The World’s Next Big Problem?

hazmat

The world has some big problems. We have shown we aren’t very adept at scrambling to deal with crises once we’ve reached the point of no return (see global warming), so maybe we should get a head start on the next disaster?

I recently read an interview of a doctor that says we’ve reached the end of antibiotics. There are bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics known to man. This is bad.

Every time bacteria is exposed to an antibiotic, there is the chance that it will become resistant to it. When you have another antibiotic to try (there are thousands), this isn’t horrible, just try the next one. But we’ve now reached the end of the line where some “super-bugs” have shown resistance to every antibiotic humans have discovered.

The reason I got to thinking about this is the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers locker room was cleaned by a hazmat crew after their game this week. Why? Several of their players have had MRSA, which is a highly resistant bacteria, and they don’t want it spreading to anyone else.

Typically this antibiotics problem is limited to hospitals. Someone gets a nasty wound and bacteria climbs on in. In the last 50 years with antibiotics, people rarely die from this. We could simply kill the bacteria with antibiotics. This opened up a world of new possibilities, everything from organ transplants, chemotherapy, and more. Basically any treatment that weakens your immune system is less of a concern when have antibiotics to treat infections.

Now we are seeing bacteria resistant to all antibiotics known to man. We are also seeing these nasty bacteria away from hospitals. (Apparently these bacteria are football fans just like the rest of us. They probably have a fantasy team that benefited by keeping a few Buccaneers players out of games.) But we are still in the early stages, no need to get all worked up yet. But what happens when there are more-and-more super-bugs out there? What happens when going to the hospital is too dangerous? Should we start thinking about this now?

Let’s turn to solving the problem. First, we need to slow down the creation of these super-bacteria by using less antibiotics. In the meantime, we also need to create some new antibiotics we can use.

Creating new antibiotics

According to the interview linked above, the low hanging fruits have been discovered. It has become more difficult and expensive to discover new antibiotics. It doesn’t make sense financially for the drug companies to spend time working on this. Antibiotics sales bring in a pittance and there is too much money to be made by continuously selling you a drug that lowers your blood pressure. We need to fix these incentives or ramp up government funded efforts.

Using less antibiotics

We need to seriously cut back on antibiotic use. Less preventative use as well as saving certain strains for our last resort. I don’t know much about how they are used in humans, but the obvious place to cut back is for factory farmed animals. 30 millions pounds of antibiotics are used on US animals each year, compared to 8 million pounds for humans. Supply and demand at its worst – with so many carnivores demanding meat, this is one of the consequences. Here’s a short excerpt from the interview:

I’d like to ask you about the use of antibiotics for farm animals. I know a large share of the antibiotics produced in this country is used in agriculture. Do you see problems there? Is that generating resistance as well as the use for humans?

We know that the use of antibiotics in any setting, and especially the overuse of antibiotics in any setting, is an issue that will generate resistance, that will lead to problems of resistance. That applies as much for human use as it does for animal use.

Do you think that if they’re used for animals, there’s actually a pathway to resistance that is a threat to human health?

I think there is. There have been a number of studies that show that when you give antibiotics to animals, especially to animals that we then eat, there are antibiotics that get into their systems that can develop resistance, and then when we eat the food, we can be exposed to those resistant organisms.

We also know that if antibiotics are used in animal feed that they can end up in animal waste, so we can end up with antibiotics in our water supplies, and it’s that type of low-level presence of antibiotics that can also lead to issues with resistance.

Do you think we have enough data to know what’s happening with the antibiotics used on the farm?

I think we know enough to say that we need to be doing a better job of improving appropriate use of antibiotics in all sectors, humans and animals.

But the agriculture sector is different, because antibiotics have been used there for a long time with an eye toward improving the growth of the animals, really for food purposes, to make them bigger and fatter with less food. Does that concern you as a use?

Certainly the CDC believes quite firmly, and I think there are a number of veterinary experts here and in other places who agree with the stance that we should never be using antibiotics in agriculture or in people for any other purpose than to treat infections.

Using antibiotics to promote growth in animals is not a good use of antibiotics. It’s not careful use of this really delicate and invaluable resource.

Check out How Using Antibiotics In Animal Feed Creates Superbugs for some more deets.


It’s amazing how I tie everything back to “you should be a vegetarian”. It reminds me of the standup Jerry Seinfeld does in The Shower Head:

“Yeah, I got some family backstage. Course my family’s nuts; they’re crazy. Yep. My uncle Leo, I had lunch with him the other day, he’s one of these guys that anything goes wrong in life, he blames it on anti-Semitism. You know what I mean, the spaghetti’s not al dente? Cook’s an anti-Semite. Loses a bet on a horse. Secretariat? Anti-Semitic. Doesn’t get a good seat at the temple. Rabbi? Anti-Semite.”

Hopefully mine’s not quite as irrational …

Shifting Paradigms

Paradigm is a short word that has the intimidation factor of a much longer word. It’s one of those that we know the meaning of, but can’t put into words particularly well. So let’s start with getting on the same page with the meaning, I’m going for the third entry in Websters:

a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind

A cognitive framework if you will. A way of thinking. This gained meaning for me in a class at Stanford called Programming Paradigms. Simply put, there are many different ways to achieve a desired outcome in programming. There are different ways to think about how to approach solving the problem. This is why different programming languages are useful – they can enable these different ways of thinking. Everything is an object. Or everything is a list.

Paradigms certainly aren’t limited to programming however. I think they should be more widely used in our every day lives. The right mindset has the potential to offer a better solution to our problems, but more importantly having the flexibility to shift paradigms gives us the ability to empathize. If you are unable to shift your perspective, you will never truly understand how someone believes what they do.

Thought exercises should be a part of our education to promote an open minded population. Simply having an open minded population would solve so many of our problems. The goal for these exercises is to keep an open mind for a set period of time, not to ultimately believe it.

Here are some mind blowing thoughts to try out:

  • The world is a computer simulation, as explored in the Matrix. You and your independent decisions are really just a program that is able to learn and grow. Scientifically there could be some validity to this. The laws of physics break down at the smallest margins. Any simulation has a limit to how many calculations can be made, and the result would look like what physicists have observed. What would this mean? Would this change anything?
  • Democrats’ willingness for the government to help the poor and less fortunate are selfishly unloading the job on someone else so that they personally don’t have to do it and don’t feel guilty. What pieces of evidence can be used to support this? How do personal feelings get in the way?
  • That money has no real meaning. It has value because we all agree that it does, but if that were to change, what would happen? If only a handful of people realized this, what would change? Would those people be better or worse off?
  • 1984 and the Hunger Games feature worlds that appear completely unrealistic. But if one of those societies is the ending point, and today’s society is the beginning, what would the path look like to get there? Have we already started on that path? Can you defend that argument?
  • There is a limit to how many people the earth can support – one day that limit will be hit and the leaders of the world will realize it. The days of parents deciding how many children they want to have are limited. What will the warning signs of this limit look like? How far past the limit will we blow past until it gets to the point of controlling births? How will it feel having this aspect of your life controlled?

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Hopefully at least one of those blew your mind. If I were in charge of education, how would I implement these thought exercises? Introduce these ideas and form small groups to explore them. Then have each person come up with a 2-3 minute argument supporting the case. Basically everyone practices defending the pro side of a radical argument. Someday it will be important to understand why the crazies believe what they do.

Starbucks Treat Receipt – The Best Idea Ever?

Starbucks is one clever company. I have been impressed by their promotions: like donating $5 to create US jobs for every pound of coffee purchased. I have been impressed by their fearless embrace of new technology: like signing up to process all credit card payments with Square. And I have been impressed by how deeply they have climbed into my head: the Starbucks Treat Receipt.

If you buy something from Starbucks before 2 pm, show up after 2 pm with your receipt to get any medium cold drink for $2. Yes, that includes the $4.50 ice cream drinks (aka Grande blended frappuccinos).

Why is this deal so awesome for Starbucks? Who goes to Starbucks twice in one day? Maybe if you are up early, but who goes after 2 pm? It is way easier to convince a paying customer to do it again than it is to get a new customer entirely. They must be crushing it on repeat customers during this promotion.

This deal is extremely appealing – I find myself saving receipts now. I tell myself “well, you might as well hang on to the receipt just in case you want to go later.” Then every time I reach into my pocket I find the receipt and think of Starbucks. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t want a sugary drink in the afternoon. And the iced coffee and iced green tea are cheap enough that the deal wouldn’t really save me any money. But I still save the receipts. I have gone back once for an afternoon treat and they are bound to get me again soon. Probably tomorrow…

There is even more cleverness, so much so that I will switch to bullet points:

  • “Treat” receipt. Yes, even the name is encouraging you to get one of those expensive sugary drinks. You deserve a treat. And then you are addicted. And probably pregnant.
  • The promotion is limited to one month. This makes it way more appealing. I think to myself, “well Brian, you better take advantage of this now because you won’t be able to later.”
  • The hot summer time promotion. You’re hot, thirsty, and have a treat receipt in your pocket. No brainer.
  • The oh so close to a rhyme – “treat receipt”. It is music to the ears.

 
 

Back to School Again – My First Experience with Coursera

In the spring I sat in on a class at Stanford – “Startup” taught by Peter Theil. I definitely learned a ton, but it wasn’t until I noticed I achieving perfect attendance that I thought I might enjoy taking other classes from time to time just for fun.

A couple weeks ago my latest class began – “Software Engineering for SaaS” (software as a service) offered by Coursera. It is adapted from a UC Berkeley computer science course for seniors. Why am I interested in this? Because it teaches a modern technology stack – Ruby on Rails – that is widely used and incredibly useful. If I were to start a new web application project a month ago, I would have struggled and wasted a lot of time getting started despite all my programming experience.

Why is that? Web programming isn’t exactly covered for most students in the computer science program. Rather, they take the fundamentals they learn and apply them to making websites. Sometimes this can be the same programming language, but often times it is not. I simply haven’t put in enough hours to be very comfortable in this area.

The hours that I have put in are in ancient technologies – PHP (used to power WordPress, and thus my websites) and ASP.NET (used by my old company because they had to use the Windows technology stack for conservative law firms that don’t want anything to do with open sources software (they’d have no one to yell at if something goes wrong!)). The SaaS class covers (or forces me to get experience on my own): Ruby on Rails, GitHub, HAML, EC2, Heroku, RESTful APIs, MVC, Agile, Cucumber, Capybara, and more buzzwords I’m forgetting.

I’m glad I’m getting a formal introduction to these because I believe it will lead to a better education than learning on my own. More importantly, I’m glad that I’m learning now before I have a project I’m trying to push out and cutting corners to get there.
 


 
Udacity is the other online advanced learning site making waves. Where Coursera adapts existing university courses for online, Udacity creates new courses from the ground up for online content. People aparently like this better. I think this chunking of content into smaller online bites, gamifying, interaction to keep your attention, whatever, only has potential to dumb the course down. What’s wrong with long-form classes? Not everything has to be a tweet, and for difficult concepts, I think long-form has an advantage.

Strong Beliefs – A Willingness to Ignore a Lack of Supporting Evidence and Contradictory Facts

There are plenty of things people believe blindly without much evidence. You could consider these people lazy for not gathering enough information to make an informed decision. You could consider these people illogical for jumping to a conclusion immediately. You could consider them stubborn for not listening to contradictory facts. But this conviction to things you believe in can be extremely valuable. What are a couple things I blindly believe and logical reasoning won’t change my belief any time soon?

Capitalism

This is an area I have been thinking about a lot recently. I started a for-profit company in a space where many non-profits are trying to make an impact. When it comes down to it I believe strongly that capitalism is the best way to improve the world. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. Of course there are certain non-profits that are necessary. But if you are providing a good or service of value to a customer that is able and willing to pay, you should collect, even if your primary aim is to help the world. Why? Because I believe it is better for everyone in the long run. I might not have the proof or even a strong argument, but it is good enough for me.

The fiction book Atlas Shrugged provides an entertaining look at the virtues of capitalism. Highly recommended.

The impact of one person

Can one person actually make an impact in a world with 7 billion people? In theory, sure. But can you or I? I have a blind faith that I can and that if everyone believed they could, the world would be a much better place (even if not everyone succeeded).

It just isn’t logical! Considering everyone has more than one problem (Jay-Z has 99 himself), there are billions upon billions of problems in the world – is it logical to believe just one person can make a dent? It doesn’t matter what your mom tells you, she is wrong, you’re not special.

“You do the little job you’re trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.”

“You are not important. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”
-Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

That’s one way to look at it… what a downer. But you know what? People have done it before:
 

Is it reasonable to believe you can make an impact? Nope, but it doesn’t matter:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
-George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Is it illogical? Yes, but that makes it all the more important:
 

 
Do you have any strong beliefs that you don’t care about the lack of supporting evidence or contradictory facts?
 


 
I didn’t list a bunch of things people believe blindly because I want you to think for yourself and I want to avoid offending. It’s hard to think about things you never think about, but take a look at your assumptions.

Shout out to Adamson for blogging Sapolsky’s video a few months ago as well as the Fight Club quote. The whole video is intriguing and definitely worth watching, but only the last 3 minutes are relevant to this discussion.

Shout out to Fenner for getting me thinking about this last weekend.

Global Warming vs. Peak Oil Theory

We all have heard about this so called global warming. Apparently it’s true. Scientifically a fact. But it doesn’t necessarily mean we need to cut back our gas guzzling ways or make the government invest in alternative energy. Why not? Peak oil theory.

The United States used to dominate the world market for oil (and thus gasoline) – no, I’m not talking about the demand for oil, I’m talking about the production! The US had tons of oil – Texas, Pennsylvania, California – and the rest the world had a mere pittance. But in 1956 a man named M. King Hubbert predicted these good times would come to an end within 15 years.

He noticed that every oil well and field shared a similar timeline – first discovery, the logistics to extract the oil being put in place, a peak or plateau of production, followed by a decline. In the US he noticed the decline took place 32 to 35 years after the discovery. Armed with this information he analyzed all the oil fields in the US and predicted US oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. And wouldn’t you know it, US oil production hit its peak in 1970. By 1973 gas prices skyrocketed, which led to the government enforcing rations and artificially setting prices.

This history lesson can also be applied to today’s global oil production market. When you do this analysis, we are dangerously close to the peak. This year could be when the most oil is pumped out the ground or it could be 5 or 10 years from now. It’s hard to predict exactly, but a decline is inevitable according to peak oil theory. Oil is getting harder to find and reach. The low hanging fruit is all gone. Even though there is a lot of oil left underground, it won’t do us much good – if we started drilling now, the flow rate won’t come close to sating demand and at some point it will become cost prohibitive.

Let’s zoom out and imagine both huge problems: global warming and peak oil. Do they cancel each other out? Will the world really keep warming if we run out of oil to warm it? Does peak oil theory tell us not to worry about global warming? Even if you believe in peak oil theory, doesn’t it just seam irresponsible to not do anything about global warming? Won’t it make things a lot smoother if we can identify excellent alternative energy options before we are forced to use them?
 


 
Credit Mr. Thiel’s lecture on energy this week for introducing me to this idea (some quick googling shows many people are interested in this). There are so many nuggets of wisdom that pour out of his mouth, it’s hard to pick just one to write about!

Pick Your Battles: QWERTY and DVORAK

I read a paper recently on the economics of the QWERTY keyboard. No, it’s not about how keyboards are priced – economics isn’t limited to just the study of money – it’s the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Basically the paper is about how we ended up with the standard keyboard layout we have today, approached from an historic and economic angle. Yes ladies, this is what I do with my spare time.

The paper explains how the keyboard layout first came about – it was first used to limit some mechanical issues and so salesmen could type TYPEWRITER using only the top row. But then the economics discussion comes in, how this became locked in as the standard despite better alternatives. Basically the layout had a narrow advantage because it was used by a slightly more popular typewriter manufacturer – and this narrow advantage snowballed over time.

Soon the keyboard became so entrenched that even a proven superior alternative couldn’t knock it off its perch. DVORAK is roughly 20% faster, leads to less errors, and reduces repetition injuries by moving your fingers less. Crazy.

Today you can easily switch you keyboard “layout” with software – basically remapping the keys to use the DVORAK layout (but when looking at it the stickers will still show QWERTY). So everyone has the option, but you won’t bother. Educating you that DVORAK is better isn’t enough to entice you to switch – information alone usually isn’t enough to change behavior! Ethos, pathos, logos! What if President Obama (or someone you really respect) told you to learn DVORAK because China is and going to dominate the US if we don’t all learn it. Slightly more effective than just spouting logic?

Now that I fully understand just how silly it is that we still use QWERTY, will I personally switch? I have a desire for efficiency, but there is a limit. You have to pick your battles – you can’t be perfectly efficient in every aspect of life. There is only so much time to perfect skills. But maybe your hobby is learning these esoteric skills rather than reading esoteric papers from the 80’s and pedantically writing about them. If so, here is another really neat one to try out – a font optimized for reading rather than writing called Dotsies.

Photo: julian

Back to School – My First Class Since Graduating 4 Years Ago

I was never the student that actually completed the readings before lecture. It was always way too many pages and there were better things to do with my time like playing soccer in the hallway. I am now that student.

This quarter I am taking Stanford’s CS183. The title of the course is “Startup”, which sounds right up my alley. Here is the course description:

Conception, launch, scaling, and growing of a successful tech company. Bridging the subjects of engineering, science, business, finance, and world history, topics will include: the technology revolution of the 20th century and prior eras; the economics of business; founding a startup; the importance of team vision and passion; long-term strategic planning; building a successful founding team; financing and the VC perspective; secrecy vs. openness; recruiting, managing growth, marketing, regulation and other operational topics. Assignments are designed to explore key concepts at greater depth, using real-world and hypothetical example companies. Inner accounts from the early days of startups including PayPal, Google and Facebook will be used as case studies. The class will be taught by entrepreneurs who have started companies worth over $1B and VCs who have invested in startups including Facebook and Spotify. Students can expect to be proficient in the core skills critical to the founding and growing of a tech company upon completion of this course.

Sure sounds interesting, but there are plenty of interesting courses, none of which I have actually attended since graduating in 2008. So what made this such a compelling opportunity that I wasn’t going to let it slip? The course is taught by Peter Thiel, one of the biggest ballers in the Silicon Valley. The guy drops knowledge like Snoop drops hot items.

Yes, I am finally willing to admit my intellectual man crush on Peter Thiel. And if you are reading this, I think you would probably like him as well. He is a free thinker that isn’t afraid to state his mind in a time that groupthink and conformity reign supreme. But what separates him from other freethinkers is that he is a man of industry rather than a politician or behind the scenes puppet-master (like many other billionaires). He has founded two billion dollar companies (Paypal and Palantir) and been heavily involved in another (Facebook).

Here are some readings to check out to get a feel for what Peter Thiel is all about:

Let me know if you are interested learning some of the nuggets of wisdom that Professor Thiel teaches in class.

Question for you: do you have any intellectual man/woman crushes?
 


 
Bonus points from me: dude likes New Zealand

No, I did not add the flowers to that picture. I think it is really how it was shot! Source

The Blame Game – New Zealand FM Radio Edition

The Blame Game is something I like to play. No, this does not mean projecting my faults upon others – do you really think that lowly of me? The Blame Game is where I assess the multiple factors of blame for a given problem. You will commonly see what I call the Blame Game used in civil lawsuits determining to what extent someone is financially responsible. A more commonly used term for this is comparative fault or comparative responsiblity.

I’ll explain it with an real world example – determining who is financially responsible for a car accident when both drivers are “at fault”. Bob rolled through the stop sign drunk, but James was speeding and didn’t stop at all. The court would have to decide who is responsible for the damages – the judge might decide Bob is 70% financially responsible and James is 30%.

I use the Blame Game as a way to think through all the factors that contribute to a problem. While driving around New Zealand, I noticed that the FM radio reception is piss-poor. Why is this? Well Brian, there are a number of things that contribute, it isn’t just a simple answer. Ok, so let’s break it down into comparable responsibilities.

Of course there isn’t really a right answer, just something that you can defend. If you are so inclined, help me out by assigning some percentages:

1. Landscape (lots of mountains in the way)
2. Lower frequency band than in the States
3. Differences in how signal is broadcasted (for example using less power to send the signal)
4. Shape of the earth (the spheroid bends away faster here, FM is line of sight)
5. Other
 


 
This type of thinking is particularly useful any time many factors contribute to something. Let’s not be content simply saying “the environment” shaped the outcome. What parts of the environment? Which is the breakdown of responsibility?

Our Blame Game answers can then be used to determine which corrective action will yield the greatest result (also useful would be estimates of how difficult each corrective action would be). Now you’re thinking like a product manager – effort and reward tradeoffs.

Yes, this is something that actually goes through my mind while alone. Not the nerdiest example either (it would probably involve maths (kiwis use “maths” rather than “math”)).

Photo: Randy von Liski

Crushing Books and Why I Publish My Book List

I have been crushing books recently. But before we jump into that, let me provide a little background.

Why Do I Keep Track of Books Read?

Flashback to 2008 … Michael Phelps won in the most exciting finish ever, Barack Obama became president, and I graduated from college. There is an incredible jump in freedom when 18 year-olds go off to college – no parents, no curfew, and easy access to your choice of poison. It crushes some people while others learn to thrive in the new environment. There is also an incredible jump in freedom when 22 year-olds graduate into the working world – no grades, more structured free time, and money to spend. It crushes some people while others learn to thrive in the new environment.

After a couple months of adjusting, I started creating the changes I wanted to embrace in this new period of life. The largest was becoming vegetarian after a self-imposed two month vegan challenge. But the one relevant to this post is keeping track of the books I read.

I learned about the field of personal informatics – tracking specific data from your life to keep as a record or use for optimization (I blogged about it here). I ultimately decided tracking too much data is OCD and to be avoided. So I would only track data for short term optimizations and one long term record – the books I have read. This is important to me as a history of what I was interested in at various points of my life and so I have a list to refer back to when giving book recommendations.

Why Do I Make My Book List Public?

I find it very interesting to learn what smart people are reading (this mainly means non-fiction, since smart people become smart from a thirst for knowledge, and books are quite possibly the best way to explore an idea in depth). It successfully communicates the influences upon that person in a way that has yet to be beat. I also look to see if the person reads across many disciplines and seeks out viewpoints that contradict from their own.

Since I pretend to be one of these smart people, I will keep my book list public.

What are the Results?

For the last three and a half years I have finished roughly 1.5 books per month. There were periods of learning about investing, behavioral economics, startups, and more.

But then there is a period of 6 months in 2011 where I did not finish a single book. With hindsight, this is a red flag signaling something is off – what was happening in my life to put an abrupt end to my thirst for knowledge? First, I was struggling in a job going nowhere which stunted my intellectual curiosity. Second, my spare time was used to create Breakout Mentors to provide fun computer programming lessons to 10-15 year-olds.

Then I retired from the working life and have finished 13 books in the 4-5 months since (and going to finish 3 more in the next week). In my relaxed state I have branched out and tried new things: the Hunger Game series, 2 biology books from Tom’s New Zealand science collection, and a classic 1000 pager I have put off for many years. It has been great and I hope to sustain this pace upon my return to the States.

Who is with me – are you going to start keeping a book list if you aren’t already? Have you drawn any interesting insights looking back on your list?
 


 
  • You can find my book list here (its also on the top nav bar)
  • Web article reading lists are also good but less common and shorter works aren’t as influential as books – check out uber-blogger Ramit Sethi’s delicious psychology tags for some good reads.
  • Dedicated reader B.Lindy has requested notes or ratings of the books so that he can better use the list as recommendations. Good idea, but not yet implemented (Derek Sivers’ list is what I aspire to have some day). Anyone interested can drop a comment about specific books or what they are interested in and I’ll try to help.
  • My sister Lisa is doing 1 second videos each day for the year. Going to be an awesome keepsake and hopefully not too hard. Check out this example result:

2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

Photo: Martin Gommel