You’ve probably seen the photos comparing people on the beach in the 60s/70s versus now.
Not very flattering, for sure, and everybody’s got their opinion on why it is. Lifestyle, food, Big Ag, medication, Big Pharma, capitalism, racism, the income divide, America-the-evil, luck, etc. Pick your favorite political slogan.
How does one find the cause and then a solution for such a problem (ie, the kind of problem that didn’t exist but then shows up)?
In the engineering world, we use two concepts to find causes and solutions: white-box testing and black-box testing. White box testing requires a map and deep knowledge of what’s inside the box. Black box testing knows nothing of what’s in the box and focuses solely on the inputs and output. Black box testing is ideal when you know that nothing inside the box has changed, yet the results are different.
In this case here, we are the box. The human biochemical system today is the same as it was 50 years ago.
So what changed outside the box?
