Life and Death Plus Majority Clean
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.
Loving Vaccines. Vaccines are one of the greatest human achievements. Childhood vaccines alone have saved over 150 million lives in the past 50 years. In Extra Life, vaccines rank at the top of the list of innovations that provide more human life. Due to vaccines, diseases like polio, measles, and tetanus are relics of the past in much of the developed world. Can we have more of this, please? Take tuberculosis and malaria - better vaccines for these could save tens of millions of additional lives. As Everything is TB notes, by 1800 TB had killed 1 in 7 humans who had ever lived. And while we work on more effective vaccines, current TB treatments deliver a staggering 46-to-1 return on investment. Should we do even more? One, is it a good idea to release transmissible vaccines for wild animals? Imagine a virus that spreads immunity instead of illness, potentially reducing animal suffering and lowering the risk of zoonotic spillovers into humans. Two, should we run more human challenge trials with volunteers to speed vaccine development?
The Internet Comes for Death.For people who like e-commerce and automation, there are now more options for managing the aftermath of a loved one’s death online. In fact, there are options for preparing for your own death. I used to think funerals and memorials were purely for the living and that it was best to let them decide what to do. Anything more felt like trying to control the uncontrollable. Lately, I’ve been wonder if providing clarity is actually a gift by sparing people the burden of logistics during grief. Regardless, I’m in favor of making a plan for your children and property. If you have either and you don’t have a will, Free Will is a great place to start (I’m an investor). Interested in planning your memorial, too? I recently came across an online tool to do just that and I’m curious what you think. The only trouble is, I don’t know exactly what I want.
Slaughterbots. Not long ago, I was writing about whether we should ban killer robots, unsure if they existed. Well, they’re here. Not all autonomous weapons systems keep a human in the loop. In a conversation with a U.S. Army General, he emphasized that humans should stay in the loop except for purely defensive systems. Does that intention survive once the shooting starts? And what does it mean to keep a human meaningfully “in the loop” if the pace of battle accelerates to AI speed? At least there are a range of defenses against drone attacks, including jamming communications, frying electronics with directed energy weapons, and guiding precision kinetic strikes. The arms race continues.
Until next time,
Miles
P.S. Looking for good news? For the first time ever, in March, the US produced less than half its electricity using fossil fuels.