I am developing a philosophy that I am done with the artificial, and I only want to solve natural problems. Natural problems which are deeply tied to the body, such as eating, drinking, sleeping. The artificial may change, but naturally, all humans have this body, and humans are the ones who make changes and Decisions.
You may solve these problems via the means of:
- Information
- Digital product
- Software product
- Physical products
- Community
I’m trying to build a business, and these natural experiences are what I want to be after because I am part of the target demographic also. I am done larping in the software space.
Just to clarify, by moving away from the artificial, I mean problems that are extensions of these problems, like:
- Body wants shelter
- Shelter needs money
- Money needs software
- You need to deploy code
If you’re solving for deployment of code, then sure, you’re solving a problem, but that is what I would call an artificial problem because it is so isolated from the natural.
What are all the bodily things we must do? We have a brain, we have muscles, and they are clear needs – basic physical needs involved around protection and nurturing our body. And then some advanced needs stem from the brain which wants us to have certain things like social dynamics that are favorable and community
On a basic search, these were the bodily things or natural things I was able to find.
INTAKE:
- Eat
- Drink
- Chew
- Swallow
- Breathe (oxygen in)
- Absorb through skin (sunlight/vitamin D, some chemicals)
PROCESSING:
- Digest
- Absorb nutrients
- Circulate blood/oxygen/lymph
- Metabolize (convert food to energy)
- Filter toxins (liver, kidneys)
- Maintain pH/chemical balance
- Store energy (fat, glycogen)
- Build tissue (muscle, bone, organs)
OUTPUT:
- Excrete waste (urine, feces)
- Exhale (CO2 out)
- Sweat
- Shed dead cells
- Bleed (menstruation, wounds)
- Produce mucus/phlegm
- Cry (tears)
- Produce saliva
- Vomit (when needed)
MAINTENANCE:
- Sleep/rest
- Dream
- Heal wounds
- Fight infection/disease
- Regulate temperature
- Maintain posture/structure
- Lubricate joints
- Replace cells
- Grow (childhood/adolescence)
- Age/degrade over time
- Regenerate (liver, skin, etc.)
SENSING:
- See
- Hear
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch/feel pressure
- Sense temperature
- Sense pain
- Sense position in space (proprioception)
- Sense balance (vestibular)
- Sense internal state (interoception – hunger, nausea, heartbeat, tension)
MOVEMENT:
- Contract muscles
- Stretch
- Balance
- Coordinate movement
- Build/maintain strength
- Maintain flexibility/range of motion
- Maintain bone density
- React/reflexes
REPRODUCTION/SEX:
- Experience arousal
- Perform sexually
- Produce sperm/eggs
- Conceive (if applicable)
- Gestate (if applicable)
- Birth (if applicable)
- Lactate (if applicable)
- Bond with offspring
REGULATION:
- Wake/sleep cycle
- Hunger/satiety signals
- Thirst
- Energy levels
- Stress response (fight/flight/freeze)
- Immune response
- Inflammation response
- Blood pressure
- Blood sugar
- Body clock/circadian rhythm
COGNITION/NERVOUS SYSTEM:
- Think
- Remember
- Learn
- Focus/pay attention
- Process emotions
- Make decisions
- Form habits
- Experience pleasure/pain
- Imagine
- Communicate (speak, gesture, facial expressions)
HORMONES:
- Produce hormones (thyroid, cortisol, insulin, sex hormones, growth hormone, melatonin, adrenaline, etc.)
- Regulate hormone levels
- Respond to hormonal signals
- Cycle hormonally (menstrual, circadian, seasonal)
When these things operate together, we feel different desires and needs which leads us to take different actions and that leads to other artificial problems that we discussed in the earlier example of deployment of code. Those complex ones derive from brain. If we were to dig deeper into the brain, we will find these things.
COGNITIVE:
- Think/reason
- Remember (encode, store, retrieve)
- Forget/prune memories
- Learn
- Unlearn/relearn
- Focus/concentrate
- Process language
- Calculate/problem-solve
- Imagine/visualize
- Plan future actions
- Make decisions
- Inhibit impulses
- Switch between tasks
- Recognize patterns
- Create associations
- Abstract/generalize
- Categorize
- Predict outcomes
- Simulate scenarios mentally
- Detect errors/mistakes
- Correct course
- Estimate quantities/distances
- Navigate spatially
- Orient in time
EMOTIONAL:
- Feel emotions (fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.)
- Regulate emotions
- Suppress emotions
- Amplify emotions
- Empathize
- Experience mood states
- Process trauma
- Form attachments
- Experience love/bonding
- Feel desire/motivation
- Experience anxiety/worry
- Feel boredom
- Experience awe/wonder
- Feel grief/loss
- Experience hope
- Feel gratitude
- Experience resentment
- Feel nostalgia
- Experience regret
- Feel contentment/satisfaction
- Experience overwhelm
SOCIAL:
- Read social cues
- Interpret facial expressions/body language
- Model other minds (theory of mind)
- Form social hierarchies/status awareness
- Experience shame/pride/guilt
- Cooperate
- Compete
- Trust/distrust
- Form group identity
- Experience belonging/exclusion
- Communicate intent
- Negotiate
- Persuade
- Deceive/detect deception
- Reciprocate
- Forgive/hold grudges
- Form alliances
- Experience envy of others
- Compare self to others
- Seek approval
- Fear rejection
- Desire respect
- Experience humiliation
- Mentor/teach
- Learn from others socially
- Conform to norms
- Rebel against norms
- Gossip/share information
- Form reputation
- Judge others
- Experience being judged
CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS:
- Be conscious/aware
- Experience qualia (subjective experience)
- Direct attention
- Enter different states (alert, relaxed, flow, meditative, intoxicated, etc.)
- Dream
- Experience time perception (fast/slow)
- Experience presence/dissociation
- Have intrusive thoughts
- Mind-wander
- Daydream
- Experience déjà vu
- Enter hypnotic/trance states
- Experience altered consciousness
- Be self-aware vs. absorbed
- Experience subconscious processing
- Have “aha” moments/insights
HABIT/AUTOMATIC:
- Form habits
- Break habits
- Run automatic routines
- Trigger conditioned responses
- Experience cravings/addictions
- Develop skills to automaticity
- Default to familiar patterns
- Resist change
- Adapt to new patterns
MOTIVATIONAL:
- Experience drive/ambition
- Feel curiosity
- Seek novelty
- Avoid threat
- Pursue reward
- Experience willpower/self-control
- Procrastinate
- Feel inspired
- Experience burnout
- Feel energized/motivated
- Experience apathy
- Seek challenges
- Avoid discomfort
- Pursue mastery
- Experience flow state
- Set goals
- Give up/persist
- Experience frustration
- Feel determined
PERCEPTUAL/INTERPRETIVE:
- Construct reality from sensory input
- Fill in perceptual gaps
- Experience illusions
- Assign meaning to stimuli
- Notice/ignore stimuli (selective attention)
- Habituate to repeated stimuli
- Sensitize to important stimuli
- Experience synesthesia (some people)
- Process metaphor
- Understand symbols
- Interpret ambiguity
- Jump to conclusions
- Update interpretations
DEFENSIVE/PROTECTIVE:
- Deny uncomfortable truths
- Project onto others
- Displace emotions
- Intellectualize/rationalize
- Use humor as defense
- Dissociate from experience
- Repress memories/feelings
- Compartmentalize
- Idealize/devalue
- Experience paranoia
- Develop phobias
- Experience PTSD symptoms
- Freeze in threat
- Experience learned helplessness
CREATIVE/GENERATIVE:
- Generate novel ideas
- Combine concepts in new ways
- Experience inspiration
- Enter creative flow
- Overcome creative blocks
- Improvise
- Play/explore mentally
- Fantasize
- Appreciate beauty/aesthetics
- Create art/expression
- Experience humor/wit
- Tell stories
- Make meaning from chaos
TEMPORAL:
- Anticipate future
- Remember past
- Experience present
- Ruminate on past
- Worry about future
- Experience regret
- Experience anticipation
- Perceive duration
- Experience impatience
- Develop future orientation vs. present focus
SELF/IDENTITY:
- Maintain sense of self
- Form beliefs/worldview
- Construct narrative/life story
- Experience autonomy/agency
- Form values
- Develop personality
- Self-reflect
- Experience meaning/purpose
- Form ego/self-concept
- Defend self-image
- Update self-concept
- Experience cognitive dissonance
- Rationalize actions/beliefs
- Experience identity crisis
- Define in-group/out-group
- Form personal standards
- Self-criticize
- Self-affirm
- Experience existential concerns
APPEARANCE/LOOKS:
- Maintain skin
- Groom hair (head, face, body)
- Manage body odor
- Care for teeth
- Maintain weight/physique
- Manage visible aging
- Present posture/carriage
- Dress/adorn body
- Signal through appearance (status, identity, attraction)
All the bodily and mental things, as showed here, lead to personal and social interaction. Then they devolved into money, because those interactions are for value, and money is the abstraction we have for value and store of value. And because of that, it all dwells into the model of social obligations and contracts we have each other regarding relationships and obligations. Once money exists, all social exchanges become quantifiable and contractual
BODY & BRAIN → SOCIAL → VALUE/MONEY → OBLIGATIONS/CONTRACTS
These things are important as they form the foundation of all the perceivable activities we do. And each one of us has it in them since they are not abstractions that are created down the branched stream, every one of us has the ability to cherish and value them. All of us care about sleep, but only some of us will care about Docker deployment.
You can look at the infographic of that branching here.
So the full human experience is:
- Biological imperatives (body)
- Psychological imperatives (brain)
- Social imperatives (you need others)
- Economic imperatives (exchange of value)
- Legal/moral imperatives (contracts, obligations, reputation, trust)
Thus, if you create content or in some way target any of the imperatives that exist, you will be able to better monetize it using all the tools available at your disposal. You can sell peaceful sleep to everyone, but not Docker deployment to most. To make your offer even more powerful, you can sell sleep to the one who is deploying Docker also, and not to anyone else. That specialization and effort creates reciprocity. And even that sleep can be sold in so many forms. It can be a pillow, sleep pills, sleeping content, or an application that helps them through the deployment so that they are not afraid of errors popping up at night.
QOVES did it with the face. They created face content. And now they have services surrounding face. One can do the same thing for almost everything that exists as imperative for us as human beings.
Of course, some things are captured better than others. Like in the case of face, you can just take a few pictures and you can evaluate it. But in the case of sleep, you need to track it first. So the barriers to entry and the rules of the games are different everywhere. Face product can have an easy customer journey, while something like Sleep can have a more loyal fanbase because they already proved that they’re willing to go through that trouble.