June 2019

Book: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

• Inverse to even just 100 years ago we're at an interesting point in history where humans effectively kill themselves more than they are killed by any other disaster or even each other through war.

  • Obesity-related illnesses are far more likely to kill you than starvation or malnutrition-related illnesses.

    • In 2014, 2.1 billion people were overweight compared to 850 million suffering malnutrition.

    • In 2010, famine and malnutrition killed maybe 1 million people, obesity-related illness killed 3 million.

  • Suicide kills more than homicide, conflict, terrorism and natural disasters combined

    • 1.5 million died from diabetes, Sugar is more deadly than all weaponry combined.

• Amazing things we take for granted when we consider our relatively recent history:

  • War and Conflict were so prevalent that financial institutions would hedge investment in the likelihood that war would break out between two countries. Nowadays, we may fight small wars and conflicts but for the most part this is completely reversed. Massive institutions do not benefit from complete deterioration of a relationship with other countries of similar stature and therefore steer away from war.

  • Main sources of wealth were material. Today it is knowledge.

    • That being said, knowledge is changing the environment. We learn economic theory, but once everyone knows that theory and implements tools to utilize it, that changes the market as it reacts to align incentives.

• Death isn't some theological destiny, it's merely a compilation of tech

  • As we dig more and more into the technical issues, we will push the life span.

  • Undoubtedly, perhaps only for a wealthy portion of the world population (certainly the United States) we will push the average life span further, possibly up to 150, possibly indefinitely.

    • How will marriages work? If you marry at 30 and respect 'til death do us part' then that's 120 years with a single person, as opposed to closer to maybe 40 that our parents had.

• We try to imagine what humanity will look like in 50 years, but how can we?

  • The average human today has capabilities available that would have baffled humans even recently.

    • The gods of Greek and Indian lore had to spread communication via physical messengers that had to travel across the land. If only they had a Twitter account.

Podcasts: The Daily by NYT

• Fantastic Podcast that's been providing some interesting insight into recent topics.

• A New Way to Solve a Murder

  • Genetic Databases have been used to find the Golden State Killer and is helping solve other cold cases.

    • These databases rely on volunteered data, and their original usage often doesn't have anything to do with police usage. Especially since this is almost medical data, where does the responsibility lie for keeping this data private? Do enough people care?

• This Drug Could End H.I.V. Why Hasn't It?

  • A promising drug looks to be an effective treatment for HIV, but bureaucracy and other issues prevent it from being more prevalent worldwide than it should be.

  • Goes into relationships between Government and drug companies. Why is this treatment $20,000 in the US but $8 in Australia.

• How a Secret U.S. Cyberweapon Backfired

  • Eternal Blue was an NSA tool used to hold Baltimore city systems hostage. How did hackers get the tool? Should the NSA have released patches to protect against the tool on Microsoft systems much longer ago?

• Confronting a Childhood Abuser

  • Powerful story from Sean Escobar about how he confronted his childhood abuser Sterling Van Wagenen and overcame adversity from his Mormon community who would have preferred to keep it relatively hidden.

Podcasts: Throughline by NPR

• A Dream of Modern China

  • The story of Sun Yat-sen and how his influence took China from a rural country controlled by an imperial monarchy to a world-power democracy.

• El Libertador

  • Fantastic episode with very high quality production! Talks about the rise and fall of Venezuela with a "throughline" connecting the lives and history of Simon Bolivar, Nicholas Maduro and former President Hugo Chavez.

• Outbreak

  • Paints a picture of the stakeholders in the measles outbreak in the US, include those who want to abstain from vaccinations and how the government can force vaccination on residents, and should they?

Podcasts: Radiolab by WNYC

• The Miseducation of Larry P

  • In the state of California, it is off-limits to administer an IQ test to a child if he or she is Black.

  • Talks about the idea of dangerous ideas:

    • IQ tests demonstrated that African American students demonstrated a lower quotient than other student groups. Racist groups pointed to this as evidence of racial inferiority.

    • Radiolab peels back the layers and finds that IQ tests may not be as unbiased as some may have thought, with cultural knowledge that would not necessarily be available to certain demographics.

• Neither Confirm Nor Deny

  • "How a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists and lawyers for 40 years and embodies the tension between the public’s desire for transparency and the government’s need to keep secrets."