Optimization Will Not Save You

The Huberman story highlights the shortcomings of treating our bodies like a computer.

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By now we’re all over the Andrew Huberman story. He’s continued on with his usual content, never even acknowledging the accusations against him. Ultimately, he doesn’t have to. The accusations do not bear enough weight. It really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a man as handsome, successful and narcissistic enough to be a multimedia health guru also has several girlfriends and behaves selfishly. It maybe shouldn’t even be a story.

The personal drama of a Stanford neuroscientist shouldn’t ordinarily warrant public attention, but it’s because he’s fashioned himself into this lifestyle figure that the story has made waves. I don’t think Andrew Huberman is a very good person, at least not the type of person we should all aspire to be. The problem, to me, is that so many people (men especially) have looked to Huberman to figure out how to live. In doing so, they’ve undoubtedly received valuable information on how to do things like sleep, exercise, look at the sun. These are crucial components of living, yes, but ones with no real ethos behind them except one pervasive belief: that every detail of our day, our bodies, our minds can be microscopically fine-tuned toward optimization that will in turn make us better people. “Better,” here, is ideologically vague but biologically measurable: the improvements are counted on scales, tech wearables and bloodwork. All those ice baths and supplement stacks are intended to translate into something biologically quantifiable, allowing us to fill out spreadsheets faster and enjoy a few extra reps at the gym. But as Huberman’s own deceptive behavior highlights, none of it will necessarily make us any happier. It won’t teach us how to live.

Huberman is one of many people aligned in the contemporary cult of optimization. Bryan Johnson is another poster child of the movement, as is much of the SF tech scene writ large. Most of these types are undergoing this optimization on smaller scales than Huberman or Johnson, but the mentality remains the same. Here are people who won’t drink not because they have any particular problem with it but because the data their Oura ring gathers suggests they sleep 7 percent better on nights they don’t, therefore allowing them to answer emails twenty seconds more quickly. Here are people avoiding coffee half an hour before meeting with their personal trainer who charges as much as a mortgage because they don’t want to reward their brain with a dopamine boost that could become habitual, concerning themselves with the precise receptors through which caffeine and dopamine interact.

It’s boring. It’s exhausting. It’s not sexy. It might not even be healthy.

One thing I’ve wondered about the Huberman story is what would have happened if he applied this same optimization mentality to his dating life. It’s possible that he did — perhaps he was only able to juggle six women at a time without them knowing about each other (at least temporarily) because he enforced this same routine of rigidity and calculation to romance. It’s also possible that he only managed all of this through sheer luck and some solid lies. One can imagine how this type of optimization could be applied to dating more honestly, but with similarly unsexy results: a common thread in several of the major polyamory stories as of late has been how packed everyone involved’s Google Calendar is. Surely plenty of people pursuing ethical non-monogamy see themselves as romantically more productive, more detailed and more modernized than the rest of us in a way that mirrors the Huberman health methods.

Regardless, the point remains that optimization will not necessarily fulfill us in the way we’re looking for. It will not stop of from behaving in self-destructive ways (which, I think, Huberman ultimately was), nor will it fill in the emotional gaps that have led us searching for solutions in the first place. It probably will help us sleep a little better, help us feel a little better, help us look a little better, and that all absolutely is worth something. All of that does count toward our broader happiness. But to treat it as our guiding philosophy leaves us empty. There is no telos to it beyond productivity and conspicuous spending.

It all begs the question, what exactly are our bodies for? For whom are we achieving this “peak” physical form? When will that “peak” even be reached? It isn’t just that we’re enhancing our bodies to yield more labor in order to make our employers wealthier, though that’s probably true, too, but rather that it feels like we’ve turned our bodies into projects so that we simply have something to do, something to define ourselves by. In some cases, it might even just be so that we have new things to buy. Spending our money on supplements and gym memberships gives us a sense of purpose. I’m not trying to critique health as some sort of capitalist psyop — the reality is likely the opposite. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be hot and fit. Those are things I want, too. But the point of this brand of optimization does not seem to be that we ought to enjoy the bounties of our healthy bodies. Rather, it is rigidity for rigidity’s sake.

That is, perhaps, the one thing I could give Huberman credit for in all this: if he truly did maintain this many girlfriends at a time, he was probably at least enjoying an active sex life. Still, it was one of disorder. It was one that reveals an underlying incoherence to the system. The lack of fulfillment is apparent.

More than the supplements, the light therapies, the manipulation of our bodily cycles, what truly shapes our wellbeing is connection. There’s decades of research concluding that nothing is a better predictor of our happiness than our relationships, including friendships and even social connections through work. It’s a more significant determinant in our mental and physical health than class, intelligence and even our genes. Loneliness, meanwhile, is as bad for us as smoking and alcoholism. You can, of course, be a bio-hacking health optimizer and have deep romantic connections and lifelong friendships that lend you a sense of community till your death. You might even find all that through the world of optimization. Huberman has himself spoken on subjects like gratitude and the benefits of positive human interaction. Still, it’s all explained as a matter of mechanisms, protocols and cellular-level control. Relationships are spoken of as neurological phenomenons rather than something we should organically cherish.

Even beyond this attitude, the optimizer life has always struck me as isolating. To be someone who meticulously tracks their physical performance by many measures is to be someone who cannot afford to deviate from rigidly structured routines. There is no room for spontaneity, for a quick drink with friends, for the occasional late night pizza. There’s no room, essentially, for being a normal, sociable person. It requires putting yourself — an idealized version of it — above all else.

If there’s any underlying philosophy to the world of optimization that Huberman represents it’s this pervasive cult of the self. At its core, it’s anti-social. As such, it becomes anti-health. I’m not at all opposed to the majority of what Huberman shares. Much of it is useful and beneficial. What I’m opposed to, rather, is the elevation of these helpful little tidbits into dogma. Optimization has become a lifestyle with no true meaning behind it. A sense of purpose and human connection is not fostered via protocol, even if someone like Huberman could probably explain the neuro-chemical processes behind them. The desire to measure and track and manage our every component may only leave us lonelier. The Hubermans of the world can tell us plenty about peptides and sugar and circadian rhythms. That doesn’t mean we should look to them to tell us how to love and live.