A Few Things: Information That Would Get Your Attention, Future of War, Why News Is Bad For You, Questions That Matter, News You Missed, The Latest in Quantum, Biology, AI and Cyber Security.....
February 15, 2024
I am sharing this weekly email with you because I count you in the group of people I learn from and enjoy being around.
Here is last week’s discussion: Marko Papic and Louis Gave on Markets, SuperHumans & the Race for AI Supremacy, Playbook for Better Parenting, Longevity Imperative, Evolution of AI, Photonics and Quantum Computing....
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Quotes I Am Thinking About:
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”
- Herbert Spencer
“Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.”
- Anais Nin
“We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.”
- Cecil Day-Lewis
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
- George Eliot
A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:
1. Thoughtful piece by Morgan Housel titled: Information That Would Get Your Attention.
3 Key Insights:
The most interesting information doesn't have to be realistic or obtainable. Just pondering hypothetical scenarios can force you to think deeply about impactful topics. If we could see people's unfiltered, unspoken thoughts and beliefs, we'd realize the world is far wilder, more diverse, creative, anxious, envious, etc. than we assume based on the tiny fraction people outwardly express.
History only records a tiny slice of what's happened - most decisions, beliefs, thoughts remain undocumented. We are blind to the vast majority of the human experience across time. Meeting all the versions of yourself that you could have become would help you realize how fragile and dependent on luck your life path was. This could make you less judgmental of others.
Knowing exactly how much time you have left would profoundly change how you live. A "life is long" mindset enables different behaviors than a "life is short" view. This is immensely powerful personal information.
2. The Economist had a cover story on the future of warfare: Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future.
Source: Getty Images
3 Key Insights from the article:
FPV (first-person view) drones represent a paradigm shift in warfare - they offer a previously impossible combination of low cost, abundance, and precision firepower. This is revolutionizing battlefields. Consumer technology, rapid innovation cycles, and AI/autonomy are driving rapid improvements in drones' capabilities. This civilian tech angle accelerates the pace of change compared to traditional military tech development.
Proliferating drones have major tactical impacts, inflicting heavy attrition and causality rates that constrain offensive maneuvers on both sides. Neither artillery nor armor are obsolete but drones make them far more vulnerable. Strategic impacts also loom large as more actors gain access to advanced precision strike abilities, enabling even small groups to have an outsized impact relative to their size/resources. Proliferation risks are severe.
The West has been caught somewhat flat-footed and is racing to catch up to these trends. Quick adoption of "replicator" drone programs and ubiquitous counter-drone defenses are critical to closing capability gaps that could be exploited by potential adversaries. FPV platforms represents an inflection point in military technology that calls for significant doctrinal, capability, and strategic reassessments among major military powers as well as non-state actors.
3. I only read the news once a week, so this old Guardian article by Rolf Dobelli spoke to me: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier.
5 Key Insights:
News misleads. News focuses on flashy, dramatic stories rather than the deeply important systemic issues. It gives us a distorted risk map and priorities.
News doesn't provide explanatory power. It shares surface facts, not the deeper transformations shaping our world. More news factoids don't lead to more understanding.
News is toxic to your body. It triggers stress hormones and deregulates the immune system, disrupting digestion, cell growth, and more.
News inhibits thinking by disrupting concentration, weakening comprehension, and exercising neural circuits for skimming not deep focus.
News kills creativity by limiting the space for novel ideas, It's hard to think outside the box when you always know what's going on inside the box. Limiting news gives more creative freedom.
4. My friend Richard Black shared a thoughtful piece titled: The Questions That Matter by Tim Hanson.
It argues that many of the questions asked by analysts and investors are actually not very useful or substantive. These include:
Detailed, nitpicky questions that focus on minor or trivial issues just to show off the analyst's knowledge rather than reveal anything meaningful about the business. "Don't you think" questions that disguise the analyst's preconceived notions as questions.
The author contrasts these with the basic yet insightful questions asked by a 15-year-old Bank of America shareholder focused on what really matters - like simply asking "What is the bank doing to raise the share price?".
The author argues we need to ask more basic questions, avoid providing too much detail up front, and ask follow up questions to extract more information. This results in learning things management teams might be trying to hide.
Investors should focus on asking basic, simple questions that matter rather than complex or misleading ones designed to show off. This helps cut through management attempts to obfuscate and better understands the business
5. MIT released a number of great free courses online.
B. News and Charts You Might Have Missed
1. OpenAI has been reportedly developing two types of AI agent software for over a year. The first type can be used to automate complex tasks by taking over a customer's device. The second AI agent class handles web-based tasks and can gather public data. It is unclear when the company plans to release these agents.
2. Sitting for most of the workday raises one's risk of early death by 16% and the risk of cardiovascular death by 34%, according to new research. Experts recommend incorporating at least 15-30 minutes of physical activity outside of work to mitigate this risk. Sitting was linked to early death regardless of pre-existing heart conditions. Combining sitting with standing/moving throughout the workday eliminates the increased risk. Simple workplace changes like standing desks and walking meetings can help reduce risk, they say.
3. More than a third of Americans now supplement or substitute medical care with therapies like acupuncture, meditation or yoga to help with overall wellness, stress and pain management, sleep, energy, and immune health. In 2002, only 19% of adult pain patients used alternative therapies, but the percentage has jumped up to 37% in 2022. In particular, the number of people practicing yoga to manage pain increased to 29% in 2022 from 11% in 2002. Likewise, meditation has risen in popularity with 17% in 2022 opting for it as treatment, compared to 7.5% in 2002.
The broader acceptance of these types of nontraditional medical care has been driven by several factors including growing insurance reimbursement for clinical alternatives, increased scientific evidence of their effectiveness, the influence of media and social media, patients looking for alternatives to opiates in addition to the low cost involved
4. Cassette tapes are having a revival in Japan. Listeners are drawn to the sound of analog audio.
5. Beware regime shifts.
C. The Science and Technology Section
1. My friend Sean Maher at Entext has been researching and writing about Quantum for a few years now and published a recent note on the subject.
Key Insights from Sean:
Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, with major investments from companies like Google, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and startups. However, there are still significant technical hurdles related to stability and scaling up the number of qubits before practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers are realized.
In the meantime, the era of "noisy intermediate-scale quantum" (NISQ) computers is emerging, where quantum processors can augment classical supercomputers in a hybrid model. This could provide advances in areas like materials science, pharmaceuticals, optimization problems, and AI.
Achieving quantum advantage could give countries and companies enormous strategic advantages. There is also potential for quantum computers to break current encryption schemes like RSA, posing major cybersecurity threats. Work is underway on post-quantum cryptography standards to prepare for this.
While meaningful applications are likely still a decade away, the field is reaching milestones that suggest quantum computers will become practically realizable in the not too distant future. This could drive massive computing power advances and disruption in areas ranging from drug discovery to cryptography and data security.
2. Thank you Zavain Dar at Dimension Capital for sharing this beautiful piece titled I should have loved biology by James Somers.
Key Insights:
Biology is presented in textbooks as a dry recitation of facts, when it should inspire more wonder about the astonishing processes of life. We should approach it with an inquisitive mindset, seeking to understand the key questions and experiments behind discoveries.
Understanding biology requires thinking physically about shapes and structures bumping into each other, not just flowcharts of abstract processes. DNA transcription happens because a molecular machine rides along the DNA double helix.
Cells are crowded, fast-moving places dominated by random diffusion. This allows efficient recognition between proteins and receptors across cell membranes.
Biologists have ingenious methods to isolate, sort, and analyze cells and molecules, like centrifuges, gels, antibodies, and gene editing. Grasping these methods provides a foundation for understanding biology.
We need better tools for diagramming, animating and simulating biology, to help people visualize these microworlds. Collaborative, editable vector graphics and biology-focused game engines could enable anyone to contribute to representations of biological mechanisms.
3. The Infinite Loops podcast with Jim O’Shaughnessy had Rohit Krishnan to discuss Demystifying AI. Rohit is the author of Building God: Demystifying AI for Decision Makers.
Key Insights from the conversation:
Current AI has profound gaps compared to human cognition - lacking the intuitive physics, interconnecting conceptual networks, and grounded multi-modal understanding of the world that even young children possess. Targeted progress on unsupervised multimodal learning, robust memory, causal reasoning, and physically situated embodiment offer paths to mitigate these deficits.
Premature overregulation risks severe unintended consequences that stifle progress, but proactive mitigation of downsides remains prudent as capabilities advance. Similar to fire, electricity, and computing, AI may bring both profound benefits and risks. Thoughtful governance that allows room for progress while addressing concrete harms in a fast-moving landscape is needed.
For creativity and judgment, AI should augment human strengths in a hybrid "centaur" model, not replace humans entirely. Imagination and goals require human guidance, while AI contributes pattern recognition and computational power. Keeping humans firmly in the loop during development and application respects the complementary value of both.
Specialized vertical AI focused on industry expertise and human needs offers the most viable startup opportunities, rather than directly confronting entrenched general platforms. By targeting neglected niches, leveraging unique data/algorithms, and pushing current techniques deeper into specific domains, startups can thrive by solving concrete problems for humans.
We are far from exhausting the supply of rich sensory data streams available to drive progress. However, proprietary data alone may provide little advantage unless combined with advanced algorithms and world models that generalize. Overall quality, diversity, and effectively capturing causal phenomena matter more than raw quantity alone. Promising synthetic data techniques also offer paths to generate valuable training sets for steady incremental improvements.
They believe that cybersecurity isn’t getting the attention it deserves by the markets. In fact, while generative AI may have been the key factor driving the equity markets higher last year, 2024 is a new ball game. And cybersecurity – not LLMs – could represent the dominant narrative this year.
Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you got value out of reading, please let others know!
Love the graph with the nature of questions. Took me years as an analyst to realize the simpler and bigger questions are more important for returns than the more complicated questions, which are really meant to show off how smart and prepared you as opposed to helping you make critical decisions.