Embracing Orthogonality

I was introduced to the word orthogonal by Mark Baker ( @guruanaerobic on Twitter). I've lived this way for a very long time but the word provides a great articulation. Basically it means to know when to not go along with the crowd, realizing that the crowd can often be wrong, disastrously so on occasion. To be orthogonal to society is to set out to do your own thing regardless of what others think.

1. Quit your job

Baker says this all the time as does James Altucher. Take that how you want, years ago I took it to mean be self employed, working from home setting your own schedule, not having an alarm clock, not punching a time clock and as the catalyst for me, wanting to ditch the daily commute to work. Sitting in traffic seems like the biggest possible waste of time. Thank God for the internet.

2. Don't listen to what "they" say about healthy eating

I've researched the hell out of this to draw my conclusion. Don't take my word for it, do your own research to draw your own conclusion. Don't eat grains, don't eat (a lot) of fruit, consume no seed oils. Never eat plant based meat. Don't go vegetarian, don't go vegan. Do eat lots of meat, fish, pork, chicken, eggs, butter and coffee. Nuts are ok too. It is very difficult to get enough bio available protein from plant based food. Plant based food is sky high in omega 6 fatty acids, that is insanely unhealthy for promoting inflammation. Soy found in many plant based food suppresses testosterone which has implications far beyond the obvious.

Grains, oatmeal, pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, cereal, fruit, fruit juice are all high in carbohydrates. This results in being overweight and having blood sugar problems among other maladies leading to metabolic syndrome (Google it). Look at the incidence of obesity in American and how it corresponds to when the carb heavy food pyramid was adopted. The carbs are killing us. The pro-inflammatory foods are killing us. Everything that kills us can be tied back to inflammation or metabolic syndrome or some combo of the two. Everything.

3. Don't listen to what "they" say about exercise

Do resistance training with weight, either dumbbell/barbell weight or body weight. Cardio is a waste of time. Starting around 30 we begin to naturally lose muscle mass, this is called sarcopenia. Eventually we start to naturally lose bone density, osteopenia and we start to naturally lose strength, dynapenia. All three contribute to becoming frail later in life. In EMT training, we are taught to treat a ground level fall in an older person as very serious until proven otherwise. Falling down, for an older person who is frail, can be life altering, the end of their independence. That is not hyperbole.

Staying fit with traditional cardio does not address the three penias. Lifting weights with the right intensity however does provide the benefits of traditional cardio exercise along with obviously building muscle mass to stave off the three penias. All intensity means is using enough weight that it forces you to go slowly (you'll have a longer time under tension) and that your rest in between sets be as short as possible so that you don't recover your breath in between. Here's a list of fantastic diet/fitness experts I made to follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/i/lists/1447376702519263236

4. Don't listen to what "they" say about treating chronic maladies.

Again, I've researched the hell out of this. Do your own research, the Twitter list above can help. Everything we've been told about how to treat chronic maladies is wrong. We've even been given bad information about what actually threatens our health. If you have any sort of malady any sort of thing you take a prescription for, any sort of -itis, a low carbohydrate diet has been studied in conjunction with treating or reversing that condition. I'm not saying low carb reverses every condition or will reverse some condition for everyone afflicted, I'm saying it has been studied and in many cases, many many cases it is effective. I was pre-diabetic a few years ago and reversed it in no time at all going low carb, I also lost 30 pounds I didn't know I needed to lose. Many people, not all but many, can reverse full blown Type 2 Diabetes going low carb. There's a study showing it can be reversed with a 72 hour fast and then going low carb after that. No matter what you have, low carb has been studied. There is no downside to consuming less sugar.

Doctors instead focus on managing chronic maladies with prescriptions, very few of them focus on prevention/reversal/behavior modification to prevent or solve your own medical problem. Be orthogonal here and you will save money and be healthier.

5. No smart houses or electric cars.

Fair enough that this might be crazy talk but don't create pathways to have your house or your car hacked.

6. Avoid the treadmill of consumerism

Live in less house than you can afford, you don't need to level up every time you start making more money. Don't get new cars every five years. Driving your car 10 years past your loan being paid off will leave you with more money in your account or more experiences than you would have otherwise had. All more so driving your car 15 years, or more, past paying your loan off. We have a 2003 4Runner and a 2006 Tundra with no plans to replace them anytime soon.

Don't be a clotheshorse. I have two suits, their both 20-ish years old, they both fit (which is a whole other subject) and I never need to wear them. I'm guessing the last time I wore a suit was in 2017 for a bell ringing ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange.

Those services that send you a box of stuff every month? AYFKM? Don't accumulate stuff, don't accumulate clutter. Do invest in convenience though. An easy example for me is tools. For our lifestyle, having the tool we need, makes our lives easier.

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7. Be skeptical

Politicians lie more than they used to, or maybe because information is easier to access we just know about more lies now. The media is more slanted than it used to be, far more so. If you want to be generous they get more things wrong than they used to. Reuters and Bloomberg are reliable in my opinion. Question what you hear, question what you are told, ask yourself if someone benefits from the message, ask yourself if someone benefits from the signal being sent. If you're getting "news" from Facebook, as opposed to just posting pictures and looking and friends' pictures, you're being heavily manipulated.

Related to health, and again do the research, despite what we're told, cholesterol is not the thing that clogs us up and kills us. Therefor statins are an unnecessary drug. They definitely lower cholesterol but high cholesterol is not what kills us. Cholesterol is actually quite important. There are many studies, Google it, don't take my word for it, showing less all cause mortality in people with higher LDL. LDL is "bad cholesterol." The whole thing is a racket....Google it. If cholesterol oxidizes, that's a problem but the problem has nothing to do with a nominally high number for cholesterol.

8. No mullets or acid wash jeans

This is about not mindlessly succumbing to fads. There's a heard of sheep vibe with a lot of fads that I think should be avoided with high priority. There's comfort in fitting in and being part of the crowd but I don't think there's great outcomes to be had in the crowd. Outcomes don't have to be bad but they can be but a key ingredient to happiness is pursuing what you actually want not what you think you should want because others act like they want (whatever the current fad is).

9. Conspiracy theories or just conspiracies?

Covid seems to be the best example here. The number of things that, depending on how you view it, they got wrong or flat out lied about continues to grow. A lot of the crazy ideas from two years ago are turning out to be true. Regardless of where you stand on vaccines, stopping the spread was complete BS and to the going-along-with-the-crowd point above, many people have allowed themselves to be spun around to believing it was never intended to stop the spread. That is complete horse shit. This one really is just a reiteration of being skeptical.

10. Like what you like, who cares what others think.

I like baseball cards and taking pictures of fire trucks. I couldn't care less how geeky that might seem.

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Embracing Orthogonality

1. Quit your job

2. Don't listen to what "they" say about healthy eating

3. Don't listen to what "they" say about exercise

4. Don't listen to what "they" say about treating chronic maladies.

5. No smart houses or electric cars.

6. Avoid the treadmill of consumerism

7. Be skeptical

8. No mullets or acid wash jeans

9. Conspiracy theories or just conspiracies?

10. Like what you like, who cares what others think.

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