Four For Friday | June 21, 2024
LF129 | Collective stupidity, black carbon, data DAOs to train AI and gravity batteries.
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
Weekly Snapshot: Have been on the road this week - in Montreal discussing macro-economics of aging with Ditchley, New York with age-tech VC Abby Levy and sleep innovator Jeff McSpadden, Chicago with age-tech OG Joel Shapira and Direct Supply’s innovation chief Tom Paprocki and the Bay Area with SOMPO and Institute on Aging to discuss systems change models.
A theory of collective stupidity
A simple and rather compelling idea about why we individually make what seems like logical, sensible decisions that are collectively dumb.
One of the reasons we are in an existential polycrisis of climate, inequality, trust, geopolitical tension and institutional collapse is due to the ferocious stickiness of Adam Smith’s invisible hand meme - an unfettered market will magically deliver an optimal economy if we just let people maximise their self interest. It has a lot to answer for.
This note suggests acting in one’s own self interest can result in collective stupidity due to our in-built desires for: laziness (evolutionary sensible to conserve energy) and need for social validation (again, makes sense not to be kicked out of your tribe).
A good rebuttal to those who justify ‘more market’ as the solution to everything.
The world is ignoring the other deadly carbon
A bit of a ‘doh’ moment when you read about ‘black carbon’ which is the unburned elements of fossil fuels, emitted as dirty smoke from e.g. wildfires, heavy industry and home fires.
It has the unfortunate double whammy of both being terrible for human health but also heating up the ground as it lands. So reflective white of snow and ice turns dark, absorbing heat, melting the ice and exposing the dark, absorbent ground beneath.
Another reason to invest in forest fire management, clean cooking and fossil fuel reduction.
Why DAOs could unlock data for better AI
AI is very hungry for data, but experts predict we’re running out of good high quality data - hitting a ‘data wall’. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) built on blockchain could potentially address some of the challenges in accessing data (for example, in accessing high quality real time data, curated by people in the health or urban domains).
A DAO is designed to both ensure accuracy of submitted data in a decentralised way without expensive overhead and have an inbuilt reward mechanism, providing tokens as payments.
This hasn’t been rolled out at scale, partly due to the compex user experience issues, but they’re being solved - so look to have models that reward people for their data before long.
Skyscrapers could become ‘gravity batteries’
Interesting idea to use high buildings, and the kinetic energy of moving a heavy weight up and down existing lifts, to act as a store of energy. This would be particularly well-suited to large towns in the global south, where there’s an abundance of solar energy but still limited by access to battery storage.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen