Learnings from Circadian Rhythm Conference
In April, I got the chance to accompany my wife to a conference on circadian rhythm and metabolic disease (she was presenting a groundbreaking poster on the role of circadian rhythm genes in sebocyte skin cells). The Chancellor of UCLA has a lab studying circadian rhythm science, and I got the chance to hear him speak about his research. The conference took place at the Bruin Woods retreat center in Lake Arrowhead, which was a beautiful location that featured many cool outdoors-y activities like hiking, kayaking, archery, rock climbing, etc. (too bad it wasn't summer time!), and the food was really good too. While most of the talks were highly technical, I was able to follow some of them and learned a lot about the importance of the circadian rhythm in affecting practically all biological functions. On the flip side, I learned how irregularities in one's rhythm can disrupt and cause many common diseases, especially diabetes (irregular rhythm is stronger indicator of diabetes than weight/BMI!). What that means for you: go to sleep on time to stay healthy! From an "eastern medicine" standpoint, these findings make sense, as the circadian rhythm is what allows us humans to stay in sync with nature around us. And I can see how in our 24/7, work-a-holic, always-online world, circadian rhythms and "synchronization with nature" can get more easily disrupted. Below are some of the main lessons I took away from the conference sessions. Here's a recent WSJ article on the topic as well.
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To follow up on my notes on Daemon, I wanted to post my notes on the sequel, Freedom by Daniel Suarez. After the cliffhanger ending of the first book, I had to immediately read the sequel.
I actually found the sequel even more interesting than the first installment. That's because the sequel dealt with a lot of really interesting societal and philosophical questions like what the role of government should be, if it's ok to do something bad for a much larger good (the book's story is quite extreme), and if highly distributed power run by a computer network of individuals can be sustainable. What's fascinating is how the first book made the reader hate the darknet and its creator, whereas the second book convers the reader to rooting for the darknet and seeing the corruption in the society it's trying to fight. I recognize the book's premise and story are quite forward-looking, and I doubt anyone like the darknet creator in the book could create a self-organizing and learning system that could predict and control as far into the future as the darknet does. But what I like is that it's not as farfetched as other stories like Terminator or The Matrix since all the technological building blocks used in the story are relatively present already (just not yet well distributed). Below are my notes, and again, I highly recommend the series to everyone who likes sci fi or technothrillers.
The best sci-fi I've read since Neal Stephenson has been the new series by Daniel Suarez starting with the book Daemon. It's all about a not-so-distant future world where an AI system designed by a game programmer takes over the world using technology that's currently available and which we already fully depend on. When the AI's author dies, his spirit lives on through his program, and after taking advantage of several key characters in the story, it begins to make broader changes to society as a whole, many of which are not necessarily bad (to be continued in my notes on Freedom). I loved the realistic nature of the story, being able to understand how many existing tools like Twilio and autonomous vehicles can be used as described in the story.
You can learn more from this great interview with the author (by another great author). The book made me consider many important questions about how our society is developing and depending on technology, for good and for bad. In addition, it raises the question of whether computer systems or corporations or governments are most effective in guiding/organizing society and if people, through distributed power and intelligence, can do a better job on their own. Suarez's "dark net" is quite an appealing proposition. Below are my main notes and takeaways (and maybe some spoilers). I definitely recommend Suarez's books to anyone interested in science, technology, or futurism.
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