Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

What about the modern world steers us away from the way 
humans are meant to live?
There are many, many things.
There are a number on the physical side. We have diets we are 
not evolved to eat. A correct diet should probably look closer 
to a paleo diet, mostly eating vegetables with a small amount 
of meat and berries.
In terms of exercise, we’re probably meant to play instead of 
running on a treadmill. We’re probably evolved to use all of 
our five senses equally as opposed to favoring the visual cortex. 
In modern society, almost all of our inputs and communica-
tion are visual. We’re not meant to walk in shoes. A lot of back 
and foot problems come from shoes. We’re not meant to have 
clothes keep us warm all of the time. We’re meant to have some 
cold exposure. It kickstarts your immune system.
We’re not evolved to live in a perfectly sterile and clean envi-

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ronment. It leads to allergies and an untrained immune system. 
This is known as the hygiene hypothesis. We’re evolved to live 
in much smaller tribes and to have more family around us. I 
partially grew up in India, and in India, everybody is in your 
business. There’s a cousin, an aunt, an uncle who is in your face, 
which makes it hard to be depressed, because you are never 
alone. (I’m not referring to people with chemical depression. 
I’m talking more about the existential angst and malaise teen-
agers seem to go through.) But on the other hand, you have no 
privacy, so you can’t be free. There are trade-offs.
We’re not meant to check our phone every five minutes. The 
constant mood swings of getting a “like” then an angry com-
ment makes us into anxious creatures. We evolved for scarcity 
but live in abundance. There’s a constant struggle to say no 
when your genes always want to say yes. Yes to sugar. Yes to 
staying in this relationship. Yes to alcohol. Yes to drugs. Yes, 
yes, yes. Our bodies don’t know how to say no. [8]
When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.
DIET
Outside of math, physics, and chemistry, there isn’t much 
“settled science.” We’re still arguing over what the optimal 
diet is.