How do some people have seemingly infinite energy?

[Joshe]

19 minutes ago, OBEler said:

He discovered that genetics really matters. And people here are not ready to hear that. Therefore this aggressive tone towards that insight.

No one argued genetics don't matter. They just argue that it does not account for 99% of health outcomes. That position is impossible to even steelman because of how absurd it is. If you can't see the absurdity, well, I suggest contemplating whether or not you're offloading too much of your thinking to an authority figure. 

Plug the position into any advanced AI and watch what happens. Ask it "Does this text contain any fallacies? If so, explain them all." His text in this thread alone contains like 5 fallacies. Sorry if this is earth-shattering, but this should be like common sense stuff. 

"If genetics alone explained exceptional vitality, identical twins—who share 100% of their DNA—should have nearly identical health, energy, and lifespans. But they often don’t. One can become obese while the other stays lean, one may develop heart disease while the other doesn't, or one lives decades longer. These aren’t isolated cases—they’re the norm in population studies. That alone shows genes set a range, not a destiny. So when people point to rare outliers like Trump or McAfee as proof that effort is irrelevant, they’re ignoring the mountain of evidence showing that environment, behavior, and even luck play massive roles—even among people with identical genetic "blueprints.""

"The allure of genetic determinism lies in its simplicity. It offers a ready-made explanation and absolves individuals of responsibility. But biology doesn’t support this view. Health, behavior, and even personality are not puppet shows—nor are they blank slates. They are dynamic systems influenced by both nature and nurture, shaped over time through feedback loops of action and adaptation.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

@Leo Gura The most potent of black pills there is, rarely talked nor thought about and yet so so obvious, true and right in front of our noses - the impact of our genes on our life. Broootaaal

[Jayson G]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That doesn't contradict what I said. Within that 1% you can do quite a bit. But no effort will make you Tony Robbins.

@Leo Gura I wanted to say this before also, but are you not zooming out to the large reality perspective, whereas all that most humans are looking for is that small domain of that 1% where what they want to achieve can be done within that 1% making genetics less of a conversation worth discussing simply from wanting to achieve their results? That 1% though would make all the difference. Even if it is 1%, I have seen people go from incredible results in all areas of life. It's like, why are we a) talking about the rare exceptions, on a statistics graph the exceptions are the hard outliers. People are not looking to be an outlier, theyre looking for a pretty good position on that graph generally, and if we're talking about the general human domain .. and trying to go from A to B, even if its that 1% effort that will get you there, why are we talking about the 99% being genetics? 

[OBEler]

@Joshe yeah we need to really cautios about such a topic, it goes very deep. Environmental shape vs genes and their interactions etc. Much studies were done already. We need to research a lot to shape an opinion about it.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Socrates said:

Limiting belief even through a materialistic paradigm, let alone a spiritual one

You not being a chimpanzee is just a limiting belief, bro.

[Miguel1]

”I suggest contemplating”

Proceeds to ”plug the position into any advanced AI and watch what happens”.

[Joshe]

16 minutes ago, Miguel1 said:

”I suggest contemplating”

Proceeds to ”plug the position into any advanced AI and watch what happens”.

You can both contemplate and use tools to help you contemplate. What matters most is that you arrive at what is true, not so much how you arrive there (unless you have ego involvement). If I bounced back and forth between contemplation and material in a book, would you make fun of that too? 

Edited 21 hours ago by Joshe

[Joshe]

47 minutes ago, OBEler said:

@Joshe yeah we need to really cautios about such a topic, it goes very deep. Environmental shape vs genes and their interactions etc. Much studies were done already. We need to research a lot to shape an opinion about it.

I agree on the depth. It is very deep, but Aurum and I argued extensively a similar topic a while back. They’re basically saying genetics determines 99% of one’s reality. Aurum was more saying it’s 80/20 rather than 99. But all you have to do to dismantle these positions is look at twin studies. 100% identical genetics and one twin can be a diseased, obese conservative and the other a health nut, pink-haired liberal. Until this gets squared, if we’re to respect reason and truth, their positions are wrong. 

[CosmicExplorer]

54 minutes ago, Joshe said:

But all you have to do to dismantle these positions is look at twin studies. 100% identical genetics and one twin can be a diseased, obese conservative and the other a health nut, pink-haired liberal. Until this gets squared, if we’re to respect reason and truth, their positions are wrong. 

Genetics determining 99% is exaggerated, but even if it's only like 65% the rest is not just environment or something you can change. It turns out that luck/randomness on a molecular level plays a huge role. Aging for example, has a very significant random component. Experiments consistently show that even when you take genetically identical worms, raise them in the exact same controlled environment (same temperature, same petri dish, same food source), their lifespans can vary dramatically. Some worms will live a short life, while others will live two to three times as long.

Edited 20 hours ago by CosmicExplorer

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, CosmicExplorer said:

Genetics determining 99% is exaggerated, but even if it's only like 65% the rest is not just environment or something you can change. It turns out that luck/randomness on a molecular level plays a huge role. Aging for example, has a very significant random component. Experiments consistently show that even when you take genetically identical worms, raise them in the exact same controlled environment (same temperature, same petri dish, same food source), their lifespans can vary dramatically. Some worms will live a short life, while others will live two to three times as long.

100%. And 65% is much more reasonable. 

Now imagine if, instead of just giving everyone the same environment, one group had an optimized one. Would that group have an extended lifespan? How much could we move the needle through intentional optimizations?

Even with randomness in the mix, I think the whole baseline shifts up with good optimizations. There's still a lot of room to affect outcomes.

I don't buy that there's very little you can optimize for to drastically move the needle.

Edited 19 hours ago by Joshe

[Leo Gura]

You are not looking at identical twins with bad genetics.

Find a genetic twin with 70 IQ and cancer.

[Rafael Thundercat]

On 26/06/2025 at 11:56 AM, Twentyfirst said:

hypomanics—grandiose types who leap on every wacky idea that occurs to them, utterly convinced it will change the world.

Well some will just be like this soldier. Imagine, imagine consciousness being locked inside this boy? Being this boy, with this mentality. 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Rafael Thundercat

[Never_give_up]

As someone that struggles with doing what he would like to do cause of no motivation, I came to the conclusion that some people are just super motivated. That's why they have infinite energy.

Why they are motivated? for whatever reason their mind see something that feels that is worth doing the effort so they get rewarded by their brain with energy and motivation.

Do you think that people that work 12+ hours on some project or something are just disciplined? that would be rare. They are passionated. Even when they suffer back in their mind their is strong motivation or lack of extreme boredom.

People say it's genetics. Maybe it is. Still the mechanism is motivation , that's what I suspect.

It's totally unfair, the difference between a doctor that make ton of money and someone that works in the sun all day for so little money could be the motivation levels they had to study (just one example, of course there are other factors too).

If you ever became super motivated at something and others couldn't do it cause they didn't get that motivated you know what I am talking about. Find something hard but seems achievable by the average person that you actually can't bring yourself to doo. Why you can't do it? cause you have no motivation. Why you can do other tasks and not that one? why other people can't do what you can do when it's only a matter of effor and not talent? cause you have motivation and they don't. Discipline is super important, but without motivation you can't have discipline.

People that have brains that rewards them with motivation while your brain is bored for the same task, these people are super lucky, they live amazing lives full of motivation. Some people study for 12 hours a day, i can't do even 10 to 20 minutes. Many people don't workout, I do it every day for 2 hours. Sometimes I skip but generally I do it. Many people aren't motivated to do it so they don't workout. It's totaly unfair, I hate it, I am sad cause of it and I am stuck in life cause of boredom. I feel powerless.

[Joshe]

When I was in my 20s, I used to wonder how certain people acquired traits that I wish I had. There was one Gen X guy who was confident AF and possessed the strongest will I’d ever seen. I mistakenly thought he intentionally developed this in himself. Every time I tried to peer into his mind to see how he formed these things, he had not even the slightest clue. I found this to be the case for everyone else I came across who possessed a trait I admired and coveted. When I tried to ask them for their secrets or advice, they didn’t have any. They can’t tell you how they do it because they don’t know.

People develop traits, attitudes, mindsets, mental orientations, etc, unconsciously and these configurations of mind manifest in different ways. It’s about the stories deep in the psyche, formed mostly by experience and circumstance, and then the position one takes toward those stories that make them prone to this or that action. The stories form around identity.

Anyway, eventually I realized different mindsets have different energetic signatures. And if you can shift your mindset, like through loving-kindness meditation, where you actually feel deep empathy for even your enemy, then what else is possible?

You can rewire yourself for immense love but not immense drive? Of course you can, if you can create the right configuration of mind and practice single-pointedness of mind upon that configuration. It’s an advanced practice, but it can be done. 

Have you ever noticed that if you have an appointment or someplace to be in the morning, when the alarm clock goes off, you jump up without grumbling and complaining and just go because you have to, but other times when you aren’t pressed for an appointment, you complain inwardly and create a living hell for yourself? This is a matter of very subtle thought that occurs in milliseconds and is very hard to notice. It’s possible to remove the mentation that creates that hell and thus, remove the friction, making it seem effortless. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

43 minutes ago, Joshe said:

You can rewire yourself for immense love but not immense drive? Of course you can, if you can create the right configuration of mind and practice single-pointedness of mind upon that configuration. It’s an advanced practice, but it can be done. 

This caught me. Real.

I know this is possible. I did this to myself. I had such a huge realization that every thought to take action that I didn't act on, caused anxiety. If a thought to take action arises, I just do it. Or I take action to progress toward it. I simply stopped attaching any judgement to the act. I don't have so many personal feelings toward actions now - I don't dislike vacuuming. I don't dislike early starts. I don't dislike caring for my plants. I'm cool with folding laundry, paying bills. It's just stuff to do that I don't have any feeling towards.

Sure, I have activities I take pleasure in, but I simply stopped labelling anything with my personal judgement. Now I just do stuff. All the time. And if I have my shit in order, no thoughts pollute my mind. 

I get to be serene and focused. In the moment.

[Joshe]

@Natasha Tori Maru Thats huge. Congrats! And I’m just like that. If I postpone things that have to be done, anxiety and irritation pile up. Although unfortunately, I haven't mastered it the way you describe.

Edited 1 hour ago by Joshe

[Butters]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You are not looking at identical twins with bad genetics.

Find a genetic twin with 70 IQ and cancer.

Just going over all your replies here with ChatGPT, you seem quite wrong for most of these tbh.

 

1️⃣ IQ differences

Study: Bouchard et al. (1990) — Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.

Finding: Identical twins raised apart had IQ correlations of ~0.7. That’s high, but not 1.0. This means genetics strongly influences IQ, but environment and random factors account for notable variation — differences of 10+ IQ points between twins are common.

Example: One twin might score 115, the other 105.

2️⃣ Cancer discordance

Study: Lichtenstein et al. (2000) — Swedish, Danish, and Finnish twin registries (large-scale study).

Finding: Many identical twin pairs where one twin developed cancer and the other did not, including breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers.

Key stat: In breast cancer, concordance rate for identical twins was only ~20%, meaning in most cases one twin got cancer while the other did not — despite shared genes.

3️⃣ Obesity and metabolic disease

Study: Stunkard et al. (1990) — New England Journal of Medicine.

Finding: Identical twins show high concordance for body mass index (BMI), but lifestyle factors (especially diet and exercise) can still drive differences. They found some pairs where one twin was obese, the other not.

4️⃣ Political ideology

Study: Alford et al. (2005), Behavioral Genetics of Political Attitudes.

Finding: Identical twins have greater similarity in political ideology than fraternal twins, but environment still plays a large role — and identical twins can fall on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

📚 Links to key studies

Here are references where you can review the data yourself:

➡ IQ and twins reared apart

Bouchard, T.J. Jr., et al. (1990). Source: Science.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.2218525

➡ Cancer in twins

Lichtenstein, P., et al. (2000). Source: NEJM.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200007133430201

➡ Obesity in twins

Stunkard, A.J., et al. (1990). Source: NEJM.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005243222102

➡ Politics and twins

Alford, J.R., et al. (2005). Source: American Political Science Review.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055405051579

[CosmicExplorer]

17 hours ago, Joshe said:

Now imagine if, instead of just giving everyone the same environment, one group had an optimized one. Would that group have an extended lifespan?

They would have extended lifespan on average as a group vs the group with a worse environment, but the individual variance within that optimized group would still be enormous (due to genetics and randomness).

17 hours ago, Joshe said:

How much could we move the needle through intentional optimizations?

How much is there beyond genetics and random chance? There's almost nothing left. I would guess 3% maybe?

 

10 hours ago, Joshe said:

There was one Gen X guy who was confident AF and possessed the strongest will I’d ever seen. I mistakenly thought he intentionally developed this in himself. Every time I tried to peer into his mind to see how he formed these things, he had not even the slightest clue. I found this to be the case for everyone else I came across who possessed a trait I admired and coveted. When I tried to ask them for their secrets or advice, they didn’t have any. They can’t tell you how they do it because they don’t know.

Exactly. I'm effectively fully protected from obesity, environment doesn't matter. There was a period in my life when I exclusively ate Mcdonalds without putting ANY self-restriction on how much I eat, I gained ZERO weight, nothing. I can have the most ultra-processed, "addicting" food lying in front of me on my table for months and I have zero desire to eat it, zero cravings. I always had visible abs, basically my whole life. In addition to that I personally know people who are significantly leaner than me (they don't have much muscle but they're shredded like 8% bf) who give 0 fucks about their diet, which consists of pure junk food and beer. If someone who struggles with obesity their whole life were to ask me or them how we're doing it, if I'm not bullshiting, I have to admit that I have no idea, it's just as mysterious to me as it is to them, why our food drive is so low. 

To be obese, you have to have genetics for it (even tho most people have genetics that allow to become obese). Similar thing with PTSD. The possibility of, and how vulnerable one is to PTSD is implanted fully by genetics. Without the right genetics, there's no possibility of PTSD. Can an ant experience PTSD? No. What differentiates a person with PTSD from an ant - genetics It's genetics that install that possibility/vulnerability of PTSD, then the environment can trigger it or not, depending on how bad it is, and how strong that vulnerability is. Are there people who experienced the worst things like concentration camps/torture/r*ape/catastrophes etc. and came out of it without PTSD? Yes.

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, CosmicExplorer said:

How much is there beyond genetics and random chance? There's almost nothing left. I would guess 3% maybe?

Ok, so, if this is your claim: "65% genes + 32% randomness = 97% outside your control."... you're making a category error. Apparently, this is a common logical fallacy with a name: heritability fallacy.

Also, what we called "randomness" today is largely things we don't understand yet. 

What you're doing is equating the measurement of statistics that describe variation across a population with what determines an individual’s potential.

It would be like saying teachers only account for 10% of test score variance, and therefore teachers can only improve an individual student’s performance by 10%. This is so obviously fallacious.

Just like with the teacher, if you take an individual and optimize their environment (diet, exercise, sleep), their health outcomes can drastically improve, even by 90%... clearly. 

There seems to be some weird bias lurking around here. I suppose because it is the best working hypothesis folks have for explaining "what will be, will be" or "every hair on your head is counted".