[FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

The last thing I wish to do is to give medical advice about your diabetes
or any medical condition because I just don't know enough to do that. But I
do want to share an experience I had with a condition that is also
associated with lifestyle: high blood pressure.

About 5 years ago I went to my GP with some minor condition. He took the
opportunity to check some other vitals, amongst others my blood pressure -
and high (sic) and behold it was high. He lectured me on the dangers and
gave me a prescription for chemicals to bring it down. I got the
prescription pills but it was as though my whole being just said NO, surely
this is wrong to take chemicals for a lifestyle associated disease?. I
decided to throw away the pills, researched high blood pressure, bought a
blood pressure monitor and changed my lifestyle and got it under control
without the chemicals. A year or so later we moved to a small coastal town
and I obviously had to change doctors. But then the covid hard lockdowns
happened and I was not careful to maintain my healthy lifestyle -  I gained
significant weight, exercised much less and the associated covid-induced
stress also did not help my blood pressure. After a while I checked my
blood pressure, and surprise, surprise, it went high again. I tried to get
back into the healthy lifestyle thing again but found it very
difficult, so I found a new local GP and asked him to treat my high
blood pressure. But after the second day on the chemicals, it was again as
though my whole being said NO, NO, NO. Again I threw away the chemicals,
upped my resolve to live healthy and I'm very proud to report that my blood
pressure is normal again without the use of chemicals.

I'm not against the mainstream medical indusdtry - they have their place
and can do a lot for many illnesses and medical conditions, But I refuse to
let go and abdicate my own wellness to somebody else. I take ownership of
my own body and manage it as I see it. When appropriate I do make use of
conventional doctors and ask their advice but at the end of the day I do as
I see fit and allow them to do with my body as I see fit.

P

On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 22:46, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Pieter,
>
>
>
> As a 40 year late-onset, lean diabetic, my ears always perk up when I hear
> that it is avoidable.  It sure would be nice to avoid it.  As for obesity,
> I have known quite a few people to struggle with it and their metabolisms
> just seem to be mercilessly efficient.  In that connection, I wonder about
> brown fat, an organ for spilling excess calories.
>
>
>
> Anyway, Pieter, thanks for what you wrote.
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 1:19 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and
> exponential technological growth.
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> Thanks for the question.
>
> Before I start, just a clarification. I'm referring to diabetes type 2,
> which is strongly linked to lifestyle and not diabetes type1.
>
> 1. From the NIH article
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5741209/:
> " Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease affecting adults and children
> worldwide. It has become one of the leading causes of death, as obesity is
> known to be the main risk factor for a number of non-communicable diseases,
> in particular type 2 diabetes. This close relationship led to the
> connotation ‘diabesity’, highlighting the fact that the majority of
> individuals with diabetes are overweight or obese. Until today the BMI is
> still used to classify overweight and obesity. Since reduced muscle mass is
> highly prevalent throughout the BMI range, the measurement of body
> composition is strongly recommended. Moreover, it is essential for
> monitoring the course of weight reduction, which is part of every effective
> anti-obesity treatment. Weight reduction can be achieved via different
> weight loss strategies, including lifestyle intervention (diet and
> exercise), pharmacotherapy, or bariatric surgery. However, not all of these
> strategies are suitable for all patients, and any further needs should be
> considered. Besides, attention should also be drawn to concomitant
> therapies. These therapies may promote additional weight gain and further
> trigger the deterioration of blood glucose control. Thus, therapeutic
> strategies are warranted, which can be easily used for the management of
> obese patients with type 2 diabetes to achieve their glycemic and weight
> loss goals. "
>
> Just a comment before I go further, We all "know", as per the above, that
> diet and exercise lead to weight loss, but for some people (including
> myself)  it's very difficult. I started to follow David Sinclair and as
> part of his longevity recommendations he includes intermittent fasting. It
> works wonders for both my wife and me.  I mention him briefly below, and
> it's worthwhile to evaluate everything he says, but for now, because it's
> more directly related to your question, I merely focus on intermittent
> fasting.
>
> 2. I follow the work and recommendations of dr David Sinclair
> https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/people/david-sinclair ,a Professor in
> the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for
> Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. IMO, if you are
> interested in staying healthy for longer, it's worthwhile to lend him your
> ears or read his book
> https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/1501191977 .
>
> 3. I quote from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about
> Intermittent Fasting https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1905136 :
> "We then present and discuss findings from preclinical studies and more
> recent clinical studies that tested intermittent-fasting regimens in
> healthy persons and in patients with metabolic disorders (obesity, insulin
> resistance, hypertension, or a combination of these disorders). Finally, we
> provide practical information on how intermittentfasting regimens can be
> prescribed and implemented."
>
>
>
> 4. Finally, if you are really interested then you might want to listen to
> dr Pradip Jamnadas' lecture on Fasting for Survival
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU
> Dr. Pradip Jamnadas is the founder and medical director of Cardiovascular
> Interventions and has practiced in Central Florida for over 31 years.
> Widely recognized for his skill in interventional cardiology Dr. Jamnadas
> has been awarded Orlando Top Doctor by Orlando Magazine consecutively for
> over a decade.
> He is on staff at AdventHealth Orlando, and teaches medical students as an
> Assistant Clinical Professor at Florida State University, the University of
> Central Florida College of Medicine, and residents in Florida Hospital’s
> teaching programs.
> Educated in England, at the University of London College Medical School
> with internships in London and Kent, he completed his residency in internal
> medicine at the University of Maryland and his cardiology fellowship at
> Yale University. In addition he completed an interventional cardiology
> fellowship at St. Luke’s Hospital in Milwaukee, WI.
>
> P
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 16:47, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Pieter,
>
>
>
> I am interested in your assertion that metabolic disorders like diabetes
> and obesity are preventable.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 5:16 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and
> exponential technological growth.
>
>
>
> The CDC reports that among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR,
> 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1
> underlying medical condition.
> https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm.
>
>
> My reading of this is that it is mainly preventable conditions and my
> simple conclusion is that if you live healthy you are well protected
> against covid.
>
> My wife and I got a wake-up call with loved ones that died of covid. They
> were all obese. Our focus is now to live healthy. It not only gives
> additional protection against covid, but against many other causes of
> illness and poor quality of life too.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 10:26, David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi Frank,
>
>
>
> Only because Marcus responded….
>
>
>
> This article
>
>
> https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/05/covid-19-vaccines-dont-really-work-as-hoped/
>
> Isn’t a good start.
>
>
>
> I didn’t read the whole thing, so I will confine my remarks to the title
> and second paragraph, relative to the reported data.
>
>
>
> 74% of people in the P-town outbreak had been vaccinated.  What does that
> tell us?  Very nearly nothing.  This is the like the textbook question
> given to any undergrad in statistics.  (And remember: “She’s an actuary!” —
> be ready to take her word for things.)
>
>
>
> There were, if I remember the number, 60k visitors to P-town.  How many of
> them were vaccinated?  Don’t have numbers on that.  Suppose 99.67% of them
> were, for the sake of making a point.  800 cases (rounded out).  600 among
> the vaccinated.  Suppose everyone in P-town was exposed (also not reported,
> I have no idea how many were).  At that rate, the number of infections
> among the vaccinated would be 1%.  Sounds well within the range of a
> vaccine that tests as 94% effective against infection.
>
>
>
> Suppose that only the state average of 64% were vaccinated and everyone
> was exposed.  Then the fraction infected becomes 1.5%.  Since P-town is a
> destination for the educated and rich, and known as a gay-friendly place so
> probably lefter than Mass as a whole, I would be very surprised if the vax
> fraction of the visitors were not above the state average.  Not least
> because they were going to a party.
>
>
>
> How many were unvaccinated among the 60k?  Again, not reported, presumably
> not something one is even allowed to ask about, and so probably impossible
> to know with precision and not easy to estimate.  But again to make a
> point, suppose the number of unvaccinated was 200 ppl.  Infections among
> the unvaxsed: 200.  Wow!  That would be 100% infectivity among the
> unvaccinated.
>
>
>
> Suppose the fraction actually vaxxed was 50/50 and everybody was exposed.
> Well, then, the vaccines were terrible; increased your chance of being
> infected by 50%.  But of course that would require that the unvaxsed were
> also only catching delta at <2%, which is improbable.  So presumably, if we
> knew the other numbers, we could guess at about what fraction of people
> actually had exposure.
>
>
>
> But then to use that, we need the correlation between degree of exposure
> and vaccination status, and who the hell knows even what the sign of that
> number would be?
>
>
>
> MY POINT (sorry to be so ugly all the time): we can find any
> interpretation you like, from completely anodyne to totally absurd, from
> within feasible ranges of other variables on which we have little or no
> information.
>
>
>
> How much drama does any of this warrant?
>
>
>
> Well, we were told that, what, 5 people landed in the hospital?  Out of
> 60k visitors plus locals.  Of whom 3 had preexisting problem conditions.
> No reports on whether the ones with problem conditions were vaxxed. Even in
> that tiny sample, we know nothing about correlation information that would
> change the direction of its implications qualitatively, from moving 1 or 2
> people between categories.
>
>
>
> One final thing: those positive cases are outcomes of tests.  I don’t
> recall seeing anything on how many were symptomatic.  Could be all of them,
> but in many of these cohorts that use any contact tracing, it is fewer.
> That’s PCR in the nose or throat.
>
>
>
> So really?  Is the title “the vaccines don’t work as believed on the delta
> variant” warranted?
>
>
>
> Speaking in slightly fuller sentences, what did we “expect” from
> experience with vaccines up to now? The vaccines enable the learning phase
> of immunity to be done and stored, so that one may or may not have
> antibodies in any given quantity (variable across people and probably
> usually degrades with time; six month numbers being given a a guess at a
> time frame, with considerable imprecision), but one does have whatever
> genetic memory there is to activate antibody-producing cells quickly.  That
> has been reported for about 1/2 year in dribs and drabs, and the variance
> in the results gives us an idea of roughly how much uncertainty we should
> have.
>
>
>
> So virus establishes a beachhead in the nose and throat, and rather than
> taking a week and a half to figure out an immune response, during which
> time it makes you much sicker, you knock it out (for most of those who do
> get sick) in a few days.  All this seems to me well within the range of
> things that have been publicly reported.
>
>
>
> Zaynap Tufecki had a nice piece in the NYT a few days ago, something like
> CDC should stop confusing the public.  It sounds like a dramatic title, but
> the content is good and sensible, and I think she mentioned part of this as
> well.  Let me look:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/cdc-covid-guidelines.html
>
>
>
> The Crooked guys also did a nice interview with Ashish Jha from Brown,
> here:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SddFBebSk-c
>
> where, in addition to being asked interesting questions and given time to
> give coherent answers, he was able to relax a bit and talk as if from
> thought instead of from script.
>
>
>
> So it strikes me that, so far, we are getting small updates to how viral
> attacks and immunity are relating, and a little info on distributions.
> None of it seems very surprising, and the early estimates are still closer
> than we have any right to hope for, given a new disease in the period of
> rapid change.  The fact that you can get high PCR titers in the nose of a
> vaccinated person is useful to know, perhaps not predicted per se, but not
> bizarre either.
>
>
>
> —
>
>
>
> I have thought, throughout the attention to these topics during the past
> year and a half, that we swim in viruses all the time.  We catch a cold
> once every few years, and suppose that is because our exposure Is
> intermittent.  But I’ll bet what is going on with the ambient virosphere
> looks much more like this business we are seeing with COVID than we would
> ever have guessed, with the important exception that we are all naive to
> COVID, and not to all the other stuff.  I have wished there were time and
> manpower to use this unprecedented effort at measurement, to revamp our
> mental pictures and epidemiological models of how ambient viruses are
> moving around.  It may be that a lot of this is already known, and I am
> just ignorant of it (that would be my first assumption), but I can’t
> imagine all this measurement doesn’t have _something_ of a general nature
> that we could learn from.
>
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 8, 2021, at 6:16 AM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Gail Tverberg:  does anyone have an opinion about her?  Based on her
> career as an actuary she writes various blog posts and articles warning of
> imminent disasters related to Covid, oil prices, etc.  When I search for
> commentaries about her I find almost nothing except items that she has
> written.  She is associated with "Our Finite World".
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2021, 1:28 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
> No need for victims when there are (pandemic) volunteers.
>
>
>
> On Aug 7, 2021, at 11:43 AM, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
>  Marcus -
>
> The pushback on everything from low wattage lighting to mask mandates
> leaves me thinking that there is really only one thing that motivates
> certain people:  That they can do whatever the hell they want and,
> crucially, that other people cannot.   A living wage infringes on that
> ranking and so must be terrible.   What if there were physical space for
> everyone, food for everyone, and many optional ways to invest one’s time?
> What if one didn’t need a wage at all?  What if you had to decide for
> yourself what was worth doing?  Heck, what if one (some post-human) didn’t
> even need food and didn’t need to reproduce?
>
>
>
> Sounds Utopian... erh... Dystopian... no... UTOPIAN!   Uhm... I just hope
> posthumans collectively find the rest of us boring enough to leave alone
> and interesting enough to not need to extinct us.   Homo Neanderthalenses
> had a long run (~.4My?) before Homo Sapiens Sapiens found our way into
> their territory and apparently ran over them with our aggressive adaptivity
> (over a period of tens of thousands of years).   I suspect *some*
> trans/post humans will also have a somewhat more virulent (or at least very
> short time-constant) adaptivity indistinguishable (to us) from
> extermination-class aggression.
>
> I like the fairy tale Spike Jonze wove on this topic with HER
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)>, and in particular the virtual Alan
> Watts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts> conception.  But I
> highly doubt we might be so lucky.   More likely some version of "the Borg"
> or "Cylons" or "Replicators" or (passive aggressive) "Humanoids" (minus the
> gratuitous anthropomorphism).   To us, it will probably look more like a
> "grey goo" scenario.  Or perhaps more aptly hyperspectral rainbow-goo.
>
> At the current rate of change/acceleration/jerk in technosocial change I
> may even live to see the whites of the eyes of the hypersonic train
> headlights I mistook for "light at the end of the tunnel".
>
> I'm going to go now to get my telescoping (drywall stilts) runner's legs
> fit in place of the organic ones I grew (and then abused/neglected) over
> the past 65 years.    I'm holding out for AR corneal transplants for a few
> more months, I think it will be worth the long wait for the upgraded
> features and the new neural lace interface specs.
>
> - Sieve
>
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