Daniel Schmachtenberger || Upgrade Your Consciousness

Thanks for having me. A lot of things we can talk about. You're a very interesting guy, which is why I wanted to get you on this show. I knew there was lots of areas that we could discuss. I'd like to first start talking a little bit about your childhood, because you had a very interesting educational path that right, or a different I have a different educational path, different and interesting, Yeah, both. Yeah, tell me a little bit about it and sort of how you saw the education system. Yeah.

I didn't know much about the education system because I wasn't exposed to it. I was home taught growing up, and I went to public school for a very brief period a few times as an experiment and a few different private schools, but the vast majority of my childhood education was homeschooled. And the reason was my parents were kind of educational philosophers and were interested to see what would happen if the kid didn't have any fixed curriculum and was just exposed to all the things they could

be exposed to, and then their interests were facilitated. So it was a very kind of constructivist idea. So that was it. I didn't have a certain amount of social studies and geography and math and handwriting and English. It really was just a facilitation of questions and fascination and interest. Times that I did go to school, there were obviously

gaps in knowledge that everyone else was learning. Like I had never shown much interest growing up in American history and understanding states and capitals and that kind of thing. There were areas where I was setting things that were well outside of the scope of anything that would normally be touched in school, and so it didn't translate very well.

What was, of course wonderful about it was I got to not only go very deep in the areas that I had any interest, but my actual interest in life itself was fostered by having the interesting topics supported and not being forced to focus on stuff that was uninterested. Yes, it sounds like you were a pretty curious person and you got a chance to actually run with that as opposed to being held back by that. The term curious person and child are synonymous. That's a good point. That's

a good point. You do see individual differences though in curiosity, and maybe that is partly environment mental supportive and as well as I think geneics do play a role, you know, in terms of dopamine production and their genes that code for dopain. But I think that that's a good point in a lot of ways from the evolutiony perspective. You need curiosity, right, You need or to adapt. I mean, if you have a child who's not going to explore their environment at all, it'll the child will not be

able to adapt at all. What do you study in college? I studied math, physics, philosophy, and undergrad psychology, more philosophy and graduate school, but then getting into ecology, biology, medicine, complex systems. Most of that wasn't in a formal academic situation.

It was in independent studies and research environments. For instance, medicine, was working with some different diagnostic laboratories, working with medical doctors and clintics on complex bases, and working to trying to find insights that were outside of the scope of what we currently had insights on. But what was the college you went to undergrad was to the Marish University in what university? Where's that located? It's in Iowa, Fair Hild, Iowa.

It was a very kind of unique school that was focused on studying the sciences with a deeper thought process around subject object relationship. Cool. So when did you start to think about putting together this neuroacker collective? How did

that come about? Neuro Hackers are relatively recent project. We started it about three years ago, and I had gotten into integrative medicine and kind of diagnostic medicine, therapeutic medicine, especially for cases that both alopathic and integrative medicine didn't have adequate solutions yet, partially because of my own diagnosed illnesses that didn't have adequate solutions that I had to

work on it, some of which had neurodegenerative components. So I got deep into understanding how neuroregular code systems work, how dysfunction works, and because there weren't any adequate solutions offered anywhere. Of course, the only meaningful option was see if novel insights can be generated by approaching in a different way, And so I started applying cybernetic theory how do the bottom up and top down regulatory systems in

the human organism work? In whole systems and complexity theory, how do all of the different omics and all of the different body systems interact and have cascade effects, et cetera. And it ended up leading to a set of hypotheses about how health works, how aging works, and how illness works, and then how illness in a case like mine could have worked led to me being able to do some kind of unique research diagnostics find things out that traditional

medicine had not. That led to me actually being able to treat and reverse the conditions I had that were, you know, reverse autommune antibodies, reverse things that are not usually medically thought it as reversible, which led to me then doing that with a lot of other people who had, you know, working with various integrated doctors who had also what are traditionally deemed as uncurable cases, and getting to see that we could reliably reverse different kinds of pathology,

and this was very meaningful and that we could address not only physical pathology but meaningfully affect people's cognitive and psychological function because with chronic disease, with autoimmune and neurodegen people's cognitive capacity and their emotional status is always effective, and it's effective in ways that have to be supported for them to be able to do what it takes to actually do the rest of the treatments, to have the focus, drive, etc. To do generally a meaningful amount

of work. And so that's what really kind of led into an integrative approach to the future of psychopharmacology, psychooneor immunology, psychiatry, and then starting to look at not just addressing issues to come up to baseline, but also could we enhance baseline. So this is kind of the intersection of biologic transhumanism, can we do fundamental biooptimization and that then intersected with

the other think tank work I had been doing. Why I was working in complex systems, which is how do we support the major transitions and civilization writ large that need to happen, environmental sustainability for major macro issues that we're addressing and there's economic shifts, there's governance shift, there's

infrastructure and technology shifts that have to happen. But there's also recognizing that all of the major issues that we're wanting to address are human behavior mediated, and all of the new capacities we're wanting to bring about are also

going to be human behavior mediated. So then looking at the human physiological, bold and psychological predispositions for more omni considerate or shittier behavior, and what can we do to be able to predispose on the physiology side, predispose human hardware towards increased complexity of thinking, perspective taking capacity and

perspective synthesis capacity, emotional resilience, et cetera. All the things that would decrease the predisposition for our harm externalizing behavior and increase the predisposition and capacity for omni considerate behavior. What do you think are some of the aspects of human nature that's get in the way of compassion and kindness.

What are some of the biggest blocks. It's going to be a very deep question that we're probably going to go into a meaningful rabbit hole if we do, because the topic of human nature versus how that nature is expressed is a very deep one. What is human nature? If by that we mean genetics, who cares because genetic expression ends up changing it radically? Or genetics largely predisposed neuroplasticity,

so we can be radically mimetic creatures. If by nature we mean that which is inexorably unchangeable, well that whole concept is nonsense in a genetic engineering world. One of the things I love about Crisper, even though I actually don't think we're nearly as close to being able to utilize Crisper safely as we think we are, but one of the things I love about it as a thought experiment is as soon as we are now realistically thinking about being able to change the genome, our whole idea

of nature has to change. Conceptually. It's a great thought experiment to say, well, even if we did evolve to have inexorable competitive or whatever trait, now do we want to keep those or not. When you have that level of exponential tech where you can change the connectome, change the genome, the level of existentialism and ethics to say what is a desirable set of traits becomes forefront right.

You have to address it and the course science doesn't do and desirable right, it does what is not what it odds historically, So how do we actually make a scientifically commensurate ethics and existentialism is part of the core of our work. But if I was to just fast forward over all of the subtleties of it and say, what do I think are the aspects of human nature that are inexorably problematic? I would say none. I think there's a lot of aspects of human nature that lead

to problems when the right conditioning is there. But I think other sets of conditioning lead to fundamentally different expressions of that same nature. And so there is a propensity for human agency, for the impulse to self actualize. If that is growing up in the context of zero sum game games and finite games. From a game theoretic perspective, that can look like lack of empathy, pathological competition, selfishness if you're growing up in the context and you're neuroplastically wiring.

In the contexts of positive sum games where winning doesn't require others losing, which then requires numbing to the pain of others losing at each shutting off empathy, and in infinite games where you are not winning to win, but you're winning to keep playing, right, what does it mean to keep playing? So you can't externalize harm when you

change the game theoretic constructs. I think the fundamental impulse to agency self expression and actualization, and the fundamental impulse to communion connecting with others can be simultaneously optimized without any fundamental dichotomy. So the problems are at a game theoretic level, which means an economic worldview, mometic structural level, not a which then effect of course genetic expression, but are not fundamentally at a genetic expression level. Sure, I

definitely hear what you're saying. And as you know, I'm a big fan of abrahamham Maslow is thinking and you just use the term self actualization. And you know when he talked about is man fundamentally good or bad? He says he thinks we're neutral, And you know, it just depends on what are the sort of conditions that are

getting what needs met and what needs not met. So I do like to think of it from a needs protective It looks like you kind of would agree with that sort of perspective of neutrality in a way, or what part of the human condition to better want to highlight. I think that's saying neutral is fair, Meaning we can have an environment. Say we go to some part of North Africa where female genital mutilation is ubiquitous, or we go to the dark Ages were burning women as witches

was ubiquitous. We can now look at that from outside or retrospective as a like ubiquitous insanity right of the whole population. They were like infected with a psycho pathologic set of means we when we look today at the fact that we externalize harm to the environment with almost every single action we do, and we still think that war is a reasonable solution to differences, and we step

over homeless people while we go get more shit. Future generations will see us as ubiquitously insane psychopathologic mimetically, I'm sure of that. Yeah. And yet of course when anyone's in their ubiquitous psychopathology, it's just called normal. So we obviously have the possibility for a level of terrible shit like scientifically optimized torture that no other animal had. We also have the capacity for levels of insight and rapture and charity and selflessness in other animals. I mean, we're

these just radical potential capacities. But I wouldn't say we're neutral, because universe is neutral. The nature of evolution itself is that it selects for more orderly complexity that has new emergent properties, and it doesn't select for the opposite. Right Like, there is a macro t Los directionality to evolution that goes from non life to life, from pro career to you carry out, from plant neurology from reptilian the million, et cetera. So life isn't mutual. Change is moving in

an orderly complexity direction. And with humans right now, look, we're at this very interesting place where we can actually understand that because of our capacity for abstraction and choose to participate with it. And our technological capacity is big enough that if we don't go self destruct and so we're at a very unique point right now at the beginning of the escape philosophy on exponential tech where we have existential tech. Right nuke was the beginning, but now

it's becoming decentralized existential tech. So we will either have the negative traits that we have had for a long time self destruct us, or we will emerge into fundamentally net positive traits because it's the only way to make it through. So this is cool. So we do have existential tech, and you're in a lot of ways developing the opposite of that. What do you call that? What's the opposite of existential tech? Technology that enhances us in a way that makes us more pro social and cooperative?

What is that called? You could call it omni considerate tech. Omni consideration is a term that you could apply at different scales. When we're thinking about working in human biology, medicine, well being, omni consideration would mean what are all the pathways that are affected by this chemical or this therapy, other than the ones that we're intentionally affecting, which are usually what we call side effects, And how can we be considered across the entire system, including what will the

effects be in the future. Are we downregulating an internal regulatory system or are we upregulating its capacity or so. Omni considerate at the level of human physiology would be just factoring all the externalities progressively better. Omni considered at the level of the environment would be factoring all the externalities of what affects the whole supply chain the environment right. Omni considered at the top level is recognizing that we are not really separate parts that can think of our

own advantage and disadvantage and lose games separately. But we interfect each other powerfully enough, and we interfect the biosphere powerfully enough that we are all really emergent properties of the biosphere, emergent properties of the whole. So we have to think about the balance sheet of the whole thing, right of civilization and the whole how do we support that. That's omni consideration applied to tech and choice making really large.

We had Dan Siegel on this podcast where we had a very similar conversation about the interconnectedness of all life forms. But the thing is, I mean, it must be frustrating. You must be frustrated, you know. I mean, you see something, you kind of see a truth that I think, you know, you're quite right. And I think a lot of people take this view as well. I think that a lot of Buddhists take that view and kind of see that. But there's so much in the world of people that

refuse to see that view. I mean, the American politics, right, noll is you know, one example of this polarization seems to be hot right now you know, for lack of a better word, and so it must be really frustrated in and what do you think we can do to convince people on the level which they will be receptive to it? How can we have them see that true? Me may ap prose that question a slightly different way. American politics isn't just dysfunctional and it's broken, right, It

was breaking for some time. And in last election we got to see the Republican Party not put forward good qualified candidates, the Democratic Party take people's favorite candidate and not support them and support someone who is highly unfavored. We got to see the two party system as a whole breakdown, like it was. The beauty of what happened was what only a few people were really acutely aware of.

Almost everybody became acutely aware of, which is that it is a no longer adequate system for how we do governance. And so we see this kind of increasing chaos there, not just in the US, but with Grexit, with issues in Career, with issues in Russia. Like around the world, we can see a movement towards nationalism because of problems with globalism, but also nationalism, like we didn't have seven

billion people. Ever, right, we only hit a billion deal in eighteen fifteen for the first time after two and a half millions of months, and we didn't have this level of the technology per capita in the world is much resource capita. So we're in a fundamentally different scenario than we've ever been, and we needed different kind of decision making and different kind of economics, and it would take us a while to get into it. But in the next fifteen years, thirty percent of all jobs will

become obsolete from technological automation. That is, that will be a complete failure of capitalism unless we do something like a basic income, because not only you won't be able to move people to other jobs, because AI will be automating other jobs. So you've got guys like Elons who are famous capitalists saying go to basic income, which is not capitalism, and it's also not long term sustainable. The

critiques of it are also warranted. It's on the path to something that is not Marxist socialist capitalist, but fundamentally new stuff that's mediated by new technological capacities we didn't have in previous levels of ECA theory. So I don't think it's just about motivating people to see something different because the thing that we need to move to hasn't been sealable, right, it's emerging. It's about now actually developing what solutions for a ongoingly viable civilization in the presence

of the technological power. We have what that actually looks like and been building that so it's demonstrated. Success creates an exodus from the failing system to a viable system. I mean there is a in terms of the seeing aspect and seeing different perspectives, I mean something more fundamental, and that's just seeing the value of not being selfish.

There is this innate human tendency that to be selfish, and I mean I hear you talking, and I hear someone who's making abstract arguments that are not implication of you and only you, but people. I just see a lot everywhere. I see people who are making decisions solely based on them and only them. And that's obviously problematic form in the long run and the rest of the planet. But it's hard to convince people of that because of

these strong ego protection drives. You notice that as a kid they might think about them and only them, and then maybe as a parent they think about them and their kids. Right as someone who stepped deeply into a religious organization, they think about them and their people, whatever their group is. If they become nationalists in a deep way, as a citizen, they think about them and their people

as a citizenship or as a race. So this movement from egocentric to ethnocentric to right, there's identity of who we are connected to that expands, and the direction of evolution is more inclusivity than to world centric and cosmocentric. How do we recognize more that we're interconnected with and include that in our circle of care and choicemaking. I think the key thing to recognize right now is, and

this is a hard one, but civilization. The main ways that we have done civilization so far are coming to an end, and fundamentally new systems will emerge if we

are to continue making it. If you talk to people who are studying coral and ocean acidification, dead zones in the ocean, ocean temperature raise, et cetera, they'll say, we have a very short number of years to make the oceans cooler than they currently are because before we're actually dying slowly at the current temperature, and we depend on them existing tidal flankdon that supports the atmosphere. The same is true across so many you know, fifteen years to

thirty percent of the jobs gone. That means a switch off of capitalism and a very short time frame. Where climate change is not a Chinese issue or an Indian issue, or a US issue. It is a human on Earth issue, and more than human right It's like a mammal on Earth issue. So is nuclear disarmament, so are the threats of exponential tech. We've never had a time in the history of the world where all of our issues were interconnected, global and existential. You had like Gandhi dealing with an

Indian issue. You had people being written to go find some new land to start America. There's no new land to go find somewhere else. You can't leave the problem, and you can't say somebody else can continue to be problematic, like any country continuing in the wrong direction with species extinction or climate change strategies is enough to take us

over the tipping point. So we're at this unique place where our global interconnectedness and power is such that we either all collectively identify that we're in this together, on this tiny, little bitty spaceship called Earth floating through this vast cosmos, and we upregulate how we do everything to have no externalities, to be omnipositive, or we all don't make it together. Basically, win lose games are over because

we are too big for the playing field. What it takes to beat the other guy actually destroys the whole playing field. But now we move into either or lose lose games. But there's one of those two win win or lose lose. Yeah, in order to have that perspective that you really have to take the long perspective beyond. You have to be able to imagine the planet and care about the planet beyond your very puny eighty years max if you're lucky, you know, or one hundred years

in max. You know, perspective. You have to think about beyond that. And I don't think a lot of people really are thinking beyond that. If you look at the fact that we're looking at geoengineering, which could have radical consequences to our atmosphere in the world for many generations because we are so desperate about temperature change in the next few years. The issue with coral is being addressed

in the next five years. It's not eighty years. The issue with everyone losing their current jobs is the next fifteen years. This is this is if people have children, before their children grow up, they won't be growing up into a world anything like the one they grew up in.

So you actually don't need very long range thinking. You just need to pull the ostrich head out of the sand, actually have a look and say, thought, what does it actually take to close the gap between the trajectory who we're on and the one we need to be into. Now that's fair. There are certainly our issues that are that we need to be awakened to within right now. No,

I definitely take that point. Can we talk about ewotropics and define that that's going to be a new term to a lot of our listeners, So I don't want to just throw that word out there. Can you explain what that word means and what people are doing in that space? Sure, No, tropic is a term. It was

defined with the development of a molecule called paracitin. It's the beginning of the research in this area really deeply, which means a chemical that can enhance some aspect of cognitive capability beyond normal baseline without meaningfully negative side effects. And it's a rough definition, but that's still generally how

it's used. So some aspect of cognitive enhancement could mean short term memory or working memory or long term memory, or focus or concentration or creativity or analysis or synthesis or you know, some of those things and hopefully more of them. And beyond baseline means not just taking someone who has brain fog and getting them back to normal capacity, which say someone has a deficiency of some key nutrient

the brain needs. Supplementing those brain nutrients could get someone back up to baseline, but it's not going to get them beyond baseline, because that's part of the evolutionary environment that evolved to baseline. These are going to be things that are modulating, modifying some aspect of normal physiology. Typically when you modify normal physiology, there is some trade off effect that occurs, or you get some negative somewhere else.

So the idea that you could enhance something beyond baseline and not have a meaningful negative is this kind of like magical unicorn idea, but it actually seems to be demonstrating itself as true in a number of areas where and this is in contradistinction to both let's say brain nutrients that would just bring you back up to baseline if you were deficient, or other forms of medicine that would bring you up back up to baseline if there's some path of physiology, or say you're dealing with anti

inflammation of brain or inflammation or whatever. Or some smart drugs that can increase some aspect of a function beyond baseline but have meaningful consequence. Is methanphetamine, adderall, etc. Right, And depending upon someone's physiology, these have the ability to modify dopamine, modify a sealpoline, whatever it is, depending upon

what kind of drug it is. But typically those single drug synthetic mechanisms, they work through some process that overrides the way the body mattually produced that chemical, that transmitter, which means if you use some long term you can

get down regulation and dependence at the addiction. And oftentimes they're modifying one chemical in a way where that chemical is getting kind of fixed based on an external stimulus, so you're less adaptive and that chemical that was in a dynamic set of ratio for a bunch of other chemicals. The other chemicals aren't also being effected. So in other words, you'll get a narrow set of positive effects. It's only going to affect some aspects of cognitive function. You can

get side effects and down regulation. So nootropics are the exploration into how to upregulate things ideally lastingly, at minimum with out lasting leaders Do we have data on the long term effects of trying neotropics, like over the lifespan some we have garactam starting that field was started studied in the early sixties, and so we now have people who've had multi year and multi decade use, and we have different kinds of both performative tests as well as

you know, brain scans, blood chemistry, many other racetams, many other amphequines, different categories of nootropics have longer term data, but we haven't been able to study this field as well as we would study normal things in medicine because our kind of Western modern model for medicine is a disease based model, where if there is a disease, we're looking at treating the disease and we get a lot of funding because we'll be able to get FDA approval

and then sell a drug. So for enhancement, where you're not treating a disease, you're not going to be able to get FDA approval, you're not going to be able to sell it as a drug. And there's a whole set of, like our whole process of studies factors, what we call risk benefit ratio, where you're willing to have some risk in the study because there is a disease that if you don't treat, there's a risk of keeping it. And so how do we do risk benefit ratio for enhancement.

It's a totally new topic, but it's a topic that's being explored everywhere in transhumanism right now. Brainship, interplant implants, you know, genes therapy, et cetera, and nootropics are one of those fields. So there's a lot of quantified self data, kind of like the early people in steroids who made a lot of mistakes but then actually learned a lot

about indochronology that the intercronologists couldn't learn. That have advanced the field of endochronology and now made you know, we have psalms today that have this same positive effect with the tiny fraction of the negative effects of the early anabolic steroids that came about through that kind of citizen science testing. Of course, at the cost to some of

the people. Nootropics has had a similar curve and so we have data, but the data is not as deep, long term and robot as we would like it to be, and it will be. Yeah, I've been reading a lot of blogs from people who who are treating themselves human guinea pigs and trying lots of things. I have to say, I have to thank you for introducing me to the whole idea of nootropics. It's a fascinating world and it really has inspired me. I would say, to really understand

what you know. There clearly are some neotropics that are more well studied than others, that's for sure. And I don't think they're all in an equal footing. I don't think you would say they are at all. Now, you created something called qualitya right, this was very well researched. So you put together forty ingredients is that right, that are synergynistic with each other. Yeah, the current version of Qualitia has forty two ingredients. But we grant many, many,

many different iterations and versions. So what's the difference between neotropics and what are called smart drugs, the difference between neotropics and SSRIs, for instance, what are the difference between those? So just to be explicit about something that's probably obvious. Medical disclaimer, part nothing that we're sharing here is medical

advice and not a medical doctor. Thank you for saying that your podcast and me and Neurohacker aren't giving medical advice, etc. So this is just general information and anything that one wants to explore regarding medicine, they should go check with

a qualified profession on that front. SSRIs are actually a gay approved medicine for treating certain diagnosed illnesses, primarily psychiatric in some other illnesses, and they are one category of psychiatric med There's other meds that modify serotonin in nearly

opposite ways. Ssrese and tricyclics do different things. There's don't mean modifying gobba, modifying, et cetera kind of things in the In the field of psychiatry, psychochromacolt smart drugs is a term that generally means a pharmaceutical that is being used for an off label purpose, meaning a doctor didn't give somebody drug for this purpose, but an off label purpose for enhancing some aspect of function and These will usually either be narcolepsy drugs that are going to promote wakefulness,

the eguroics, medaphinel, armadaph and all those kinds of things. They will be sometimes anti Alzheimer's, anti Parkinson's kinds of things, el dopa and dnapazil, things like that, or psychiatric neds well beutrin adderall debrenil, and some of these can actually be balancing for certain people's physiology, depending upon what's out

of balance. But most of the time these will serve some kind of psychostimulatory role in a way that will lead to long term instability, and the risk benefit is deemed worthwhile in the current field of medicine because it's addressing some real dysfunction for somebody. But in general, I don't recommend much in the way of smart drugs, and it doesn't mean that there's no positive application of them, but I recommend people be highly educated before exploring, and

then explore conservatively. I appreciate that what I'm trying to understand is how is the difference like your quality neotropics in general, they do affect and they do target neurotransmitters. They do target like dopamine production, serotone production. That's exactly what ssrized will target serotonin production. How is that different? So let's take a look at dopamine prinstance. So my favorite, it's my favorite molecule. Yeah, it is a favorite for everybody.

The dopamine opioid axis, right, the kind of pain pleasure reward circuit axis is one of the deepest evolutionary biology axes in nervous systems for knowing what to avoid and what to go towards, and so major aspects of how pain pleasure dynamics work, et cetera, are there. Most ocd addiction is a dysregulation of that system. It's a profoundly deep system, even if someone also has serotonin or babble or other things to address. So dopamine is the first

of the catecholamine. So it converts to northern ephrine and then to epinephyrine, and those are all kind of stimulatory neurotransmitters. Dopamine has a lot to do with focus, attention, concentration, also pattern analysis and pattern recognition. Patternicity. It's why if it's excessive, you can get false pattern recognition. Think of a schizophrenia. Yeah, and if it's deficient you'll have lack of drive, lack of motivation as well as inability to

recognize patterns adequately. So underperformance, it's not more or less that we're interested in. It is the adaptiveness, right, It's how the dopamine process can self regulate well. Because when you're trying to relax in falsely, if you don't want to have dopamine peaking, you want it to be able to chill. And when you're trying to concentrate, you want

your body to be able to up regulate. So one thing is, rather than give someone a dopamine agonist that is going to elevate dopamine kind of no matter what, we would like to be able to give precursors and then the conversion factors on those precursors and other things that support your body's dopaminergic processes so that it can do its own. Basically, you think about it has the body has an internal and endogenous regulatory system. How do

we support that regulatory system to self regulate better? So with dopamine. Dopamine is you have an essential amino acid phenylalanine, it gets converted to tyrosine, It gets converted to acetyl tyrosine. It gets converted to el dopa, it gets converted to dopamine. It then has to travel across the set naps where it's broken down by chemicals like MAOB, and then it has to get uptaken in the post synaptic dopamine receptors. And there's differential uptake in the D one, D two,

D three receptors that affect how it processes. And it can also be broken down by hydroxylasin and ouropeneforn, et cetera. So if someone doesn't have enough phenylalanine, enough tyrosine, if they don't have enough of the phosphorylated version of B six that helps convert or vitamin C, or copper that helps convert amino acids into el dopa into dopamine, if their MOOB levels are excessively high or their hydrox lasers high, these are all going to lead to imbalances in their

own regulatory systems. So we were looking at common regulatory difficulties and how to be able to support the system to have increased regulatory robustness and so therefore you're less likely to see growth side effects. Yeah, right, So think about you know when I was talking about the amino acids, the vitamins and minerals that were necessary as co factors,

plus the synaptic transmission, plus the receptor site modulation. We're looking at multiple steps across a whole pathway, and we're seeing where are the rate limiting effects and how can we support those? But then that's just dopamine, right, And so increased concentration without increased working memory ends at being pretty lank. And so increased working memory is mostly not dopamine lot supported, right, It's mostly mediated by acetyl coldine

and other transmitters. And yeah, well now we're looking at enzymes again. And so if we're wanting to increase short term and long term and working memory and intensity of focusing concentration, but also the capacity for task switching, well, it was we kind of modeled from a cognitive science perspective. What are all the things we're wanting to affect? Are what people call the synergy of those things? Are these

cognitively available creative productive flow states. If you look at what are the underlying physiologic pathways that mediate those, and then how do we support those pathways, then let's look at synergies between them. Sounds like a fair approach. Well, I do wonder though, Okay, someone listening to this could be like, well, like, how are you? Why are you?

Why do you have so much confidence? You were not formally trained, You're not You could imagine a doctor listening to this and just immediately dismissing this whole thing and saying, well, look, I might even going to listen to this because he didn't even go through med school. What do you say that? You know? So I was like, like, why are you

so confident in what you're saying? Well, having a lot of respect for what we consider better methods of interdisciplinary education and traditional specialist education usually does we also have a lot of respect for people that at the cutting edge of their specialties and have formally trained in it. So, you know, this wasn't developed in isolation. This development was working with many doctors where we were working in integrated

facilities running pre and post blood labs. And we actually started with, you know, having some medical directors that want to play with us and particularly with patients that they were having a hard time with and we said we so again risk benefit made sense to them because they were having a hard time with them, said we think we've got an approach that could help, And so we were customizing chemistry based on looking at their genome and

their clinical chemistry, their clinical intake, et cetera, and then getting to see really profound shifts not just in subjective reporting, but in those same biometrics being tested again. And so then that that's actually where we started in the formulation propuss It then started to say, well, what things are pretty common across most people who have similar desires or symptomology that we could before getting into personalized medicine, be

able to meaningfully affect a scale. So those doctors were contributing to the insight of how we did formulation. And then we've had a number of PhD neuroscientists of different disciplines, neurochemist, computational neuroscientists, etc. Look at what we're doing, give us feedback on it. A number of different kinds of doctors, psychiatrists and integrative mds and et cetera look at it

and give us feedback on it. Many doctors just find what we were doing, start using it in their clinics and contact us and saying, you know, here are the effects we're seeing in patients that were very positive. So we're actually just starting to put together a program to kind of like harvest this data better how we can

do some distributed science. And of course, once we came to a place that we felt good with our own internal testing on formulation, which had many rounds, we did a formal safety down a sheet we had, you know, which looked at all of the research, meta analysis, structure review on all the ingredients and those in, et cetera. And we had pharmacists look at it, doctors look at it,

HD neurochemists look at it, et cetera. And I went through, you know, I don't take anything at face value, right, So I mean I looked every researched every single one of the ingredients, and I like spent like a day on each one. I was like, because that one's very potent. It's very potent. So racetams, starting with paracetam and then there's many other racetams, en er acetam, prestam, do different things, but their primary effect is upregulating a styl coline uptake

in the NMDA complex. So they are learning. The helps with learning and memory, learning memory, working memory, but also sensory motor nerve capacity, and so they are alistairic modulators of the NMDA complex and then which racetam will have differential effects on GABBA receptors or dopaine receptors, et cetera.

So racetams are really the first kind of major area of nootropics that people get into when anyone gets into nootropic and then because they're they're affecting the post synaptic neurons uptake of acetyl cooline, then they'll usually start stacking them with some chaline donors, maybe some acetyl group donors, and then maybe some things to help the acetylcholine get across the synapps, like acetylcholine estrays inhibitors, and so you know, that's how you can kind of start to stack the

pathway for acetyl colin. The next major category that people really kind of commonly get into with nootropics that are very meaningful are ampekines, which are glutamate uptake on the post and aptic neurons, so modulators of the ampicomplex and upregulating the glutamate up taking increases the speed of synaptic transmission, but also decreases excitotoxicity from excessive levels of glutamate and

staying in the synappse. So new pepts. New pept has ampekine like and ractam like properties at the same time, meaning it upregulates both glutamate and acetylcholine uptake in the postsynaptic neuron, which is quite unique. Anoracitem also does both of those, but new pep does it more potently, and so there's research showing it as being neuroprotective because it

is specifically protecting neurons from excitotoxicity damage. While typically you could decrease excitotoxicity from glutamate by just scavenging glutamate and you can use things like oxlo acetate to do that, but then you're decreasing the speed of glutamatic transmission. So new pep does this unique thing where it decreases excited

toxicity while increasing glutamatorgic transit transmission, really supporting it. So new pep's a very interesting molecule from the standpoint of being both neuroprotective and increasing a number of interesting dimensions of learning attention and then one of the big kind

of holy grails of the spaces working memory. Yeah, I see a big in terms of holy grail in terms of the future of this, it's obviously a personal dosage because there's individual differences in genetics that help regulate neurotransmitter

production and how environment reactions. So I'm sure you're working on that area, right, So we are, and you know, being able to have integrative doctors, psychiatrist, neurologists, general practitioners get support in better and better methodologies for assessing brain chemistry and not just brain chemistry but intocrinology, physiologic chemistry, et cetera. And then putting all that together and then being able to work to balance and optimize it. That's

hugely important. And it's an area that you know, we are working in and working with some small number of doctors prototype methodologies, but also working on structures that could be brought more widely. But there's also things that could

happen that are not doctor or therapist mediated. So imagine a portal where someone can take cognitive assessments online using best in class online cognitive assessment that has been related to best in class in person assessment and shows high accuracy, and also online psychometric assessments, and so that people can see how their pattern recognition, their work memory, but also structured subjective insights into their psychologic state, predisposition, etc. And

they could track that in time. Then imagine that they could load up into that same portal and this ismatically secure portal and they control their information so it's not being used by anybody in the company for reasons they

don't want. If they could helpload their motion tracker data, their quantified self, their sleeptracker data, and then maybe even if they go get medical blood data QEG data, and then the system doesn't just look at each one of the psychometrics and biometrics on their own relationship to a reference range, but starts looking at what is that full complex of data with all the other pieces tell us that is synergistically more than the separate pieces, right, Yeah,

you can imagine like a fit bit for this that like tracts this stuff throughout the day. Absolutely, we are looking at the intersection of quantified self data harvesting better actual biometric diagnostics and better psychometric diagnostics, and then the synthesis of all that knowledge to then be able to customize protocols, both at the level of medical protocols where doctors can use it and at the level of just

direct to consumer wellness protocols. Now, for that, imagine a version of quality that is fully customized, where we get to take all this data from someone and then customize which chemicals and which amounts are in there. That requires a robotically automated compounding pharmacy that can make a custom formulation from a bunch of powders based on an AI generation of their specific formulation based on the biometric data.

That's complex to do. It's a dream of ours. We want to get there and be able to do it, and we've definitely worked on how to do that. But it's not right around the corner yet, but maybe in our lifetime, oh and much sooner than that. Are you familiar with noesis experience machine full of philosophical experiment? No, you know, he has this thought experiment. You know. Imagine if we could hook you up to a machine and it gives you whatever is desirable or pleasurable anytime you want.

It turns out most people would not want that because they want to. The will is something about the human will, about suffering and overcoming suffering that makes us human, that makes us want to, that gives us a sense of meaning in life. Ultimately, the kind of vision you have for this world, which I share, and I think is really quite admirable. Will have to go beyond neotropics, right, I mean, it's only part of a whole system of

cultural changes, of personal changes as well, that is willed. Right. So let's just roughly break down four categories that we can look at this in terms of that are not reducible to each other, but are all inder affecting sounds good. Let's think about human physiology, which includes our EEG pattern, computational neuroscience, stuff, chemistry, or intochronology that are microbiome, genetic expression, just all of the things that affect what you can

think of as to human hardware. So there are human hardware predispositions for I mean, if you just think about consciousness running on that hardware, then then empathy runs on certain neural networks, utilize utilizing certain neurochemistry, et cetera. That can be up or down regular It can be down regulated by head trauma, by microbiome imbalances, by toxicity. It can also be upgraded by a number of things. So

let's think about the human hardware predispositions and capacities. Let's think about human software being our value systems, our worldview, our understanding of self or understanding of other. Right now, they're not hardware software as totally distinct categories like they are in computers, because of course they are dynamically interaffecting each other continuously in real time. That's I mean the neuroplasticity where your thoughts are affecting physiology and your physiologists

predisposing thoughts. It is a completely intimate link between them. But we can still roughly think of those categories. So on the software side, we have education, we have media, we have psychology, we have personal development, psychotherapy, etc. On the hardware side, we have not just medicine but the future of well being optimization, and those are both at

the level of the individual. Then at the level of beyond the individual, level of the collective kind of the hardware of the collective is infrastructure, how we meet our physical needs and relationship with the planet water, energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, base management. And then the software of the collective is

the agreement fields that run over that is social structures, economics, governance, language. Ultimately, the hardware and the software of the individual and the collective all have to be upgraded in this for this kind of phase shift that humanity is entering into and upgraded towards omnipositivity, meaning that each of those fours or

have things that affect human experience in human behavior. The environment right, the lower right infrastructure that the built world and natural world environment affect human experience and affect human behavior. So do the social agreement fields, culture, economics, etc. Economics, what we incentivize very directly affects human behavior, what we have status apploicated to, etc. Our definition of success in

the individual, kind of human software, and our physiology. So we would say no, tropics are just the first part we're getting into of human physiology, which is just one of these areas, and all of them are necessary, but only all of them together make sufficient. Yeah, I appreciate you outlining those for that topology. There are hard there are things we can do software wise that can show the same effects on phiology and physiology as the neotropics in some case, like meditation can get you in a

state of mind. So there's different roots perhaps to this upgrade. There's not just a single route, and there are multiple roots that can get you the same place, perhaps sometimes the same place, and sometimes different but related but highly synergistic places when they come together. Oh sure, yeah, for sure. And that's the beauty of self organizing systems. And I mean that's the whole point of systems, right, is that you want to get to a point where they're all

integrated and that the entropy is minimized. Well, you were just talking about whole systems and self organization and why the whole understanding how whole systems works leads to a perspective that emphasizes synthesis of all of the meaningful modalities. One of the concepts that we have to get over that is kind of reductionism in the negative sense rather than positive elements of the word is kind of looking for single bullet silver bullet solutions. You know, a single

molecule that's going to fix this whole thing. Well, it wasn't a single molecule. It was off, right, It was a whole cascade of systemic effects that were off. And so is it human hardware or is it human software or is it the environment? Well, it's usually all of it in some kind of complex. So the question becomes if someone's physiology is off, out of balance, it can lead to their psychology being out of balance, which can lead to their physiotic being more out of balance, and

you get a vicious cycle. You can also get virtuous cycles of creating lift in any of the areas, making it easier for better behavior and function in those areas, creating more lift. So our interest is how do we stop negative feedback cycles and how do we promote virtuous cycles positive feedback cycles between body mind relationship environment right between all of those interfecting complexes, and how do we meaningfully synthesize and support all of the modalities that are

actually effective. No, that sounds like a great goal. I mean you have our thoughts, you know, like cognitive behavioral therapy effects either way we frame things. The way we make meaning out our experiences effects our coresal production, It effects you know, our negative reactions. So we in all these different they're bidirectional, you know, all these different ways. Daniel, thank you so much for your generosity and chiding with me today, and I do wish you all the best

in your endeavors. Likewise, it was a blast. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott barrk Kauffman. I hope you found this episode just as thought per booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com