KPAO by Dave Cortright

Humans are a “real-time operating system” at our core

In the world of computers, a real-time operating system is designed to process data and react to it in “real time”, with allowable delays not much more ⅒ of a second.

In many ways humans (and all other animals for that matter) operate using a real time OS. The world is full of threats and opportunities and we need to respond to the former for sure but also the latter as quickly as possible to take full advantage of situations to avoid harm and secure resources.

Humans have a unique ability to create models of the future and predict what might happen. In this mental state, we are no longer real-time, but instead are doing more traditional “computing”, coming up with answers, changing the model, feeding in new info, running things again… It’s easy to get caught up in this state and ignoring the real-time input from the world coming into your senses right now, especially now that we’ve created a world where in many situations threats are very unlikely to come up (e.g. in your home or at work).

But at our core in our lower level systems, we are still a real time operating system. Even when you are lost in your thoughts about the past or future, the lower level systems are still there chugging along keeping you alive and doing their best to prevent you from harm. When I talk about “present sense”, it is turning off the thinking brain and being aware of these systems as they are working. When I do it, I notice things like how I am holding my body out of balance, orthe subtle sounds around me, or the quality of the air I am breathing… there are dozens of things that are going on around you right now if you just take the time to be with them.

The Tsimane exemplify living life in the human EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation)

Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s series Chasing Life has some great examples of ways in which people all over the world are living their lives more aligned with how we were designed to thrive. A tribe in the Bolivian rainforest exemplifies pretty much all aspects of it.

Dr. Gupta went there primarily to look at heart health, but their entire lifestyle contributes to their overall health. It’s a combination of several aspects of their life:

Activity/Exercise—“Nearly all of their waking hours, the Tsimane are standing or walking… those with the healthiest hearts in the world are constantly active but not intensely active. And they hardly ever sit.” Yes, this is what how we humans were designed to operate. Sitting, slouching, lying down… really any form of being sedentary are counter to our genes.

Community—“We knew the Tsimane lived in small extended family clusters of 60 or so people along the banks of the river… The social fabric of the Tsimane was strong, with lots of laughing, chatting and sharing. There is no doubt this socialization, and lack of loneliness, is also protective against heart disease, as we have seen in countless studies around the world…” One more point that isn’t explicitly called out—they spend pretty much all of their existence in the company of their “tribe”; there really is never any risk of loneliness or isolation.

Diet—“The Tsimane get most of their calories from carbs. Foods such as plantains, cassava, rice and corn make up nearly 70% of their diet… the food there is not processed or refined, lacking any added sugars or salts. All-natural carbs are the mainstay of the healthy-hearted Tsimane, along with around 15% fat and 15% protein. Additionally, the diet provides twice as much fiber as the standard American diet, according to an article in the Lancet medical journal. Their diet has lots of micronutrients, such as selenium, potassium and magnesium, coming from their farmed food.”

Rest—“As soon as the sun went down in the late evening, people retired to their huts, and within half an hour, I heard deep breathing and snoring all over the camp. Turns out if you don't have a device to stare at, you tend to sleep early and deeply.”

 

On Walden, and living a simple, secluded life in the woods—it takes a village

I remember reading Walden when I was younger and fantasizing about a simple life in nature. It sounded so romantic. After my girlfriend quoted from it recently (“to live deliberately”), I went back to see again with fresh eyes the components of his journey. The thing that strikes me is how much other people played essential roles in making his experiment a success.

First, the land on which he built his cabin was owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The supplies necessary for sustaining himself were procured “with the help of family and friends, particularly his mother, his best friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Even in the chapter entitled Solitude, he talks of his new companion, an old settler who arrives nearby and an old woman with great memory.

The very next chapter is titled Visitors. “ Thoreau talks about how he enjoys companionship (despite his love for solitude) and always leaves three chairs ready for visitors.”

Two chapters later is the Village—“Thoreau's reflections on the journeys he takes several times a week to Concord, where he gathers the latest gossip and meets with townsmen.”

Indeed throughout the book he has interactions with a number of others—John Field, hard-working Irish farmhand; William Ellery Channing; winter visitors including a farmer and a woodchopper.

For all his embraces and reflections on the simple life of solitude in the woods, he still kept up quite a social life with his friends and neighbors. He was by no stretch a hermit.

Conveniencing ourselves to death

I think the title of this post can sum up a lot of of the “progress” we have made throughout civilization. And I want to be clear there is a lot of good that has come from civilization; we wouldn’t have made the changes and kept them otherwise. However there is nothing that is all good or all bad, and there are unintended consequences to our choices.

An ancient and ubiquitous one is the chair. From a biomechanical perspective, our bodies weren’t designed to sit, or at least not to the extent we do today in modern society. We were meant to stand, squat, walk, and run. Chairs were not part of our environment of evolutionary adaptation. But how could something as innocuous as a chair be bad for us?

Because the convenience of a chair means we are no longer working our muscles to the same extent that we were before. The convenience is fine for a bit, but if you do it for too long (and I’d venture to say somewhere between 15–35% of your waking time is too much), then you are essentially deficit spending your fitness.

Anyone who has been to a music festival or gone to an amusement park can empathize. Here are things that our ancestors would be able to do easily (stand and/or walk around in the outside in the sun for most of the day). Yet we are exhausted after doing it for just a few hours. It’s because we don’t do that on a regular/daily basis.

Now of course you could say that we’ve evolved. We live in a society where it’s no longer necessary to have this ability. And that is true. But the truth is, our genes haven’t changed; we’ve only changed our environment. Our genes evolved to work optimally in an environment where our bodies are used in that way. Our ancestors never went to the gym or did pilates, but they were all in great physical shape. That’s because in nearly all aspects of their daily life they were using their bodies in ways that worked out their muscles.

Chairs with backs also allow us to slouch, which again might provide ease and convenience, but ends up reinforcing the wrong way to hold our bodies. Noëlle Perez Christians created a whole movement of yoga based on this fact.

There are many more examples of ways in which we have made our lives more convenient but the unintended consequences are overall bad for our health: transportation instead of walking, sit toilets vs squatting, and yes even single family homes vs larger multi-generational communities. None of these things are bad per se, but it’s important to be aware of the hidden costs and unintended consequences, especially when taken in the extreme.

Co-housing is one of the most promising ways to align modern living with Bowlby’s Razor

One of the biggest ways that modern society differs from hunter/gatherer tribes is that we live in much smaller, more isolated groups. The bottom 2 levels of Maslow's hierarchy can be had with minimal social interactions. You just need money and some perfunctory niceties.

And let me be clear, there are definitely advantages to living in smaller groups. With fewer opinions there is less conflict to be resolved.

However there are drawbacks too. When things go wrong and a household needs help, there aren't the close bonds with others that would allow others to easily step in and help out. People decreasingly know their neighbors, and that corresponds to decline in overall trust of people. We fear what we don't know.

The problem with trying to reverse social declines like this is that it takes both sides to engage positively. And the other problem that it requires work. We don't often spend much time outside in our yards anymore, so the odds of running into a neighbor by happenstance in the 15 seconds between the car and the door are increasingly small.

This is where co-housing is different. It started in Denmark about 50 years ago. This is a good intro (and there are many more clips out there). It balances the need for privacy (everyone has their own private residence) with community (shared meals, common areas for socializing, group consensus on managing the community). It ensures that everyone coming into the community is committed to being social and neighborly, and the design of the community allows more incidental connection with others.

Realistically we're not going back to tribal living. But the more we can mimic the core mechanics of a tribal lifestyle as co-housing is doing, the happier and more fulfilled we will be.

What the Gilroy shooter tells us about the root problem in our society today

Someone in the crowd shouted “Why are you doing this?”… The [shooter] responded, “Because I’m really angry.”

This is a good overview of the Dunbar Number, and—equally important—the levels of intimacy that make it up. Here's a kid who has anger but has no skills on how to manage it or talk about it with close friends or family members. So instead of it getting resolved in a healthy way—by connecting with another person about it, sharing it, and having them be compassionate and empathetic—it comes out as aggression. And in this case, violent aggression with a deadly weapon.

One concern, though, [with increasing trend of virtual interactions] is some social skills may not develop as effectively when so many interactions exist online. We learn how we are and aren’t supposed to act by observing others and then having opportunities to act out our observations ourselves. We aren’t born with full social awareness, and Dunbar fears that too much virtual interaction may subvert that education.

All too true.