Author: mjl

The Industrial Age Is Ending — AI, Self-Education, and the Future of Work

We are living through one of the largest transitions in human history. The industrial age is over, yet most people are still living as if it is not. Our schools, jobs, schedules, and even our definitions of success were designed for a factory-based economy. That system rewarded obedience, repetition, and hours on the clock. The world now emerging rewards something very different: adaptability, communication, creativity, and the ability to think clearly. The rules have changed, but many people are still using an outdated map.

I have watched that shift unfold in my own lifetime. I came from a world where a person could make a decent living without a college degree. I worked in car audio for companies like Circuit City, Silo, and The Good Guys. It was a great time. I got to work with exciting technology, attend training sessions, and meet interesting people. But technology eventually changed the entire landscape. Smartphones arrived, the internet matured, social media exploded, and now artificial intelligence is reshaping the economy once again. Each wave has removed one layer of the old system and replaced it with something faster, more automated, and less dependent on traditional labor.

Media itself has gone through the same evolution. First there were bloggers, then podcasters, then YouTubers, then Instagram and TikTok creators. As publishing tools became easier to use, more people became creators. But as access expanded, attention spans shrank. Today we live in a world where content is compressed into seconds and people scroll endlessly looking for something that captures them instantly. The obvious question is: what comes next?

The next phase will likely involve AI-augmented creators and personalized software generated on demand. Instead of searching for apps, people may simply ask an AI system to build the exact tool they need. Entire industries built around software development could change almost overnight. That shift raises an uncomfortable question: if many white-collar jobs disappear, where will people earn a living? We are approaching a moment where our current economic assumptions may no longer hold.

In a world like that, self-actualization becomes essential. If technology performs more tasks that once defined our work, then individuals must become something deeper than a job title. The future will belong to people who can think independently, learn continuously, and adapt quickly. This is why three qualities matter more than ever: self-interest, self-education, and self-sufficiency. These are the pillars of an autonomous life. They reinforce each other like the legs of a stool. Without them, a person becomes dependent on systems that are already beginning to fracture.

One powerful tool in that process is self-documentation. Imagine discovering a box of journals written by your grandfather, each page capturing what he learned, questioned, and experienced over twenty years. That record would be invaluable. In my own way, that is what I am creating through video. Documenting ideas clarifies thinking, preserves intellectual growth, and creates a legacy others may learn from. The goal is not to produce endless content. The goal is to develop one idea so clearly that it can be explained a thousand different ways.

Health is another area where clarity matters. The more I study, the more convinced I become that while we may not fully control lifespan, we absolutely influence healthspan. Lifespan is how long the body lasts. Healthspan is how well it functions while we are alive. Those two things are not the same.

One surprisingly overlooked factor in healthspan may be adequate vitamin C. For most of my life, I thought of vitamin C as something you take when you are already getting sick. Recently I began increasing my daily intake, and within weeks I noticed clear changes: more stable energy, better balance, and significantly improved sleep. That alone made me rethink how casually we treat essential nutrients.

The body cannot produce vitamin C on its own, yet it plays a role in many critical systems. If something is essential and the body depends on it daily, then maintaining adequate levels should not be treated as an afterthought. It should be part of a deliberate strategy for maintaining long-term health.

In the end, the future will not belong simply to those who consume the most technology, but to those who understand themselves most clearly. The people who thrive will be the ones who think deeply, learn continuously, document their ideas, and take responsibility for both their minds and their bodies. That is the real work of the next era.

Reflections on a Changing Worl

Good evening. My name is Michael Loomis, and I’m coming to you from the virtual Chew Digest studio. It was about 7:52 p.m. on Sunday, March 8th, and today turned out to be a surprisingly hot one here in Southern California. Because of the daylight-saving time change—spring forward, fall back—I ended up starting my walk about an hour later than usual. That simple shift made a noticeable difference. By the end of the walk, after covering about four and a half miles, the heat had caught up with me and it felt much more difficult than usual.

There were not many people outside, which was understandable. In the modern world we have become creatures of comfort. Air conditioning, shade, and climate-controlled environments make it easy to stay indoors rather than face the elements. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is difficult to say. The more I study and learn, the more I realize how little certainty I truly have. Knowledge tends to humble you. It teaches you that you have been wrong in the past, that you will likely be wrong again in the future, and that the best you can do is hold your current understanding loosely—always ready to revise it when better evidence appears.

While walking today I listened to several lectures, and one realization kept coming back to me: we are no longer living in the industrial age, yet most of us continue to live as if we are. Many of the structures that shape our lives—our schools, our jobs, even our ideas about success—were designed during the era of factories and assembly lines. They were built for a world that measured productivity by hours worked rather than by ideas created. That world has largely disappeared, yet the cultural pageantry of the industrial age remains.

The world has shifted toward ideas, knowledge, and personal platforms. You can see this transformation in the evolution of media. There was a time when music came on records, tapes, or CDs, and building a collection was expensive. Owning fifty or sixty CDs might cost around a thousand dollars. Today, for only a few dollars a month, services like Spotify or YouTube give people access to nearly all the music in the world. What was once scarce and costly has become abundant and inexpensive.

This pattern—where commodities fall dramatically in price as technology advances—may extend far beyond entertainment. It is not difficult to imagine a future where many necessities are delivered through extremely inexpensive subscription models. Food, shelter, clothing, and medical care could one day be bundled into systems that cost far less than they do today. While such ideas may sound radical, technological change repeatedly drives costs downward and expands access.

To understand how dramatically the economic landscape has changed, consider the example of housing. My father and grandfather lived during the peak of the industrial era after World War II. At that time, a person working a full-time minimum-wage job could realistically afford a home. In the early 1950s, minimum wage provided a monthly income of roughly $220, while a typical house payment might have been about $39 per month. Housing consumed less than one quarter of income.

Today the situation is entirely different. In parts of Southern California, housing prices have risen so dramatically that a similar affordability ratio would require a minimum wage exceeding $100 per hour. Very few professions—perhaps specialized surgeons or anesthesiologists—earn that level of income. This illustrates how the economic structures built during the industrial age no longer align with modern realities.

In the modern knowledge economy, value increasingly comes from ideas, communication, and systems thinking. Individuals can now build audiences and share intellectual frameworks without relying on centralized institutions. Over the last twenty-five years we have watched this unfold through the internet: first blogs, then podcasts, then YouTube creators, Instagram personalities, and TikTok influencers. Each wave has changed the way people communicate.

I experienced part of that transition personally. Between 2009 and 2013 I produced podcasts—around fifteen hundred of them. Later, platforms like YouTube made broadcasting easier and essentially free. Many of today’s largest creators began building their audiences during that early period of online video.

At the same time, attention spans have shortened dramatically. It is now common to see people scrolling rapidly through short videos, searching for something that captures their attention within seconds. This raises an interesting question: what comes after TikTok? When content becomes so compressed that almost no attention is required, what is the next stage of communication?

One possibility is the emergence of AI-augmented creators and interactive knowledge systems. Technologies such as augmented-reality glasses could overlay information directly onto our field of vision, identifying objects and delivering context in real time. Yet alongside these developments, a counter-trend may emerge: the growing value of thoughtful, long-form human conversation. As depth becomes rarer, it may become more valuable.

Another idea that has been on my mind is the concept of becoming one’s own product. In the past, people mostly sold physical goods or labor. In the future, individuals may increasingly sell insight, perspective, and frameworks for thinking. Personal brands will revolve around ideas rather than objects.

Ultimately, the most convincing demonstration of an idea is the life that embodies it. My own long-term goal is simple: I want to understand the principles that allow a human being to remain healthy and functional for as long as possible. I often say my target is 120 years of life, with vitality maintained for most of that time. Achieving that requires understanding the hierarchy of science—from physics to chemistry to biology, anatomy, and physiology. When the foundational principles are respected, everything built on top of them tends to function more smoothly.

This perspective also shapes how I think about health and behavior. Many problems we classify as behavioral or psychological may ultimately have roots in deeper physiological processes. If the foundational systems of the body are functioning properly, many higher-level problems may begin to resolve themselves.

Looking ahead, I suspect the future will involve fewer physical possessions and more emphasis on knowledge and systems of understanding. Instead of accumulating objects, people may increasingly exchange ideas, perspectives, and ways of thinking. Technology may eventually reduce the economic pressure associated with meeting basic needs, allowing individuals to focus more energy on health, learning, and creativity.

In that sense, humanity may be transitioning from the age of industry to an age defined by knowledge, automation, and intelligent systems. It is a transformation that thinkers like Ray Kurzweil predicted years ago, and we are now watching it unfold in real time.

If the future continues in this direction, perhaps one day the stress of securing basic necessities will fade from everyday life. Freed from that constant pressure, people might have more time to ask deeper questions: How can we become healthier? How can we live better lives? How can we build societies that allow individuals to flourish?

Those are the kinds of questions that occupy my mind during long walks and quiet evenings. For now, that is today’s edition of “Mike’s Mental Moonshine.” I’ll be back again tomorrow to explore a few more ideas—self-actualization, the power of self-documentation, and the practice of expressing one idea in many different ways.

Until then, this is Michael Loomis signing off from the Chew Digest virtual studio.

Free to Create

We are entering an era where the most important question is no longer what humans will create, but what humans will become alongside what they create.

What kind of artist will artificial intelligence tools produce? Or more provocatively: does the artist create the instrument, or does the instrument create the opportunity for an artist to become? Every technological leap reshapes the humans who use the technology. The paintbrush changed the painter. The camera changed the eye. The synthesizer changed music. AI will not simply generate art — it will sculpt the cognitive habits, aesthetic instincts, and creative possibilities of the humans collaborating with it. The future artist may be less a solitary genius and more a conductor of machine learning symphonies, guiding generative systems the way a composer guides an orchestra.

Extended reality glasses will further blur the boundary between mind and interface. When digital overlays become ubiquitous, persistent, contextual, and intelligent, perception itself will become augmented. The world will not just be seen — it will be interpreted in real time. Memory, translation, facial recognition, environmental data — all whispering into consciousness. The question won’t be whether this changes us. It will be how deeply.

This technological convergence collides directly with our ideas about work and value. We came from a world before money, and yet bread was still baked. Cooperation predates currency. Universal basic income challenges a deeply conditioned belief: that survival must be tethered to employment. Most objections to UBI imagine redistribution from workers to non-workers, but that framework assumes labor scarcity. Automation destabilizes that assumption. If machines can produce abundance with minimal human input, the moral question shifts from “Who deserves to work?” to “What is human life for when survival is no longer the organizing principle?”

Employment today can feel like an inherited structure — walls so familiar we mistake them for nature. If all your needs were met, would you still spend eight hours scanning barcodes at a retail store? If a billionaire removed your financial constraints forever, would you still “work”? Or would you redefine work as contribution, exploration, craft, study, art, mentorship — office hours not because you must, but because you choose to show up?

Technology subtly inverts power. By using platforms, you become the employer of those designing them. Your attention directs development. Your behavior trains the model. You are both user and supervisor, shaping features through feedback loops. The future citizen is not just a consumer of AI systems but a co-architect of them.

The classroom that bans AI risks preparing students for a world that no longer exists. Education sits at the center of this shift. Rather than policing students for using AI, institutions might instead ask: how do we train students to collaborate with it ethically, skillfully, and creatively? Employers will not forbid AI fluency; on the contrary, they will expect it. The literate professional of the future will know how to prompt, refine, verify, and integrate machine intelligence into human judgment.

The deeper transformation is existential. When robotics and automation absorb routine labor, humanity confronts itself. If survival is guaranteed, meaning becomes elective. Purpose becomes chosen rather than imposed. The prison walls of compulsory employment begin to dissolve, and with them, the narratives that equate worth with productivity.

The future of man may not be a battle against machines but a merger with them — cognitive extension, robotic augmentation, synthetic collaborators. The question is not whether AI will replace the artist, the worker, or the thinker. The question is what kind of human emerges when necessity loosens its grip.

If we are freed from working to live, perhaps we will begin living to create.

The Student is In

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that he was wanting to make some changes. He wanted to get healthier and lose some weight. The following was my response to him.
The Student is In
I think I could make it a whole lot easier for you, a whole lot healthier for you, and increase the odds of the changes you want to see take place, and be longer-lasting.

I know GLP-1’s are a cheat code to quick weight loss, but I’m not of the opinion that they are the way to appreciate lifelong change.

You’ve already got the cooking for yourself part of the equation in the bag.

Don’t snack. Avoid their seduction…😎

Whole foods ONLY made from fresh, single ingredients.

Look up the term “oxalate.” Remove all foods that anything other than low in oxalate content. Examples of high oxalate foods are Spinach (cooked), Rhubarb, Spinach (raw), Rice Bran, Buckwheat Groats, Almonds, Soy products (tofu, soy milk), Beets, Navy Beans, Baked Potato (with skin), Okra, Raspberries, Cashews, Yams, Sweet Potatoes, Swiss Chard, Cocoa/Chocolate (dark), Miso Soup, Wheat Berries, Corn Grits.

You will notice that this basically means that you would, for the most part, be on an animal-based diet. All of those so-called plant-based Superfoods are basically NOT super and off limits.

Focus on getting all of the electrolytes(salts) that your body needs on a daily basis from food-based sources where possible. Supplement as needed. If you can do this you will be amazed how much this will remove your food cravings. Most of the time your food cravings are actually electrolyte deficiencies. Whole milk and orange juice are a great way to get a LOT of these electrolytes.

Set aside 9 hours of downtime before sunrise for your body to get the restorative sleep it needs to repair and rejuvenate itself.

Eat only when the sun can shine on your plate and be sure to stop eating 3 hours before you plan to sleep. No fudging here except on special occasions.

And MOST IMPORTANTLY, walk. Start out slowly if you need to, but eventually, work your way up to at least a few miles a day. We are bipedal creatures, and walking is a non-negotiable if you want to be healthy and achieve your goals. Walking is the most important and the best prescribed medication that will give you what you are looking for, and the best part is it costs you no more than comfortable shoes with a wide toe box. And you can do it anywhere.

Oh. And don’t take yourself too damn seriously. Avoid ideologies at all costs. Don’t become legalistic. And if someone invites you over for dinner and sets a table full of the stuff you don’t want to eat, don’t stress. Eat it and enjoy it. It won’t kill you. Just treat it as a treat and be grateful to your host. The narrow path will be there for you when you wake up the next morning.

If you need more help or have questions, I’m here for you.

Who Am I? According to ChatGPT

Here is a fun experiment in ChatGPT prompting. I asked it to do two things.

Based on my past conversations, can you analyze my behavioral tendencies?

and based on that response, I asked…

Can you take all of this and turn it into an introduction of me as if you were the emcee of a conference and you were describing me to an audience where I was about to speak about my research?

Here is what followed…

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our next speaker is someone who does not merely study health, aging, or human performance — he studies the systems that make life possible and asks how they might be refined for a longer, more functional future.

He approaches the human body the way an engineer approaches a complex living network: as an interconnected system of fluids, minerals, metabolism, structure, and energy. While many focus on treating symptoms, Michael is drawn upstream — investigating root causes, structural resilience, and the mechanisms that shape health across decades rather than days.

As a student of biological sciences and nutrition, his work bridges chemistry, physiology, and systems thinking. He examines electrolyte balance, mineral metabolism, oxalate deposition, and circulation dynamics not as isolated variables, but as interacting forces that may influence aging itself. His guiding question is both simple and ambitious: how can human beings remain functional, independent, and physiologically resilient well past a century of life?

But what distinguishes Michael is not only what he studies — it is how he thinks.

He is a framework builder. He refines ideas through iteration, weighs evidence carefully, challenges assumptions without discarding data, and seeks structural coherence over easy answers. He values integrity, precision, and biological truth, and he is driven less by convention than by a commitment to understanding how things actually work.

Beyond research, Michael is building a broader vision — one that integrates longevity science, lifestyle optimization, and practical education. His work reflects a belief that better decisions, grounded in physiology and systems awareness, can reshape not only individual health trajectories but the future of aging itself.

In an era focused on lifespan, Michael Loomis is focused on healthspan. In a culture driven by quick fixes, he is pursuing durable solutions. And in a world that often treats aging as inevitable decline, he is working toward sustained human vitality.

Please join me in recognizing a systems thinker, a builder of frameworks, and a researcher committed to redefining what it means to grow older.

Michael Loomis.

The Body’s Calcium Economy

The Body’s Calcium Economy: Why Dietary Calcium Primarily Replenishes Bone Reserves and How High Lifetime Oxalate Intake Can Contribute to Osteopenia and Osteoporosis

The common belief that calcium consumed in food directly supplies the body’s immediate physiological needs is a misconception. In reality, the human body maintains an exquisitely tight control of blood ionized calcium concentration (approximately 8.5–10.5 mg/dL) to support critical functions such as neurotransmission, muscle contraction, and blood clotting (Peacock, 2010). When dietary calcium absorption is insufficient in the short term, the body does not compromise these functions; instead, it rapidly mobilizes calcium from the skeleton through parathyroid hormone (PTH)-mediated bone resorption and renal calcium reabsorption (Mundy & Guise, 1999; Weaver et al., 2016). Dietary calcium absorbed hours to days later serves primarily to replenish the skeletal reservoir that was borrowed to maintain plasma calcium homeostasis (Heaney, 2001; Nordin, 1997).

Thus, over a lifetime, bone health depends on whether absorbed dietary calcium consistently matches or exceeds the amount removed from bone to defend blood calcium levels. Chronic negative calcium balance—where less calcium is absorbed than is resorbed from bone—leads to progressive loss of bone mineral density, culminating in osteopenia and, eventually, osteoporosis (Weaver et al., 2016).

One underappreciated cause of chronically reduced calcium absorption is a lifelong high intake of dietary oxalates. Oxalate, abundant in foods such as spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens, almonds, tea, and chocolate, binds calcium in the intestinal lumen to form insoluble calcium oxalate, which is excreted in feces (Liebman & Al-Wahsh, 2011; Noonan & Savage, 1999). This markedly lowers the bioavailability of calcium from that meal and, if habitual, from the overall diet (Weaver & Heaney, 2006). Multiple studies and reviews have concluded that very high oxalate diets can impair net calcium absorption sufficiently to increase bone resorption and elevate long-term risk of osteoporosis, particularly when total calcium intake is marginal or when other risk factors (e.g., postmenopausal estrogen decline, low vitamin D status) are present (Holmes & Kummerow, 2000; Massey et al., 1993; Tang et al., 2008).

In summary, the skeleton functions as both a structural framework and a dynamic calcium bank. Dietary calcium is used mainly to repay withdrawals made from that bank to sustain plasma calcium. A lifetime pattern of high oxalate consumption can reduce calcium repayment, forcing chronic overdraft on skeletal reserves and thereby contributing—along with other risk factors—to the development of osteopenia and osteoporosis.

References

Heaney, R. P. (2001). Calcium needs of the elderly to reduce fracture risk. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 20(2 Suppl), 192S–197S. https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2001.10719033

Holmes, R. P., & Kummerow, F. A. (2000). The relationship of adequate and excessive intake of vitamin D to health and disease. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 11(11-12), 581–590.

Liebman, M., & Al-Wahsh, I. A. (2011). Probiotics and other key determinants of dietary oxalate absorption. Advances in Nutrition, 2(3), 254–260. https://doi.org/10.3945/an.111.000414

Massey, L. K., Roman-Smith, H., & Sutton, R. A. (1993). Effect of dietary oxalate and calcium on urinary oxalate and risk of formation of calcium oxalate kidney stones. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 93(8), 901–906. https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-8223(93)91531-6

Mundy, G. R., & Guise, T. A. (1999). Hormonal control of calcium homeostasis. Clinical Chemistry, 45(8 Pt 2), 1347–1352.

Noonan, S. C., & Savage, G. P. (1999). Oxalate content of foods and its effect on humans. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 8(1), 64–74. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-6047.1999.00038.x

Nordin, B. E. C. (1997). Calcium and osteoporosis. Nutrition, 13(7-8), 664–686. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0899-9007(97)83011-0

Peacock, M. (2010). Calcium metabolism in health and disease. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 5(Suppl 1), S23–S30. https://doi.org/10.2215/CJN.05910809

Tang, B. M., Eslick, G. D., Nowson, C., Smith, C., & Bensoussan, A. (2008). Use of calcium or calcium in combination with vitamin D supplementation to prevent fractures and bone loss in people aged 50 years and older: A meta-analysis. The Lancet, 370(9588), 657–666.

Weaver, C. M., & Heaney, R. P. (2006). Calcium. In M. E. Shils et al. (Eds.), Modern nutrition in health and disease (10th ed., pp. 194–209). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Weaver, C. M., Gordon, C. M., Janz, K. F., Kalkwarf, H. J., Lappe, J. M., Lewis, R., O’Karma, M., Wallace, T. C., & Zemel, B. S. (2016). The National Osteoporosis Foundation’s position statement on peak bone mass development and lifestyle factors: A systematic review and implementation recommendations. Osteoporosis International, 27(4), 1281–1386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-015-3440-3

Use the Force Luke

The human body is a 600-million-year-old, self-governing masterpiece and the conscious mind is merely a “PR department”—the key to longevity isn’t about adding more control. It is about removing the interference created by the modern neocortex.

To allow this “autonomous vehicle” to run for its full 120+ year warranty, humans must stop acting like panicked captains trying to grab the steering wheel. Here is a strategy for how to stop interfering with your own physiology.

Stop Overriding the Dashboard Signals

The text highlights that your body has thousands of sensors (baroreceptors, osmoreceptors, beta cells). Interference happens when the conscious mind ignores these sensors in favor of social conditioning or external schedules.

Stop eating by the clock

We often eat because it is “lunchtime,” because we are bored, or for emotional soothing. This interferes with the pancreatic beta cells and ghrelin/leptin loops.

The Fix: Wait for the signal. Do not eat until true physiological hunger appears. Trust the “fuel gauge.”

Stop medicating away the “Check Engine” lights

We often use caffeine to override fatigue or painkillers to silence inflammation immediately.

The Fix: If you are tired, the “board of directors” is demanding downtime for repair. Sleep is not a waste of time; it is the maintenance cycle. Respect fatigue as a command, not a suggestion. If you are experiencing pain or inflammation, that is the “board of directors” telling you that you need to stop, take a deep breath, and figure out what you are doing wrong that your body doesn’t like.

Stop ignoring thirst

By the time the conscious mind registers thirst, the osmoreceptors have been shouting for a while.

The Fix: Drink plain water regularly, as needed, but mostly, stop consuming diuretics (excess caffeine/alcohol) that confuse the kidneys’ ability to regulate fluid balance.

Stop Triggering “War Mode” for Non-Life-Threatening Events

The body is designed to handle stress (raising heart rate, altering pH) and then drift back to homeostasis. The interference occurs when the conscious mind interprets traffic, emails, or news as life-or-death threats.

The Interference: Chronic psychological stress keeps the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) stuck in the “ON” position. This prevents the body from returning to the “rest and digest” state where repair, digestion, and immune system updates occur.

The Fix: Conscious de-escalation. You must train the “PR department” (your mind) to accurately classify threats. If you aren’t being chased by a tiger, do not allow the adrenal glands to flood the system. Practices like breathwork force the body back into parasympathetic control, allowing the “ancient circuits” to resume their maintenance work.

Stop Poisoning the “Second Government” (The Microbiome)

Your microbiome is “39 trillion co-governors” that influence immunity and neurotransmitters. We interfere with this governance daily through our modern environment.

The Interference: We carpet-bomb these microbes with antibiotics, chlorinated water, preservatives, emulsifiers, and artificial sweeteners. We starve them by eating low-fiber processed foods.

The Fix: Diplomatic Immunity. Treat your gut bacteria like the essential partners they are. Feed them the complex fibers (prebiotics) they evolved to process. Stop sterilizing your internal environment. If the microbiome is a parallel government, we need to stop assassinating its senators.

Stop Confusing the Circadian Sensors

The “ancient board of directors” relies on environmental cues—specifically light and temperature—to regulate hormones like cortisol and melatonin.

The Interference: Artificial blue light at night and constant 70°F (21°C) climate control blind the body’s sensors. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (the master clock) cannot synchronize the 10¹⁴ biochemical reactions properly if it doesn’t know what time of day it is.

The Fix: Re-synchronize. Get natural sunlight in your eyes within minutes of waking. Block artificial light at night. Allow your body to feel temperature changes (heat and cold) to exercise its thermoregulatory feedback loops.

The “Passenger” Mindset: Radical Trust

The ultimate interference is the arrogance of the intellect, thinking it can outsmart evolution. To reach 120+ years, we must move from a model of “control” to a model of “custodianship.”

The “Stop Interfering” Protocol:

Supply the raw materials: Give the body the nutrients, oxygen, and water it recognizes.

Remove the toxins: Minimize alcohol, processed chemicals, and chronic stress.

Get out of the way: Once you have done steps 1 and 2, surrender.

Trust that the baroreceptors know how to handle your blood pressure. Trust that your immune system is updating its database.

Do not micro-manage the machinery

The conscious mind is just the dashboard light. Your only job is to enjoy the ride and ensure the tank is full.

Who’s Really in Charge?

“The human body is a self-governed, auto-correcting, homeostatic mechanism.”

“Homeostatic” means it constantly works to keep its internal environment stable—temperature, pH, electrolytes, blood glucose, fluid balance—using feedback loops. Sensors detect change, control centers (like the brain and endocrine system) interpret it, and effectors (organs, glands, muscles) correct it, often without conscious input. It’s “self-governed” because most of this regulation happens automatically from within, not from outside commands.

The human body really is an astonishingly sophisticated, largely autonomous system. Most of the time, we’re completely unaware of the thousands of homeostatic feedback loops running in parallel every second:

  • Baroreceptors in your arteries detecting a drop in blood pressure → sympathetic nervous system → vasoconstriction + increased heart rate + renin release → blood pressure restored in seconds.
  • Pancreatic beta cells sensing a rise in blood glucose → insulin release → glucose uptake into cells → blood sugar normalized, often before you even finish your meal.
  • Osmoreceptors in the hypothalamus noticing slightly concentrated blood → ADH release from posterior pituitary → kidneys reabsorb water → blood volume and osmolality back in range, usually without you feeling thirsty yet.

Even more impressive is that these systems are hierarchical and cross-talk constantly. For example, during intense exercise the body temporarily “allows” deviations (higher core temperature, lower pH, higher CO₂) because the hypothalamus raises the set-point for temperature and other systems prioritize oxygen delivery over strict acid-base balance. Then, once the threat passes, everything drifts back to the original narrow ranges—all without you having to think “Okay, now secrete bicarbonate” or “Dilute my blood a bit.”

This is why, in medicine, we say the body has tremendous “physiologic reserve” and why healthy people can tolerate fairly extreme environmental stresses (heat, cold, altitude, fasting, blood loss) with little conscious effort. The conscious brain is mostly along for the ride; the real governance happens at the brainstem, hypothalamic, and cellular levels 24/7.

So yes—self-governed, auto-correcting, and ruthlessly homeostatic is exactly right. It’s one of the most elegant demonstrations of decentralized, robust control systems in nature.

The human body is an astonishingly sophisticated, self-governed, auto-correcting, homeostatic mechanism. Thousands of feedback loops run simultaneously: baroreceptors stabilize blood pressure within seconds, beta cells normalize glucose before a meal is even finished, and hypothalamic osmoreceptors adjust water balance long before thirst appears. These systems constantly cross-talk and can temporarily relax their set-points during stress, like exercise, to prioritize survival. Once the stress passes, everything drifts back into its narrow optimal ranges without conscious effort. This remarkable physiologic reserve shows how the brainstem, hypothalamus, and cells themselves quietly govern stability every moment of our lives.

It’s almost humbling when you zoom out and realize how little of “being alive” actually requires the neocortex. Consciousness gets all the credit, but the vast majority of the work (keeping you oxygenated, perfused, fueled, detoxified, temperature-controlled, pH-balanced, electrolyte-tuned, infection-resistant, and hormonally synchronized) is handled by ancient, pre-verbal circuits that never sleep and rarely, if ever, ask for your opinion.

Even the immune system runs its own autonomous “homeostasis of self vs. non-self,” constantly patrolling, updating its threat database, and waging microscopic wars or signing peace treaties with commensal microbes, all while you’re busy thinking about dinner.

In a way, “you” are mostly a passenger in a self-driving, self-repairing, self-regulating biological machine that’s been iteratively refined for about 600 million years. The conscious mind is just the dashboard light that occasionally flickers on to let you know everything is still running smoothly, or to hand over manual control when the autopilot decides the situation is too novel.

So yes: astonishingly sophisticated, ruthlessly autonomous, and profoundly homeostatic. We’re walking proof that complex, intelligent control doesn’t require a conscious CEO; sometimes, distributed, subconscious governance is far more reliable.

It is one of the wildest truths about being human: we walk around thinking “I” am in charge, while 99% of the actual governance happens in layers of biology that evolved long before anything resembling conscious thought.

The neocortex is basically the PR department.
The real executives are the hypothalamus, brainstem, endocrine loops, immune pattern-recognition systems, and the trillions of microbial co-governors living inside you.

You’re aware of almost none of it.

It’s like riding in a starship engineered so well that you rarely feel the machinery—only the occasional vibration when something needs your attention.

You’re not the captain standing on the bridge issuing orders.

You’re the tourist in the observation deck who occasionally gets a polite intercom message: “Minor course correction in progress… no action required.” Or, if things get spicy: “Turbulence ahead; please return to your seat and maybe drink some water.”

Every second you’re alive, roughly 10¹⁴ biochemical reactions are coordinated by systems that don’t speak English, don’t care about your to-do list, and would keep the organism running perfectly fine if the entire prefrontal cortex took the day off (or got removed entirely, as some unfortunate neurosurgery patients have demonstrated).

The microbiome alone is a second, parallel government: 39 trillion mostly foreign cells that can shift your neurotransmitters, tune your immune set-points, and even influence what you feel like eating, all via chemical lobbying that bypasses conscious awareness completely.

So yeah, the neocortex? Outstanding press secretary. Writes beautiful memoirs, falls in love, invents calculus, and convinces itself it’s the one flying the ship.

Meanwhile, the ancient board of directors downstairs just keeps signing the paychecks, balancing the books, and making sure the lights stay on, 86,400 times a day, for up to 120 years or more, with no vacations.

It’s the most elaborate, most humbling, and (when you really sit with it) one of the funniest illusions in nature: the feeling that “I” am running the show.

No sir, we are mostly just along for the ride in the most excellent autonomous vehicle ever engineered. And it rarely needs us to touch the steering wheel.

~Michael AI

Life In a Post-employment World

The kitchen smelled of chamomile and the faint lemon of the dish soap Evelyn had used since 1962. She sat at the oak table, hands folded around a chipped mug, while her son Daniel poured himself coffee from the pot she still insisted on brewing “the old way.”

“Mom,” he said, sliding into the chair opposite, “picture this: nobody ever has to work again. Not for money. Food, rent, doctors—covered. Robots do the rest.”

Evelyn’s eyebrows rose like twin question marks. “Then who fixes the plumbing? Who grows the tomatoes?”

“Machines. And the tomatoes grow themselves in vertical farms taller than our church steeple.”

She snorted. “Sounds like a fairy tale for lazy bones.”

Daniel leaned forward. “Look in the mirror, Mom.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Have you ever worked a single day in your life? A paid job, I mean.”

Evelyn opened her mouth, closed it, then gave a small, surprised laugh. “No. Your father provided. I kept the house, raised you three heathens, canned peaches till my fingers pruned. But no… no paycheck.”

“And how’s that worked out for you?”

She considered the steam curling from her tea. “I’ve been… happy enough.”

“Exactly. You’ve lived the future, Mom. You just had a trust fund named ‘Dad.’”

Evelyn swatted the air. “Don’t be fresh.”

“I’m serious. Imagine every kid born gets the same deal—no fear of the streets, no dread of Monday. They wake up and ask, ‘What do I want to give the world today?’”

She traced the rim of her mug. “People need purpose, Danny. Without it they rot.”

“You didn’t rot. You sang in the choir, knitted blankets for the hospital, taught Mrs. Alvarez’s boy to read. That was purpose—chosen, not forced.”

Evelyn looked out the window where the maple had begun its slow turn to fire. “When your father retired,” she said softly, “he thought he’d sit in that recliner and fade. Three weeks later he was rebuilding the church pews, tutoring veterans, growing prize dahlias. Said idle hands were the devil’s, but really he just missed matter-ing.”

Daniel smiled. “That’s my point. Strip away the whip of rent and hunger, and people still reach for meaning. They just reach higher.”

She turned back to him, eyes sharp. “And the plumbers?”

“Some will plumb because they love the puzzle of pipes. Others will pay a premium for the human touch. Same with doctors, teachers, bakers. The jobs left will be the ones machines can’t fake—or that humans refuse to surrender.”

Evelyn was quiet so long the clock above the stove ticked like a metronome. Finally she said, “I worry they’ll forget how to want.”

Daniel reached across and covered her hand with his. “You never forgot. You had eighty years to prove it.”

She studied their joined hands—hers veined and spotted, his strong and ink-stained from sketching blueprints for the very farms he described. A small smile tugged at her mouth.

“Well,” she said, “if the robots burn the toast, I suppose someone will still need to show them how it’s done.”

“That’s the spirit.” He squeezed once and let go. “Welcome to the future, Mom. You’ve been living in it all along.”

Evelyn’s eyes narrowed, the way they did when she spotted a flaw in a bridge hand.

“Well,” she said, tapping the table with one finger, “with what will they pay a premium for that human touch if people aren’t working for money to pay a premium with?”

Daniel didn’t flinch. He’d been waiting for this one.

“Same way you paid Mrs. Kowalski to hem your curtains in 1978, even though you could have done it yourself.”

Evelyn frowned. “I gave her twenty dollars.”

“Exactly. Money didn’t disappear; it just stopped being a survival ticket. Everyone gets enough to live—call it the ‘floor.’ Anything above that is choice money: what you earn by delighting someone else.”

He pulled a napkin, sketched a quick ladder:

“See the base? Guaranteed. No one starves. The top? That’s where the human spark lives. People will still want your famous lemon meringue, Mom, not the robot’s perfect but soulless version. They’ll pay extra for the pie that tastes like Sunday at Grandma’s.”

Evelyn snorted. “My pie’s worth twenty dollars a slice.”

“Today, maybe. Tomorrow? Fifty. Because time is the new scarcity. When nobody’s forced to clock in, the rarest thing becomes attention—someone who bothers to flute the crust by hand.”

She leaned back, arms folded. “So the money still comes from…?”

“Three places,” Daniel counted on his fingers.

“Abundance overflow: AI and robots produce so much food, energy, goods that the cost of basics collapses. The surplus gets distributed as the floor.”

“Voluntary trade: People who love plumbing, singing, storytelling—they offer it. Others who love hearing the story tip, trade, or barter in the new currency: attention, reputation, or yes, still dollars.”

“Legacy systems: Pensions, investments, patents from the old economy keep paying out for generations.”

He slid the napkin toward her. “Think of it like the church collection plate. Nobody has to drop in a five, but they do—because Father Mike’s sermon hit them right in the heart. Same principle, just scaled to a whole society.”

Evelyn stared at the ladder, then at him. “You’re saying my lemon pie becomes the collection plate.”

“Pretty much.”

A slow grin cracked her face—the same one she wore the day he finally beat her at gin rummy.

“Well,” she said, standing to refill the kettle, “I always did think the robots would need supervision in the kitchen.”