Ideas, Randomness, Startup stuff

Humans are engineered badly. I was debating the American Obesity Epidemic last night with a few friends. One suggestion was the obesity problem was due to weak-wills, lifestyle, and lack of exercise. I see the problem differently.

I think the problem is that evolution has given many people a preference to gorge while food is plentiful and conserve energy when possible. Historically, individuals who didn’t gorge in times of plenty, over time, were not successful at surviving times of scarcity and did not propagate their “light eater” genes to later generations.

Fighting biological urges isn’t easy. Could you stop breathing for more than a minute on will-power alone? Do you know anyone who breathes too much? There is no tendency to gorge ourselves on air because there has never been a shortage of air. At some point, I think we’ll re-engineer our urges by correcting our genes or creating the “food control” pill, which, like the birth control pill gives us control of over the consequences of the sex drive, will give us control over hunger, or the consequences of eating(obesity). Some people will see this as a over-medication due to our own vices. I see it as correcting a design flaw. The problem is not that someone eats a whole bag of chips. The problem is that they have a drive that makes them want to eat the whole bag of chips in the first place.