> We don’t know what keeping moderately elevated testosterone levels does to someone, and my guess is that on net it’s positive.
TRT has wild side effects, including gynecomastia and shrinking of the testes.
What is interesting to me is that other effects high testosterone has. High testosterone is not just magically better, otherwise we'd all have much higher levels out the gate. There's down sides. It's hard on your heart and blood vessels.
Men, just off the rip, are at much higher risk of heart disease. It's not "free" to have testosterone, it harms your health in many ways. If you increase your testosterone even higher to super-human levels then you're really playing with fire.
In addition, we have to consider psychoactive effects. Men are also, off the rip, much more violent and aggressive. So we really run the risk of some unpleasant human effects if we raise testosterone too much.
When we amplify testosterone, we amplify all the good parts of male physiology: higher muscle mass, lower body fat, higher performance. But we also amplify the bad: heart disease, strokes, lower longevity, and emotional issues.
lukev•7mo ago
One thing that's incorrect is that modern billionaires are more altruistic than their historical predecessors, and less likely to engage in conspicuous consumption. That's quite incorrect. Musk and Bezos own plenty of yachts.
Modern billionaires also seem far less interested in donating to the general public good "out the door"... the trend these days is to form massive foundations for tax purposes, but still hold the reins pretty tightly to make sure we don't just do something as simple as building a public library or something that might let the money end up in the hands of the undeserving.
And the counterexamples are also counterexamples to the pattern in the article... Gates gives a lot of money away, for example, but he's also not the poster boy for T supplementation and aggressive business practices at this point.