Bryan Johnson in conversation with Kunal Shah | CRED curious

Positive health interventions (like exercise) are often nullified by cognitive bargaining where people justify eating extra calories consumed; removing choice eliminates this mental negotiation

“when we do positive things like we we work out of the gym and it's like dinner comes like well I worked out for an hour today I can probably afford two brownies because I already burned the calories like we we do the play these games in our mind and so just stopping self-destruct behavior”

Johnson says the basic principles of Blueprint are free: get good sleep, eat good food, don't eat too much food, don't eat junk food, and don't do self-destructive behaviors—fundamentals everyone knows are true but don't practice.

“blueprint at the basics all I'm saying is get good sleep eat good food don't eat too much food don't eat junk food and don't do self-destruct behaviors like like remove the two million dollar number remove The Eccentric things I do we all know these Basics are true we've been taught them all lives we just don't do them”

The concept of zero took hundreds of years to develop and required working through philosophical and religious objections before becoming established in mathematics and enabling modern societies, demonstrating that breakthrough discoveries meet significant resistance

“it had to work its way through philosophy and religion and math like Discovery we think zero is an obvious situation it's not it took Humanity hundreds of years to figure out zero and erect societies”

The host (Kanav) lost 60 pounds between a prior conversation with Johnson and starting his current startup, and then regained all 60 pounds after startup stress began, demonstrating how organizational stress overrides health intentions

“I lost UH 60 pounds between uh that conversation I have with you and then I started my startup again I've got that exactly back so it's a it's an interesting thing that so how did you manage to conquer the hardest organ the brain”

Everything Johnson values has come only after working through difficulty and pain; this principle motivates him to seek discomfort rather than avoid it

“everything I value which has come for free I've had to work through it and push through the difficulty that includes relationship building working through hard conversations working through when I want to give up on a certain thing like we all know these things are true”

Johnson argues that Blueprint and health optimization demonstrate that algorithms managing human biology is not a dystopia but an inevitability following from fundamental physics and energy efficiency, and society's moral objections cannot override physical law.

“I would argue when these things happen in society if you just look at the fundamental characteristics of Energy Efficiency of the laws of the universe this is a demonstrated inevitability and it's going to sell right through the stormy seas of human opinion it doesn't matter what we think about this it doesn't matter if it offends us it doesn't matter if it hits the most sacred thing we have it's it's it's not it doesn't matter it is a more efficient way to manage our systems”

Generation Z is born into addictive content (short videos, TikTok) that impacts brain development; this makes young people easy to offend and trigger because their neural reward systems are calibrated to constant stimulation

“we're going through a very interesting time where generation pretty much is Born Into addictive content yeah short videos uh tick tocks of the world uh and and it's gonna do some impact to the brain what do you think is really happening to our brain and and uh and and therefore we are super easy to offend I can I can feel that we are kind of and and somehow I have a feeling that lot of us and I've seen the younger Lord feels they are all celebrities somehow because they tend to have some followers and they watch some stuff and they are uh easy to trigger”

The host (Kanav) achieved consecutive weeks of 85+ sleep scores using the Aura ring and experienced dramatically sharper cognitive performance including heightened focus, no afternoon fatigue, and sustained energy

“I got a week continuously of 85 Plus I think it was probably the most sharpest week I had at work because I was like absolutely sharp at everything that I was doing was not getting tired not getting tired middle of the day and and it's it's sort of addictive because it just makes you better almost instantly”

The rate of change from AI and technological innovation is accelerating beyond human cognitive capacity to learn and adapt; companies will face crises every 6 months or 2 months instead of annually, and humans need to rebuild society to become highly adaptable systems rather than planning-based systems

“we're a four and a half year old company and I've had one major crisis a year already like from geopolitical situation to Market meltdowns to AI coming in now uh and it's going to get probably become six months two months a month and humans can't really learn uh we take like 25 years to make somebody uh a little bit of a rational human”

When new technological or social patterns arise that demonstrate higher energy efficiency or systemic effectiveness than existing approaches, they inevitably spread through society regardless of human opinion, aesthetic preferences, or concerns about them being dystopic or offensive

“I'd argue when these things happen in society if you just look at the fundamental characteristics of Energy Efficiency of the laws of the universe this is a demonstrated inevitability and it's going to sell right through the stormy seas of human opinion it doesn't matter what we think about this it doesn't matter if it offends us it doesn't matter if it hits the most sacred thing we have it's it's not it doesn't matter it is a more efficient way to manage our systems”

Digital media and algorithmic content systems (particularly social media and short-form video) might not matter what humans want from them; authority should be delegated to different systems for managing attention and behavior rather than trusting individual choice

“in this contemplation of digital media and algorithms and what our mind wants maybe it doesn't matter what our mind wants maybe uh we should just set that aside and consider a different way uh to get at Authority on how to exist”

The human mind is the problem and the nemesis that prevents self-improvement; to achieve health and adaptation, humans should empower their organs (via biomarker data) to make decisions rather than trusting conscious thought

“in order for me to address the challenges I had in Being Human I needed to put aside the thing that I thought was my most valuable tool my mind you know we are accustomed to uh thinking when do I have a problem to deal with I use my mind to solve that problem and so in the case of blueprint I said my mind is my problem and if I don't I need to kill you know my Nemesis before my Nemesis kills me”

Johnson developed his idea of 'zeroth principle thinking' as a response to hitting the limits of first principles thinking; zeroth principle thinking targets unknown unknowns and unknown possibilities that cannot be mapped or anticipated.

“and one one night I went to bed and I I asked my my mind to hey could you help me come up with a framework like a a structured a methodical framework on how to think about the future not on woo-woo terms but in like some some way I could actually do so in a methodical way and then I came up with this idea of Zero's principle thinking”

Brian Johnson has slowed his aging by approximately 30 percent through Blueprint protocols

“you have slowed down your aging by close to 30 percent or or nearly close to 30 percent and that's like it seems crazy”

Blueprint uses data from all organs (measured via biomarkers) to create a clinical-grade protocol that an individual follows algorithmically without deviation, removing cognitive choice from daily health decisions and demonstrating an algorithm can take better care of a person than they can take of themselves

“blueprint is basically to say as a species we've arrived to a point where algorithms are showing I I hope that what I've shown is like blueprint is a world first demonstration I've shown an algorithm takes better care of me than I can myself based upon science and data”

We automatically assume technology will be better in 20 years, but assume humans will just decline and decay; the question that matters is whether we can put humanity on an improvement curve like technology has achieved

“if you and I do a thought experiment and we say how good is technology going to be in 20 years from now we both are automatically going to assume better... now if if we pose a question how are you and I going to be in 20 years the explicit assumption is we're just going to Decay Decline and walk our way to death”

Most people hate Blueprint achievements not because they are scientifically invalid but because they feel helpless to achieve the same thing themselves; society has made self-destructive behaviors unavoidable by surrounding people with heroin-like addictions (junk food, social media, alcohol) that normalize failure

“they I understand people's hate I really do and I love them I don't take any of it personally um blueprint is a commentary on society where when each of us goes to work we go by 20 fast food chains 20 additional places that sell sugary drinks you know 50 75 grams of sugar we didn't have to navigate a heroin-like addiction of of tick tock we didn't have to navigate alcohol with friends binge watching porn junk food so ciety has taken its god-like powers and pointed them at getting us all to be addicted”

Johnson's bedroom is completely blacked out with no light, and he sleeps independently without a partner, allowing him to maintain consistent sleep timing without coordination or disturbance

“I black out my bedroom so there's no light that comes in I I have the luxury of sleeping independently so I don't have to coordinate with a partner coming to bed at a different time getting up at night waking me up and so I just do all these things I've built up this uh this protocol that it just delivers reliably high quality sleep”

AlphaGo playing Lee Sedol, the 19-time world Go champion, demonstrated zeroth principle thinking by making moves of genius that humans could have played for thousands of years but never did, as if playing Go from 'another dimension'.

“and then if you look at alphago when they played lease at all 19-time world champion and observers of that game of Go said like watching alphago play this game is like watching it From Another Dimension it played moves of Genius that humans could have played for thousands of years they never did”

To thrive as a species, humans may need to set aside the mind as the architect of human existence and find alternative sources of authority to direct behavior, analogous to how the Copernican Revolution, quantum mechanics, and relativity required reorienting human understanding of reality

“to me it feels like this idea that like so the obviousness of like hey we are an extremely self-destructive species... I would postulate if we are going to be able to make a sustainable Planet... I think one thing we need to consider is putting aside our minds as The Architects of this whole thing... just like my body is its own architect now and its own uh Authority and not my mind... these really big ideas they exist and we have to reorient our reality around it”

Blueprint's core philosophy is that humans are self-destructive species, both internally (self-sabotage), interpersonally (violence and conflict), and ecologically (planetary destruction), and that algorithmic management of behavior is the solution

“we are an incredibly self-destructive species with ourselves with each other and our planet and it's so out of control we just try to bury it we've normalized self-destructive Behavior so much and we protect it that if a person doesn't want to participate in it we call them weird and we ostracize them”

The 'goal alignment problem' with AI is less about aligning humanity with AI and more about humans achieving internal goal alignment within themselves (their 70+ organs and competing values), which then allows healthy interaction with AI

“I was basically trying to solve the goal alignment problem we talked about AI progressing and we say oh we need to line ourselves with AI what does that even mean humans have billions of different goals even within us we all have hundreds or even thousands of different goals and so the goal lineup problem is not to say and what people when people say goal alignment it's like what they're saying is they want everyone else to align their goals to theirs right it's like it's not like what's in everyone's best interest and so I was trying to solve the goal and problem within me within Brian to say how could I have my 70 plus organs go aligned with each other”

Rebuilding personal baseline comfort level away from constant stimulation (phone, TikTok, junk food) toward slight discomfort is foundational to health; humans have been conditioned to soothe discomfort immediately and must reverse this

“we live in a society that wants to satiate discomfort the moment it appears so if someone's even slightly bored pick up the phone and get a hit of heroin by looking at Tick Tock or reach to the junk food to eat even when you're not hungry we have such a low tolerance for discomfort and everything around us soothes us all the time we become accustomed to just being having a binky in our mouth of all the ways we can soothe ourselves binge watching and all the above and I had to rebuild my reality to my my Baseline of what is stimulation what is pleasure and I had to remap my pleasure to say I find it pleasurable to be in a state of slight discomfort”

Chronic self-destructive behaviors like binge eating at night can be overcome by identifying the specific version of self responsible (e.g., 'Evening Brian'), understanding their persuasion tactics, and systematically refusing them in the moment, which creates a sense of personal agency and control

“I said okay evening Brian is my Nemesis he uses the following tactics to try to persuade me and now I'm going to systematically tell him no and so when he showed up I would say hi evening Brian welcome uh I know you're here I know what you're going to say and no I'm not going to say yes and then I would in my mind watch evening Brian just throw a tantrum”

The first-time measurement of what happens to a human brain when taking intramuscular ketamine occurred through Kernel technology; data showed changes in brain state that subjective reporting alone (e.g., 'I felt happy') could not reveal

“it was the first time in history that's been done and it's really interesting that you know we we have not today been able to to answer what happens to someone bring someone's brain when they take ketamine the best we've been able to do is people offering their perspectives on like well I felt like I was having you know a psychedelic experience where I felt happier or whatever and so be able to speak with data in a uh you know a quantitative framework really helps to structure it”

Humans should live with the assumption that life extension and radical human capability expansion are coming, making it essential not to die now; dying is the one thing to avoid because the 21st century may be more spectacular than any period of human existence

“if somebody lives in the 20th century it would have been reasonable for that person to say you know what I'm going to live hard in life... and I'm going to accept that I'm going to die in my 40s or 50s... in the 21st century the the wisdom is the technology is coming that could radically extend life and we may with the advancements in AI we may be entering into an era of human existence that is more spectacular than any human has ever experienced and I don't think we want to miss out on that”

Society has historically inverted the relationship between technology and humans: humans sacrifice their health and wellbeing to build better technology, when the correct relationship is technology in service of human flourishing and longevity

“we need to switch this equation so that our technology is in service of us and everything we do is for the betterment of humans it's just been backwards thus far”

Johnson attaches himself to science and technology through an algorithm that instantaneously implements new scientific evidence without requiring his mind to evaluate or approve it, removing his mind as the 'rate limiter' on the speed of adoption.

“I've attached my physical being with a system of improvement through Science and Technology as soon as we find scientific evidence that something can be done in my diet or supplement or something else is instantaneously implemented in my routine and it's done it does not have to pass through my brain to say is this a good idea a bad idea do I want this do I not want this it just passes and so that has substantially improved the speed of my own adoption of Science and Technology”

Once death and decline are understood as potentially preventable rather than inevitable, humans will become more compassionate, less violent, less prone to war, and less willing to engage in nuclear brinkmanship because the stakes of mutual destruction become unacceptable

“once we get our heads around this idea that death Decay decline may not be inevitable it's going to dramatically change how we think about the world and each other so is you know is a changing climate something that we can passively observe and just try to ignore or do we need to take aggressive action to try to ensure sustainability is war a good idea you know is is a death a good idea are we okay to play this nuclear brinkmanship game and have the extinction of our species on a trigger like all these things that have been normalized over our time like how we just are on the edge of annihilation or like severely crippling problems we may view the world very differently and may become more compassionate as a species less prone to war less prone to violence less at each other's throat”

Johnson argues that when humans demonstrate that something is possible, other humans have the capability to step up and achieve the same thing, and humanity's resilience over long timescales is underestimated when people focus on short-term acrimony.

“humans are remarkable you know like there's it's so easy to isolate the acrimony between humans and this and that but if you look at us uh the human race over a longer period of time uh we're unbelievably resilient and there's also a lot of really interesting data on you know when one human shows something's possible so many humans can step up into the exact same thing”

Johnson notes that we are 'trapped' in our own time and cannot conceive of the aspirations, frameworks, and understanding of people 50, 100, or 200 years in the future, just as past generations could not conceive of our current frameworks.

“if we if we try to just like to your point if we say we have to understand that our imaginations our aspirations our Frameworks are a product of our own time like we're trapped in our own time and we do our best to come up with our ideas of our own time but we're trapped and the people in 50 years 100 years and 200 years are going to have entirely different frames”

Accepting that algorithms manage health better than humans will be an inevitability like autopilot in aviation; people will go through the seven stages of grief realizing algorithms are superior, then will need to find new meaningful activities to replace health decision-making

“humans always hold on to what has been and what is and we will all go through the seven stages of grief of realizing that an algorithm is better at this game than we are and so that will be and what we'll have to do is we'll reconstruct our realities to say you know what amazing I now I'm going to find new games for my mind to play because if somebody has something to look forward to it's easy to pass something off it's just people don't know what to so if they say if I'm not making decisions on a daily basis about what I'm going to eat and I can't have this sensorial pleasure um I don't know what to do with my existence”

Johnson's recommendation for embracing the zeroth principle future is to remove self-destructive tendencies that would ruin the future, stop self-destructive behaviors, and walk into a potentially magnificent future with reduced self-sabotage.

“let's remove our own self-destructive tendencies that would ruin the party if we died individually or if we kill each other collectively let's just not do destructive stuff and let's walk into this future that may be more Majestic than anything we've ever been able to imagine”

At age 21, Johnson determined he wanted to spend his life doing something meaningful for the human race, specifically something that would be noteworthy enough to be discussed in the 25th Century as having changed the course of human history.

“at the age of 21 I determined I wanted to spend my life doing something meaningful for the human race and I have in the back of my mind this idea that imagining people in the 25th Century having a conversation about the early 21st century and commenting on the things that happened in that time frame that changed the course of human history and I wanted to do something that would be part of that conversation”

Johnson argues for a philosophical shift from short-term, zero-sum games to infinite games: 'lucky us we exist. Let's play an infinite game together' and focus on not messing up the opportunity of existence rather than fighting over finite resources.

“it really boils down to lucky us we exist let's play an infinite game together like that's it I mean existence doesn't get any more complicated to me than that I didn't ask to be here I don't know why I'm here I'm here I really enjoy it here I want to keep on being here let's not mess it up”

Humans can raise aspirations about what they can become; currently there is a ceiling on human capability (e.g., Olympic records differ by milliseconds) but demonstrating room for improvement in health could energize a new frontier of exploration similar to how technology has infinite expansion

“we may raise our aspirations on what we can become right now you know when we think about what technology can become like we'd say like we map it out into like the most crazy terms but with humans we put a ceiling on ourselves like what can we become and we just know what they are there's no surprises somebody may break an Olympic world record on this thing or Nothing by 10 milliseconds but we don't think of humans as having this infinite expansive Horizon”

Human problems including conflict, violence, and war may be partly caused by people feeling terrible about their own lives (from poor sleep, bad food, addiction) rather than being purely ideological or rational

“maybe the root of our problems of why we fight each other so much and why there's so much violence and why like we're just at each other's throats maybe it's because we all feel so awful about life you know maybe it's because of our sleep and our foods and our addiction patterns so to me this is at the root”

Humans need a new generation (Generation Zero) that specializes in zeroth principles thinking and is willing to divorce itself from all human customs, norms, and previous institutions to move forward in an unpredictable landscape

“I think I think what we really need as a species is uh we have gen Z and you know Gen X and whatever else I think we need a new gen gen zero that specializes in zeroth principle thinking and say and says like we basically are willing to divorce ourselves from All Things human every custom every Norm every everything we have we've built to this date it's great we appreciate you also we're willing to sever that and move forward in the zero principle landscape and open ourselves up to brand new forms of existence”

The subjective sense of clarity and quality of intellectual output improves dramatically when living a disciplined health protocol; Johnson claims his blog posts and written ideas over the past 10 years show objectively higher quality compared to before establishing Blueprint

“I would just say if you I could offer up and say I feel great but like doesn't matter I don't care if you just objectively look at the quality of my ideas over this 10-year period I think that I would say they objectively are higher quality intellectual output I think there's been a Clarity of thought that I've been able to achieve having this lifestyle then the the numbness of what societal standards produce today”

Johnson argues that humans are an 'incredibly self-destructive species' starting with ourselves, with each other, and with our planet, and that society has normalized this to the point where people who refuse to participate in self-destructive harm rituals are called 'weird' and ostracized.

“we are an incredibly self-destructive species with ourselves with each other and our planet and it's so out of control we just try to bury it we've normalized self-destructive Behavior so much and we protect it that if a person doesn't want to participate in it we call them weird and we ostracize them”

Breslow frames sleep as a 'lighthouse' that cannot be negotiated with and cannot be moved, serving as an immovable anchor that structures all other decisions (not trading it for work, social events, or anything else)

“sleep is a lighthouse it it cannot be negotiated with it's not going to move so the storm can the cities can crash up against it but it's never going to move not for work not for social events not for anything it just stays the same every day”

Johnson eats all his food in a 6-hour window (6am-noon) and fasts for 18 hours because he discovered through hundreds of experiments that resting heart rate before bed is the best predictor of sleep quality

“I eat all my food from 6am to roughly noon every day so I eat in a six hour window I fast for 18 hours because I found after running hundreds of experiments my resting heart rate right before bed is the best predictor of my Sleep Quality”

Reading biographies of people who achieved zeroth principles insights and changed society helps develop the psychological capacity to think beyond current norms; examples include Claude Shannon (information theory), the concept of zero (mathematical history), and Magellan (circumnavigation)

“I personally my my arrival to this point is I love reading biographies and yeah it's and specifically about people in their time and place where they were able to embrace first principle thinking and zeroth principle thinking and discover things that no one else could see”

When Johnson was CEO of Braintree experiencing chronic depression and poor health, he was irritable and hostile to customers (e.g., customer called back saying 'the person I spoke to before was an asshole'); his improved disposition now is calm, peaceful, and steady with no fights or offense

“there was this one time uh Braintree where a customer called in wanting to do business with my company and for some reason I was really irritable and so we had a conversation then he called back a few minutes later my co-worker answered and um and she said okay he called because he said the person he spoke to before was an [ __ ] he wanted to speak to someone else and I was like ah like what am I doing like I'm the CEO of this company customers are calling to business with me and I'm being a jerk”

Blueprint costs $1,500 per month in the US and includes groceries, with lower-cost versions available; however, the most powerful intervention (stopping self-destructive behaviors) costs nothing and is often more powerful than positive interventions

“I have spent millions of dollars developing this protocol I've made all of it available for free for everyone and so in the US if someone were to do the entirety of blueprint it's one thousand five hundred dollars a month which includes all your groceries but there's even lower cost versions”

If asked to be president of a country with prosperity solved and health figured out, Johnson would focus on answering 'what do we yearn for as a species' and creating shared aspirational goals rather than structural policy

“if you want to build a boat teach the crew how to yearn for the sea what what do we yearn for as a species what are we fighting for where are we going you know we plan for work advancement and making money and children and even our own death what's our plan as a species”

First principles thinking is thinking that targets goals no one else can reach (talent hits the target no one else can), while zeroth principles thinking targets things no one else can see (genius hits the target no one can see)

“the easiest way to say this is uh Talent hits the target that no one else can that's first principles thinking right you're stripping away all the assumptions you're trying to get to the the Bare Bones so Talon is a target no one else can genius hits the target no one can see and that's zero with principle thinking”

Each generation maps their aspirations and understanding of existential nature according to the technological capabilities of their era (Buddha and meditation for 6th century BCE, heaven/God for medieval Christianity, simulation hypothesis for AI generation), so current aspirations are bounded by current tech and future generations will see things entirely differently

“each generation of humans map aspirations equal to their technology so in the time of Buddha you know a Cutting Edge technology would be to meditate and you know achieve the the meditative states that he put out as the aspiration you know Nirvana as like um with the mindfulness and then if you look at like um Islam and Christianity it was like hey these Heavenly beings came to us visit us and bestowed wisdom upon us that we're now going to share with you about the way we should exist in society and then you arrive at our time and you know because we've built computers and games we say we're in a simulation”

The only way Johnson could soothe his pain during periods of stress and family strain was through binge eating, which created a 60-pound weight gain and cascading sleep/health consequences

“the only way that I only thing I could do to try to soothe my pain like excruciating pain of life was to overeat like eating food to a point of binging myself was in my effort to try to soothe my pain and it led to me being 60 pounds heavier than I am now and that would wreck my sleep and it would ruin my next day”

In conversation with a Middle Eastern leader planning 2030 goals in 2016, Breslow used a robot metaphor: trying to predict and program a fixed path (mapping sand and programming robot) fails because conditions change, while building adaptability (GPS and adaptive tools) succeeds regardless of environmental shifts

“I was in the Middle East with a leader of a country and he was planning out his 20 30 goals... I thought okay let me think about this like... we have two robots... one is we can create a map... program in the robot and say go... the second way is to just um give the robot the tools it needs to adapt as fast as possible... so to me the answer is we need to think about how we become adaptable as a species”

While manually flying an airplane and observing autopilot's ability to keep the plane perfectly level, Breslow conceived of creating an 'autopilot for himself' to eliminate the need for constant conscious decision-making and self-control, which led to the Blueprint concept of the autonomous self

“I'm a pilot I was flying an airplane one day and I was using my hands to manually keep the plane steady and then I flipped on the autopilot and the paint the plane just sat up straight just perfect posture I thought oh my goodness what if I could create an autopilot for myself... that's when I came up with the idea of blueprint on the autonomous self”

Einstein's special theory of relativity showing that space and time are relative is an example of zeroth principle thinking—a discovery that existed in the universe but was invisible until found, restructuring human understanding of reality.

“if you say what qualifies as a zeroth principle Insight well space and time being relative you know uh Einstein's special theory of relativity is a zeroth principle Insight it existed in the universe we just found it”