Fundamentals: February 2021
Bi-monthly Publication / Re: Life
Welcome back to Re: Life (2022 edition)! This newsletter covers my life as a high-schooler studying cancer biology, developing medical devices, and finding answers to difficult questions.
Pssst ... By the way, this version of the newsletter was inspired by the 3-2-1 newsletter (hat tip to its author, James Clear), where each edition notoriously covers 3 original thoughts, 2 thoughts from others, and 1 quote from someone else. You’ll get what I mean soon. Enjoy!
30-Second Recap:
To tell you the truth, this month was a bit exhausting. As you know, I’m a grade 11 - or 11th grade - student, and I recently discovered that exams and final projects in grade 11 are actually something you need to study for. Even if it was just school, I tried holding myself to the highest standards I could, which led to work that I was proud of (like this report I made on the mathematics of viral spread in closed areas).
With the time I did have left, I continued working on LightIR, but mostly involved outreach and continuing early testing. From when the last update came out, I now have to collaborate with on a mouse study. Currently, I’m finishing the paperwork (e.g. materials transfer agreements) needed to send the device over and make that happen.
I’ve managed to keep studying molecular biology with some consistency. More specifically, I learned about protein regulatory ligands, as well as noninvasive methods of detecting the organic compounds released by cells. And in the meantime, I’ve been reading some interesting books (inspired by this video) without a real goal in mind other than curiosity.
But First - Some Fun!
Ever since the inaugural Re: Life entertainment video became wildly popular, I thought a lot about what else I could cover that you’d find interesting. I won’t reveal too much, except for the fact that this is one of my favourite hobbies…
Thought #1: Cobra-Breeding and Evil Doctors
Recently, I got into a heated dinner-table debate with my parents about the American healthcare system. (PS: For any Americans reading this, Canadians actually spend more time talking about America than they do talking about Canada).
TLDR: Fundamentally, the livelihood of doctors depends on the existence of disease. A society full of perfectly healthy citizens should be in their best interest, but current healthcare systems don’t allow it to be,
“When India was a British colony, many cobras used to live in the wild, underdeveloped land. The British weren’t fond of the snakes, so they set a bounty out for them. Every snake that a villager brought back to a local government official would be paid some money.
The plan worked beautifully - millions of snakes were killed - until they realized that the Indians began commercially farming them.”
** Note: Smart move, India. The economic name for this exploitation is a perverse incentive, or, to be more fitting, the cobra effect.
**Note: Most doctors I’ve met are very nice people. I’m certain the majority of doctors aren’t intentionally trying to make you sick. But that’s only because enough people get sick anyway that there isn’t a need to intervene.
When most systems are created, they gain a life of their own (and a fear of going extinct). In an ideal society, people would never need healthcare, but the millions of doctors and companies and today’s healthcare system have no reason to support a future in which they aren’t needed.
As soon as you elect a politician, they begin caring more about getting re-elected than making good policy, creating a basic conflict of interest. Apple doesn’t really care if you think differently, and coca-cola doesn’t care whether or not you get diabetes if you buy their soft drinks. This is an undeniable truth.
The challenge of making good systems isn’t running them after they’re created, but having enough forethought to tie the rewards directly to the results we want to see. So really, the only institution that wants the best for you is your insurance company. I’ll leave you to figure that one out yourself.
Thought #2: The Source of Wanting
To figure someone out, don’t pay attention to what they say but instead what they do. It’s harder to fake that since what we do defines who we are. After all, our actions are a function of our thoughts. Our thoughts reflect our desires. But our desires - the things we want - come from what we understand.
The only way we can truly “change ourselves” is by changing our actions. The only way we can change our actions is by first changing our thoughts. The only way to change our thoughts is by changing our desires. And that requires experimentation.
If you validate or invalidate your old desires and replace them with better ones, the effect will naturally ripple down and improve your actions. We use our experiences as catalysts to update our ideas of what matters and what we should want.
Take the classic arc of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur: make money first, then realize it can’t make you happy, or healthy, or an extrovert. We already know this end result intellectually, but for some reason, we only understand if we try. Until we come to the realization ourselves, our desires won’t change, and until that happens, neither will our actions. Inside each of us is an everlasting sense of paranoia - a curiosity to see things for ourselves, just to be sure.
“Growth is simply discovering that the things you originally wanted were all wrong.”
Grow for long enough and you’ll eventually find the right answer through the process of elimination, just like you would in a multiple-choice test. You can never know the right answer directly. Even if your original guess was the right one, it’s impossible to know for certain if something better exists without checking.
In the end, you might even come to the same answer you started at, but you won’t be who you were before. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said that no one ever crosses the same river twice. Neither the river stays the same, nor do you.
One Quote:
These days remind me of a quote I read a long, long while back, from an old story of the Buddha. When the Buddha realized he wouldn’t live much longer, he said to some of his closest disciples:
“Monks, make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge.” - the Buddha
An Indian mystic named Sadhguru said this in a more head-snapping way: “if you’re lonely, aren’t you just in bad company?” Within you, me, and everyone, there’s a place we can always return to that’s peaceful, comfortable, and safe. That place is ourselves - there’s nowhere that you could belong to more than within yourself.
Until next time, try asking yourself: can I handle my own presence?
Until next time,
Aaryan