In Pursuit of Optimism
Friends!
I am returning this week to a very important topic that I have touched on before: OPTIMISM.
I titled this newsletter series IN PURSUIT OF ELEVATION mainly due to our inability as a culture to create more enlightened conversations that can hold a space for multiple and often contradicting points of view without turning to the level of vitriol, meanspiritedness, and ultimately a kind of brutality that we have witnessed lately. I am trying my best to, both for my own sake and hopefully for some of you, shine a light on different perspectives and ideas that are worth listening to. I believe that things that concern us might not be our fault but they are still our problem. We live in an interdependent world.
It's been a mystery to me that we all want to feel optimistic yet surround ourselves with so much pessimism. Why are so many people consumed by negative reporting? What is it about negativity that makes it more credible, newsworthy, and penetrating? I have circled around this topic in several newsletters before, particularly this one.
Feeling optimistic is one of the greatest feelings in the world. And feeling pessimistic is one of the worst. So finding optimism clearly matters. However, you can't fake optimism. At least I can't. For those that can, CONGRATULATIONS, you've got it made.
Optimism (or pessimism), to me, is based on a proper assessment of any situation and its context, identifying relative risks, taking inventory of the collective capabilities and resources of people around me (myself, family, colleagues, teams, nations, etc) and based on all those assessments arriving at a strategy that best can lead to a successful outcome. That sounds like a mouthful. And I guess it is. One of the reasons why our current culture is so consumed by negative bias is that it's easier. It doesn't take a lot of effort or talent to point out what is wrong and blame someone for it. But to find less obvious strengths and opportunities that can offset whatever challenges we face always takes deeper conviction, more creativity, and a lot of patience, resilience, and grit.
In Business School I took a lot of statistics classes. And I maintain to this day that it was the most useful subject I ever studied. I learned then, and I practice now, a probabilistic approach to life. Assessing relative risks is an exercise in likelihoods. There are NEVER any certainties in life. Everything we do involves risks. And there are always underlying tradeoffs between risks and rewards, costs and benefits, instant or delayed gratification in every decision we humans make.
I find most individuals get this concept instinctively. People can plan their path to work and make it on time (at least most). They can factor in time, traffic, weather, and mode of transportation. Most people can plan a move to a different city which involves a host of tradeoff decisions and complete the myriad of decisions nearly perfectly. But when we collectively try to have a public conversation around tradeoffs between risks and rewards it gets nasty and more driven by politics than by probabilities.
COVID is a great case in point. It is true that this virus is very contagious. It is also true that it affected older people more than younger. It is also true that we didn't know enough in the early days and still might not have ALL facts. But it is also equally true that our immune system affects our ability to cope with this virus (and other diseases). It is furthermore true that your diet, your exposure to sunshine, and your underlying conditions were key indicators to your levels of risks both in getting and then surviving the virus. While all these facts are more or less non-debatable we didn't have the capability to discuss them properly. We didn't use this year to go on a health kick as a nation which would help ALL diseases and would have saved lives. If we somehow could help ourselves to calm down, listen to facts, accept that "other" points of view aren't crazy or wrong they simply are different than our own, we would do so much better. That's the elevated perspective I am trying to reach.
So, going back to probabilities I thought I'd make an effort of laying out why I AM MORE AND MORE OPTIMISTIC about our collective future. Sounds crazy. Right? I am not trying to talk myself or you into feeling the same. I am simply listing a few reasons for why I think we might be at the beginning of a sensational period in human evolution.
I am doing it for 3 reasons.
You typically find what you are looking for. If we look for what's good we will find more good than bad.
All in all, I find the 4 reasons for optimism below to be compelling and therefore have a real chance of bringing unimaginable benefits to humanity.
Perhaps most importantly, optimism is contagious. If more and more people truly believed the future will be better, it will be.
I have chosen 4 key reasons for optimism. As a reminder, I have a day job and I write these newsletters weekly so it is impossible for me to be thorough and complete in my assessment of EVERYTHING. This is just one take, this particular week. I will try to add and subtract over time. I have also tried to respect your Sunday morning and cover them briefly. In the links below there is more to read and listen to for those who want to go deeper.
Lastly. Please don't infer from this that don't think we have any problems. If you do you are missing the point I am trying to get across above. Of course, we have problems. In prior newsletters, I have referenced most of them. But this post is NOT about them. Rather it is about the reasons for believing that we might, on balance, very well have stronger tailwinds than headwinds. Which is the basis for my own optimism. Probabilistically what is good in the world will defeat what is bad.
I selected these 4 important reasons why we might have very good days ahead.
Post-Pandemic Productivity
Biotech Bonanza
Evergreening Energy
Moore's Law Multiplying
POST-PANDEMIC PRODUCTIVITY
I have heard this statement many times during the pandemic. Do you know what happened after the last pandemic? The answer: "The roaring twenties".
While our circumstances compared to then are very different there might be some psychological factors that could serve us well. Coming out of this period of disruption we clearly have had plenty of time to reflect and adjust. As I wrote last week, people and organizations have taken this time to sharpen their saws and reconfigure and rethink their "operations". People have also changed spending habits, saving propensities, and adjusting via new skills and routines.
And importantly, most people are grateful that it is soon over. It produces more positive human energy. I think collective energy cannot be understated and I believe the relief and happiness to get back to normalcy will paradoxically help us elevate to a new and better reality.
But I also think working our disruption muscle has been a very positive side-effect of the pandemic. We got to practice living through a disruption. And that is actually good news as change is the only constant. We are living through an era of rapid technological change and our capabilities to identify them earlier, adjust to them quicker, and benefit from them more will be enhanced precisely because we have had the pandemic experience we just had (with all its mistakes, frustrations, and disappointments).
BIOTECH BONANZA
This is a bit above my paygrade for sure. But please listen to the podcast below with Tyler Cowen who can articulate this and the next point on energy better than I can. But here is the gist of it (big thanks to my friend Johan Pontin who helped me get this brief summary more accurate!).
The Covid-19 virus’s genome was sequenced in a few weeks and mRNA vaccines that are now being rolled out across the world are significant for future disease treatment. The speed of the scientific response is a strong indication of a technological revolution – a ‘Bio Revolution’ – in the life sciences. Traditional vaccines take several years to develop and would typically achieve less than 70% efficacy, whereas the mRNA cell therapy took months to develop with efficacy above 90%. That is nothing less than transformative, if not revolutionary.
Analogous to the industrial revolution before it, the Bio Revolution represents the intersection of biology and technology, this time with advances in biological science being driven forward by innovative developments in computing, automation, artificial intelligence, and our increased understanding of the human genome. The Human Genome Project that completed in 2003 gave us immense insight predominately into our proteome where we focused in on less than 2% of our genome that is transcribed. At the time many referred to the remaining 98% of the genome as "Junk DNA" or "Dark Matter” today we mostly refer to this part of the genome as the “Transcriptome”. The insight into the transcriptome and its function is far more transformative than the proteome.
Initiatives like the ENCODE project launched in 2003 that aims to discover and understand all the functional parts of the genome, the Proteome, and the Transcriptome, has taught us that more than 85% of the genome consist of non-coding RNA (ncRNA), that is a functional RNA molecule that is transcribed from DNA but not translated into proteins.
The Moderna and BioNtech cell therapies/vaccines would not have come to reality without this insight.
The Bio Revolution is enabling us to develop RNA medicines that hold the promise of curating disease or preventing disease, whereas the vast majority of medicines approved to date have focused on the proteome and therefore mainly treat symptoms and manage disease states. The drugging of the transcriptome will be so transformative and revolutionary that it will take us from today's predominantly reactionary sick care society into preventative and curative healthcare.
EVERGREENING ENERGY
I have been an avid supporter, campaigner for a more sustainable world of business in general and aggressive renewable energy policies in particular. We need to move our current linear economic system to live in harmony with our circular ecosystem. Not doing so is unsustainable and waiting until we run out of time or resources is both irrational and immoral. Fortunately, it seems like most leaders agree and we are witnessing a radical increase in the production of renewable energy as well as all sorts of closed-loop systems in waste management, growth of regenerative farming, and the elimination of toxins in almost every sector of society. Not fast enough. Not deep enough. But still, significant progress.
The obvious benefit is that we might have a chance at reducing emissions enough to reach our climate goals and thereby avoid real catastrophe. I am still not sure but it's trending in the right direction. So that's good. Much more decisive action needed for sure.
The part less discussed is what happens to our world when energy is completely clean, available to almost anyone at costs MUCH lower than prior eras (oil and coal primarily). Well, no one knows for sure but I think you could easily envision local communities with access to energy innovating and reinventing themselves at a level that will completely change how we live, how we work, and how we trade. I think it is super exciting. Energy has been a critical ingredient for so much of human evolution and the notion that, like knowledge, it might soon be accessible to anyone, anywhere at really low costs, will spur innovation and human flourishing in unimaginable ways.
Moore's Law Multiplying
The last point (at least for now) is what Sam Altman has framed as Moore's Law for Everything. You can call this Artificial Intelligence or whatever you want. But the point is that our advances in software along with the incredible exponential growth in computing power has up till now mainly benefited the technology sector itself. But Sam's (and many others) view is that we are at the dawn of an explosion of AI benefiting just about everything else. IBM Watson finally beat Chess World Champions simply because the accumulated history of every Chess Game ever played is smarter than any individual champion. Think about this idea applied to medicine, education, and just about any other field. If Moore's Law logic applies, we can see an exponential improvement in the service, cost, and quality of the most important services in life. Think about it as instant access to world-class health care, education, translation, and knowledge. For everyone.
Sorry if that was a bit dense. Please listen to the source material below if you are interested.
Tyler Cowen being interviewed by Chris Anderson at TED. Tyler is a professor of Economics. What is interesting with his perspective is that he wrote a big book called The Great Stagnation in 2011 which was a bit "depressing" and caused quite a stir. He argued in it that we have actually made very little progress when lots of people then thought we had made more. But now, he is making a compelling case for why this is about to change. Particularly pointing to point 2 and 3 on my list.
Sam Altman being interviewed by Ezra Klein. Sam founded Y Combinator and is super-articulated about Artificial Intelligence and why it is a reason for real optimism. And he does it thoughtfully without the typical techno-optimism that often lacks recognition of some of the problems any big game-changing vision also entails. Sam also wrote this article about Moore's Law for Everything if you want to go deeper.
David Brook's article in NYT about the great American Renaissance does a good job of why the post-pandemic culture could be stronger and better than we might think.
I always liked the book Abundance (2012) by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. In it they lay out reasons for optimism and I think it's, therefore, a good source for those who want to dive deeper on my attempts here today. Here is a summary I found.
In the latest survey of CEOs, they are more optimistic than typical. It's easy to perhaps be cynical about CEO's. Too many believe they have a self-centered and myopic view of the world. While that might be true for some, they also all have a view from a mountaintop where they can take the pulse from thousands of employees and millions of customers and supply chains in most countries in the world. Here is the latest survey at Fortune. This quote stands out to me from CEO of Deloitte US, who serves many of them: There is tremendous optimism. It does seem to be grounded in economic fundamentals, strong growth, tremendous pent-up consumer demand. I’ve had, in conversations with client CEOs over the past couple of weeks, comparisons made to the Roaring 20s, comparisons made to the period coming out of World War II.
I know for some readers this might be difficult to embrace. And sure, I can write a case for pessimism as well. It's probably easier to do. But my point here this week is to (a) recognize the importance of optimism and thereby accepting and embracing our own responsibility for finding it and spreading it and (b) trying my best to lay out why the future might be much better than we think.
Spending Father's Day with all our children and their 7 grandchildren and then immediately welcoming our newest grandchild were of course great reminders of the presence and importance of optimism. Looking in the eyes of children we owe to them the best possible of futures. Don't we?
Have a great week!
