In this episode of Pain Points, I’m speaking with David Chapman, a writer and thinker whose work on meaning, meta-rationality, and science has been the most important education I received outside of MIT.
David was a prominent AI researcher in the late 1980s and later a startup founder, but for decades he has written deeply about philosophy, systems, and what he calls “meta-rationality.” In this conversation, we explore how that lens applies to healthcare and chronic illness.
David shares his own story of navigating years of debilitating fatigue and food intolerance, how the medical system failed him, and the experiment he devised that restored his health. He also describes his experience with long COVID, and how a six-mile run cured his fatigue.
We also discuss: why debugging is inherently meta-rational, how most medical science may be false, and why bright lights—not antidepressants—end up curing decades of seasonal depression.
“I could barely stand up. So I drove myself to the trailhead, ran six miles, and by the end…the fatigue was gone.”
“Popper spent his life trying to solve the question: what separates science from non-science? He failed. Everyone has failed.”
Episode Outline
[00:00 – 08:00] Meta-Rationality and Debugging
Rationality vs. reasonableness vs. meta-rationality
Debugging as paradigmatic example of meta-rational thinking
Chronic illness is necessarily metarational
[08:00 – 14:00] Failures of the American Healthcare System
Patchwork of semi-systems that don’t communicate
Anecdotes of bureaucratic breakdown (insurance snafus, mis-sent faxes)
Emergence of the communal mode: relying on personal networks instead of systems
[14:00 – 19:00] Medical Interventions and Their Limits
Treatments are often presented as “fixes,” but the body still does the healing
[24:00 – 33:00] Fatigue, Food Intolerance, and Experimentation
Years of symptoms: fatigue, brain fog, GI distress
Multiple doctors, useless tests, failed elimination diets
Breakthrough: reducing diet to three foods, symptoms vanish in a week
[47:00 – 49:00] Mislearned Associations
Pesto and cheesecake stories as examples of the body “wrongly” learning aversions
[53:00 – 59:00] Long COVID and the Six-Mile Cure
Fatigue relapse after a hike
Experiment: pushing through with a six-mile run
[60:00 – 72:00] Somatic Practices and Newtonian Mechanics
Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais as non-woo somatic methods
Health as alignment, awareness, and agency
[74:00 – 79:00] The Demarcation Problem and Medical Science
Why the line between science and non-science can’t be drawn
Why most medical research may be false
[87:00 – 92:00] Bright Light Therapy and Seasonal Depression
Curing decades of winter depression
How breakthroughs often come from outside the medical system
[92:00 – End] Closing Reflections
Health as agency and experimentation
The need for communities that avoid both scientism and woo
Restoring agency to people dealing with chronic illness
Links
You can find David’s writing at meaningness.substack.com
