Snapshot · Modern Wisdom
88% of Darwin Award winners (people who die through spectacular self-inflicted stupidity) are men, and 90% of Carnegie Hero Award recipients (people who risk their life to save a stranger) are also men.
Where this was said
At 2:19:40 · chapter starts 2:13:35
Stewart-Williams surveys the major physical health sex differences: men are more prone to cardiovascular disease, most cancers, and early death; women are more prone to immune disorders and pain conditions. The male mortality disadvantage is particularly stark — men die younger than women in the vast majority of cultures, including most where women face high maternal mortality. The mechanism becomes clear when you consider the Korean Joseon Dynasty eunuch data [1] — Chris Williamson "Eunuchs lived longer than intact men: Korean Joseon Dynasty eunuchs lived significantly longer than intact males of identical social standi…" 2:17:30 : eunuchs castrated before puberty lived significantly longer than intact males of identical social standing, directly implicating testosterone. Stewart-Williams points out we technically already have a known intervention to close the lifespan gap — it just comes with obvious drawbacks. Randy Nesse's evolutionary medicine calculation [2] — Chris Williamson "Curing male mortality gap > curing cancer: Evolutionary medicine researcher Randy Nesse calculated that if male mortality rates were reduce…" 2:18:38 lands as the most striking statistic in this section: if male mortality rates were reduced to female levels, more years of life would be saved than if cancer were entirely cured. The 88%/90% symmetry of Darwin Awards and Carnegie Hero Awards closes the section: male risk-taking cuts in both catastrophic and heroic directions with almost identical frequency.
Korean Joseon Dynasty eunuchs lived significantly longer than intact males of identical social standing, showing testosterone has a direct biological cost to male lifespan.
Evolutionary medicine researcher Randy Nesse calculated that if male mortality rates were reduced to female rates, more years of life would be saved than if cancer were cured entirely.
Animals first sensed light 540 million years ago, triggering an evolutionary acceleration known as the Cambrian explosion within 10 million years.
It is estimated that half of all cortical activity in the human brain is involved in visual function, underscoring vision's central role in intelligence.
Cognitive neuroscience literature shows that by age 6, humans can recognize tens of thousands of different object categories — far more data than early AI systems were trained on.
Only about 3% of FDA-approved drugs have genuinely unclear mechanisms of action, making an unknown mechanism a meaningful early red flag for any compound.
Even compounds that clear preclinical testing often fail in humans: 30 to 50% of drugs entering phase 1 trials do not advance to phase 2, frequently because human behavior differs from animal models.
More than 80% of published BPC-157 research comes from a single academic group whose researchers have IP and commercial interests connected to the molecule, limiting independent replication.
Roughly 100 peptide drugs are already FDA-approved, about 150 more are in clinical trials, and 600–700 are in preclinical development, underscoring the legitimacy of peptide science broadly.
The scientist who discovered BPC-157 refused to disclose the screening method used to identify the compound and has never fully published the parent protein sequence — what Peter Attia calls 'scientific trust me, bro.'
The brain's visual, auditory, and motor cortices light up nearly identically whether an experience is real or imagined, making visualization a form of actual neural training.
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