The Long Game 63: Fraudulent Health Research, Social Media Use & Wellbeing, Other-Optimizing, Alchemy
The Long Game 63: Fraudulent Health Research, Social Media Use & Wellbeing, Other-Optimizing, Alchemy⌛ Timelapse of the Future, Prepping, Buddhism, Blas, Victimhood, Disunited Nations vs. Dawn of Eurasia, and Much More!Hi there, it’s Mehdi Yacoubi, co-founder at Vital, and this is The Long Game Newsletter. To receive it in your inbox each week, subscribe here: 📣 We are hiring at Vital, help us build the future of health optimization. In this episode, we explore:
Let’s dive in! 🥑 Health🔬 Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?We covered many topics related to the shortcomings of scientific research and academia in general on The Long Game. This week, I read this piece from Richard Smith, who edited BMJ for 13 years, on the state of health research:
As a follow-up on this, I recommend Fantastic Anachronism’s How Many Undetected Frauds in Science? that I already linked a few months ago.
Finally, José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente came up with some ideas to fix all these problems with his Better Google Scholar:
You can also check Connected Papers for a cool product helping you find related scientific papers. 🌱 Wellness📱 Restricting Social Media Use for Emotional WellbeingI think it’s safe to say that most people would argue that restricting the time spent on social media would improve one’s emotional wellbeing. This study tested the hypothesis and found some surprising results:
It seems too soon to draw any hard conclusion. Still, it shows that we will need a lot of research better to understand the relationship between our technology and human well-being. Initiatives like the Human Screenome Project are encouraging steps in the right direction. 🧠 Better Thinking❗ Beware of Other-OptimizingI’ve touched a few times on the difficulty of giving good advice to people, mainly because advice is a mix of survivorship bias and advice that we give to ourselves. I found this piece on the danger of “other-optimizing” excellent and worth sharing:
Sometimes the advice is helpful, but most of the time, the advice that worked for you worked because of the right timing, the right mindset, the right previous path, and might not be replicable in a different context. That’s why I try to stay away as much as possible from giving advice to anyone.
⚡️ Startup Stuff👮♀️ AlchemyThis week I read Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, and it’s a great reminder of some important concepts when building creative solutions. Here are some takeaways I got from the book:
A little extra for this week in the startup world: be careful not to optimize for the wrong things. The goal is not to please the authorities anymore. It’s to build a fantastic product. Discipline, focus, understanding when to copy and when to innovate, and ability to ignore what is not vitally important: 📚 What I Read🧘♂️ When Buddhism Goes BadA thought-provoking piece on the dangers of meditation:
⚠️ Why People Feel Like Victims?There are a lot of discussions around victimhood lately. This is a good article to understand why:
🌍 Disunited Nations (2020) vs. Dawn of Eurasia (2017)I found this article to be an excellent summary and comparison of Peter Zeihan in Disunited Nations and Bruno Maçães in Dawn of Eurasia.
🎙 Podcast Episodes of the WeekThis week in podcasts:
🍭 Brain Food🥇🥈🥉 The effects of competition outcomes on health: Evidence from the lifespans of U.S. Olympic medalistsI found this paper fascinating. It argues that regret can kill: 🥈 medal winners die 2.5 years before 🥇 & 4 before 🥉 because silver medalists see the outcome “as a loss and, through the associated psychological stress, have their health compromised & life expectancy reduced.”
🎥 What I’m Watching⌛ Timelapse of the FutureI already shared this masterpiece in the newsletter. I watch it once a month. It helps me zoom out. I’m always wondering until which part of the video humans will last. 🔫 Prepping for DoomsdayIt’s been a while that I didn’t share anything related to prepping on the newsletter! I found this video entertaining and thought some of you might enjoy it. For a more serious article on the importance of some level of preparedness, read this. 🔧 The Tool of the Week📚 Blas.comI recently came across Blas on Twitter. It’s a great place to discover new books through some short summaries. It made me want to read Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri next:
Related 👇 🪐 Quote I'm Pondering
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden If you enjoyed this newsletter, make sure to subscribe if you haven’t 👇 👋 EndNoteThanks for reading! If you like The Long Game, please share it on social media or forward this email to someone who might enjoy it. Podcast reviews are also gratefully received. You can also “like” this newsletter by clicking the heart just below this, which helps me get visibility on Substack. Feel free to email me or find me on Twitter if you have any feedback or questions. Until next week, Mehdi Yacoubi PS: Lots of newsletters get stuck in Gmail’s Promotions tab. If you find it in there, please help train the algorithm by dragging it to Primary. It makes a big difference. If you liked this post from The Long Game by Mehdi Yacoubi, why not share it? |
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The Long Game 62: US Army & Longevity, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Happiness vs. Comfort
Sunday, July 18, 2021
🏦 Billionaires, Drawing Cities, Going First, Oura Ring, The Myth of Panic, Dark Triad, and Much More!
The Long Game 61: Changing Your Mind, Non-Sleep Deep Rest, No Rules Rules, Alan Watts
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🌌 The Edges of Our Universe, Efficiency vs. Resilience, Rat-Race, Building in Public, Terraforming Venus, and Much More!
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The Long Game 59: The Health Challenges of Spaceflights, Startup Mental Health, Inner Circle
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🛩 Electric Planes, Hard Work, Fertility, Brown Noise, The World is Malleable, Ketamine, and Much More!
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