombat when I was a kid, to do a special kick you'd have to push left, left, aba or something like that and when you see charlatans doing these tricks, instead of getting wrapped up in their charisma or how good they look, you just see like, oh, he just did left, left, abab. It really does kind of inoculate you a little bit too. You know particularly just some of the most common techniques Because, as we always say on this show, there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten. Nobody has reinvented the charlatan game. It's the same thing and, like I said earlier in the show, in some ways, I feel like we are in a golden age of grifters. What's up, dave? I feel like we are in a golden age of grifters. What's up, dave? But yeah, this is kind of my best answer for the tool that we all need to protect ourselves against it.
Speaker 1:It's not indulgent to read philosophy. At its best, I think it's going to teach you just a set of critical skills that I think we actually need, not only in health and fitness, but in this brave new world that we're entering into, I think you're going to need more and more. Harvard Business School agrees with me. So, anyway, there's my cheap appeal to authority on the way out the door. But anyway, guys, thanks for bearing with me today. You guys know philosophy is kind of my indulgent, nerdy hobby. So there you go. There's my full-throated defense of why it is not a complete waste of time. That being said, I could be dead wrong. But, um, I appreciate you spending your time with me here. Um, remember, guys, mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no, no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. I'll do the same.
