Biohacking advice creates a bad equilibrium
There is no shortage of experts online giving productivity advice. Most of productivity advice is tautological (if you wake up and do your most important thing, you will get more done than if you don’t do your most important thing), and so it’s really a thinly veiled mechanism for procrastination. Sometimes it provides a boost of motivation, which can be a useful catalyst, and sometimes it provides real advice about behavior change, but it looks more like therapy for people too proud for therapy. I’ve been guilty of reading a lot of this stuff, but you begin to see the patterns in the advice, the same mantras over and over again, and it gets boring. So I think most productivity advice is a problem, but the problem resolves itself.
But then biohacking became a thing. Experts would find a paper out of lab in Finland that says some caffenated ashwaganda amphetamine at this time of day is ideal for writing essays upside down, but only in a sensory deprivation tank. And then they throw you a bone, say “drink matcha tea,” because it has a precursor to whatever chemical was studied, and so will make you more productive.
This is not science, it’s optimisim. The problem is, optimism works. Trying something new will give you some motivation, and the placebo effect will do it’s magic. So people hear “drink matcha tea,” drink said matcha tea, and then become more productive.
That doesn’t sound so bad, except people are dumb. There will be people who try taking the obscure caffeinated ashwaganda amphetamine, jack up their dopamine response, and then deal with consequences for the rest of their life. Access to these substances usually has gatekeepers, namely doctors and pharmacists. The assumption people have is that these professionals are experts in linking symptoms to substance, and little more. Google can do that, so I can do that, the biohacker declares. The truth is that these professionals have a lot of context too. They’ve seen the effects these drugs, and similar drugs, have had on people over many years. They (should) have read much more about this than you have. They saw the meta-analysis, and the paper the meta-analysis ignored.
The secret is that these gatekeepers might know something that you don’t, and you won’t even know to google for it.
Doctors have a responsibility to their patients, morally and by law. They’re job is to help you do what’s in your best interest. An internet expert in biohacking has no such responsibility to their audience. Maybe at first they’ll tell you something respectable, like try caffeine as a stimulant. But they need to keep producing content, so after a while the advice will be backed by less and less evidence. For a while it won’t be harmful advice, just unsupported. But then, when every expert gives the same harmless but ineffective advice, they need to find a way to differentiate themselves. So they start to say things that can be harmful, because others aren’t saying it. Bonus points if they have a PhD to command some authority. And it doesn’t matter, because they only need to grow their audience, and they can always create a wall of deniability (“this isn’t medical advice”). They have no exposure, it’s betting someone else’s money.
My point here is that the equilibrium for biohacking experts is to give advice just risky enough to build an audience without getting in trouble. Such experts will be charismatic, irresponsible and careerist. So instead of listening to them, look for experts who focus on providing context, not simple rules and advice. That’s what their expertise really qualifies them to do, anyway.