For the past decade, I have been biohacking quite aggressively. I would love to know where and who I would be now had I never started intervening. I love the life I have built for myself, and in this version of the universe, my interventions certainly helped me out quite a bit (and also many friends of mine).
Our world is a highly chaotic system. If starting conditions are even slightly altered, the trajectory and outcome can be radically different. This is called the butterfly effect.
Let us run a thought experiment. Clone the universe. Now you and a biological clone exist, identical down to the atomic level, same health, same mind, same thoughts, same life. Then, in the parallel universe, a scientist secretly injects your clone with “Agent X” every night while he sleeps. The scientist tracks how the two lives diverge over time.
Your clone wakes up with a little more energy and a little more optimism about the day ahead. He needs 30 minutes less sleep, 15 of which he uses for the morning meditation real-you never quite gets around to. The afternoon lulls you experience become, for him, usable stretches of productive time. He has more drive. He procrastinates less. Instead of defaulting to social media, cloned-you feels pulled toward finally starting that business you have had in the back of your mind. He can actually apply some of what you have read in all those self-improvement books, because he now has the energy and presence to follow through.
The combined improvements in energy, drive, and motivation compound into greater willpower, which allows him to make better food choices, train harder, and sleep better. He has an easier time losing fat and building muscle. He looks better, which shifts how he carries himself and how others respond to him. The gains in appearance (along with energy, mood, and enthusiasm) translate into a more fulfilling social life. He is in a better mood than you, and mood is contagious. People enjoy being around him more. He has more friends and better relationships, which serve as a buffer against stress, a source of feedback and perspective, and a pipeline for opportunities that would never have reached him otherwise.
Because of better relationships, better opportunities, and a greater capacity for sustained effort, he earns more money. His wealth outpaces yours. The increase in confidence, energy, and motivation also makes it easier for him to step outside his comfort zone. One evening, he gets over the hump and talks to Bella, a woman he was struck by from the moment he saw her. Down the road, she becomes his wife, something that would not have happened if he had not had the nerve to approach her that day.
Having seen both lives unfold, if you could choose which one to have lived, which would you pick?
There is no sure way to predict exactly how the experiment plays out, but the alternate futures will be different. The longer the experiment runs, the larger the gap becomes. Even if cloned-you gains only a very small edge each day, over time it adds up. And whether cloned-you is aware of it or not, he automatically reinvests this compounded interest anew, every single day. Day after day. 365 days a year. While initial change is slow, small differences in energy, mood, and health can trigger an upward spiral across many domains of your clone’s life. An upward spiral real-you has little chance of catching.
Many people fail not because their vision was wrong but simply because they ran out of energy before their efforts could bear fruit. How many potential Steve Jobses never made it because their failing biology put a lock on their ambitions?
There are invisible biological shackles many people carry. Shackles that make it harder to live a life one actually wants. Shackles that make it harder to dream, to find purpose, and certainly much harder to sustain the persistence, drive, energy, and health needed to keep working toward the things one values.
I am going to die. I do not want to waste my time. I want to become someone I and others are proud of. Discipline, commitment, agency, boldness, calculated risk-taking, doing things that move the needle, being useful, giving love, finding purpose, these matter. But they are long-term games. And long-term games require, first and foremost, vitality.
As Herophilus said over two thousand years ago: when vitality is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
