From past to future
Does history have a basis in mathematics, what's *actually* happening in AI, and living in a world in chaos. This is Issue #003 of Forward.
Last week, we started this newsletter explaining how President-elect Joe Biden has his task cut out trying to manage a pandemic-hit economy. It’s been nearly a year since COVID-19 started making headlines, but we’re finally starting to see a few that inspire hope, not despair.
After positive reports about Coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, promising initial tests from AstraZeneca and Oxford University are giving people a little cheer, with world markets also cautiously reacting to the positive sentiment.
However, WHO regional director for Europe Dr. Hans Kluge was quick to point out that these vaccines (if and when they are approved by regulators) be used for global, public good — by providing them to healthcare workers and at-risk patients before the general public.
The math behind why history repeats itself
Things may be getting better from a health perspective, but if Peter Turchin is to be believed, it doesn’t look so rosy from a societal standpoint. Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, analyses history from a statistical point of view, tracing the rise and fall of civilizations and important events.
His models have been gaining grudging respect among academics, and he says the current socio-economic climate in the US is a result of a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. (The Atlantic)
The potential end result? Another decade of unrest.
The great thing about history though, while it may repeat itself — perhaps even with mathematical precision — is that studying it is the best way to not repeat our past mistakes.
An important lesson from history is that the risks we talk about in the news are rarely the most important risks in hindsight. Over the last decade, we saw economists and investors discussing the ‘biggest risk to the economy’ — was it Ben Bernanke’s monetary policy? Barack Obama’s fiscal policy? Donald Trump’s trade wars?
No, none of those. It was a virus. Out of the blue, causing havoc we couldn’t comprehend.
The same story, again and again.
We’ll let Morgan Housel explain.
Hello Computer
AI, ML, Blockchain. Three terms SEO experts have loosely bandied about over the past half decade to get easy eyeballs. The unfortunate side effect of this phenomenon is that the really exciting breakthroughs in these sectors are often buried under the fluff. For more discerning readers, AI investors Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth have released a State of AI 2020 report. How much did it cost to train GPT-3? Is PyTorch better than TensorFlow? How good is AI at actually deciphering human speech? If these are the kind of questions that make you lose sleep at night, the report makes for interesting reading.
“If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.”
Stuff we loved this week
Should you do old things better or do entirely new things? The former gets all the attention, but the latter is what has the potential to change the world. Inherently, we all know this, but sometimes, it’s good to get a reminder.
In our increasingly complicated personal and professional lives, communication and planning can get… complicated. We found Paul Graham’s piece on how to disagree and James Clear’s musings on making peace with entropy to be great anchors.
Hunter-Gatherers value storytelling over hunting and gathering: By far, the most in-demand tribe members were not the best hunters or fishers. They weren’t the best healers. They weren’t even necessarily the people with the highest status.
Instead, the most desired living mates were those considered to be the most talented storytellers. “...…the Agta prefer to live in camps with skilled storytellers, who are even more valued than good foragers.”
Read more: Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling
Food for Thought
Bitcoin breached $18,800, and is back in the limelight among believers and naysayers alike.
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money...” — Satoshi Nakamoto
So what’s a Bitcoin ‘halvening’ then? What does it mean for the cryptocurrency and those exposed to it? Ash Bennington and Balaji Srinivasan decode the endless possibilities associated with it in this video (68 min).
There’s something magical that happens when Tim Urban writes about Elon Musk. Doubly so if it’s about something ‘magical’ that Musk is doing. Neuralink is among the more fantastic of Musk’s projects, and this 2017 piece on Wait But Why is a great primer on Musk’s ambitious vision.
That brings us to the end of another issue of Forward. We’ll be back in two weeks time with more insights and observations. As always, if you liked what you read and haven’t subscribed to Forward yet, just enter your email below and we’ll send it to you fresh off the press every fortnight.
Until next time,
Your friends at NEO