But it’s not that the choice is random—it’s that the consequences of choices are rather uncertain.
its fitness landscape might be friendlier
Well, first it’s well-bounded: there is both an upper bound on how much (in health and longevity) you can gain by manipulating your diet, and a clear lower bound (poisons tend to be obvious). Second, there is hope in untangling—eventually—all the underlying biochemistry so that we don’t have to treat the body as a mostly-black box.
Another thing is that there is a LOT of individual (or group) variation, something that most nutritional research tends to ignore, that is, treat it as unwanted noise.
A major problem is that it’s legally/politically/morally hard to experiment on humans, even with full consent.
But it’s not that the choice is random—it’s that the consequences of choices are rather uncertain.
Well, first it’s well-bounded: there is both an upper bound on how much (in health and longevity) you can gain by manipulating your diet, and a clear lower bound (poisons tend to be obvious). Second, there is hope in untangling—eventually—all the underlying biochemistry so that we don’t have to treat the body as a mostly-black box.
Another thing is that there is a LOT of individual (or group) variation, something that most nutritional research tends to ignore, that is, treat it as unwanted noise.
A major problem is that it’s legally/politically/morally hard to experiment on humans, even with full consent.