Folding and The House Winning
your Saturday roundup
Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
De Novo Protein Design. Deepmind’s AlphaFold made headlines by predicting 200 million protein structures. Possibly the most useful thing AI has ever done. AlphaFold takes the sequence of amino acids and available evolutionary information about the protein and predicts the shape. What was new to me was that AI is already going the other way from desired structure (implied from function) and figuring out the sequence of amino acids required. Blow your mind by watching David Baker’s Nobel prize lecture on de novo protein design. It is fascinating that the techniques used for AI creating new images work for creating novel proteins. What kinds of proteins do you want to design? The possibilities for health and the environment boggles my mind.
Sports Betting. Now that we’re through the Super Bowl and March Madness is not yet upon us, let’s talk about gambling. Yes, we need compelling reasons to curb liberty. No, we don’t need to put a casino in everyone’s pocket. And it doesn’t seem right to put sports books next to ballparks and ads for gambling inside them. Micheal Lewis’ podcast mini-series about the sports betting industry paints an ugly picture. Andrew Yang pens a summary of the problems including decreased savings, increased bankruptcy and more domestic violence.
Never Enough. I struggled with the book Never Enough. I mean the one about achievement culture, not the other Never Enough I mentioned before. The book seemed anti-achievement at first and I’m generally pro getting stuff done. It starts with a focus on the downsides of an excessive achievement orientation and includes some horrible results from parents pushing kids too much. The book ends up concluding that children thrive when (a) they know they matter as people regardless of achievement and (b) they have a purpose or project they are working on that is about more than themselves. I’m not sure if the author would agree with me, but what I think she is really criticizing is excessive focus status games with a limited number of winners (like college admissions). I agree that this approach to life has many downsides. One important part of life is to strive for non-rival achievements, actions or creations that provide value for others. Does that make sense to you?
Until next time,
Miles