Capitalogix

From 7.7 Billion to 100 People

If you were to distill the world's 7.7 billion people into 100 people ... What would that look like?

Here is an infographic.

via Jack Hagley

 

Some of the data seemed inaccurate so my son Zach did some additional research. On the image, 75% have cell phones, but only 30% can access the internet. He found a more recent statistic indicating that now 55% of people can access the internet. 

Also, the 23% who "have no shelter" makes more sense if you change it to "who lack 'adequate' housing". Only approximately 1% are homeless.

Pretty interesting. 

I'd love to see updates to this.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 27th, 2019

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links

• Giving Algorithms a Sense of Uncertainty Could Make Them More Ethical.(TechReview)
• How Musicians Communicate Non-Verbally While Performing.(PsychCentral)
• Welcome to the World's Largest Gathering of Humans. (NPR)
• The Evolutionary Advantages of an Addictive Personality. (Scientific American)
• George Orwell Predicted Cameras Would Watch Us in Our Homes; He Never Imagined We'd Gladly Buy and Install Them Ourselves.(OpenCulture)

 

 

Trading Links

• The Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence. (Forbes)
• Apple Named 'World's Most Admired Company' for 12Th Year in a Row.(MacRumors)
• The Government Shutdown May Ripple through the IPO Market for Months. (Quartz)
• Billionaire Ray Dalio Shares a 3-Step Formula for Anyone to Start Investing.(CNBC)
• Ex-Goldman Banker Describes Finance as "Dark Art," Advocates Running McDonalds Franchise Instead. (News)

 

Celebrating a Well Lived Life

I was in California this week to celebrate my Mother's 79th birthday.   

  

 

She is still very committed to living life to its fullest – and spreading joy and love to those around her. 

It made me think about how each of us is so different ... yet, we are also similar.

Over time, each of us is insignificant and yet each has altered the course of history. 

Individually, and collectively, I think it makes sense to leave things better than we found them.

One of our most important decisions is how we choose to matter. 

How do you intend to make your mark? 

What will be your legacy? 

The Pale Blue Dot: Life, Mankind, and the Universe

In 1977, the Voyager 1 launched into space.   Just over a dozen years later, the Voyager 1 spacecraft had traveled farther than any spacecraft/probe/human-made anything had gone before.  It was approximately 6 billion kilometers away from earth.  At that point, the Voyager 1 was "told" by Carl Sagan to turn around and take one last photo of the Earth ... a pale blue dot. 

The resulting photo is impressive precisely because it shows so little in so much.

 

"Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."  – Carl Sagan

Earth is in the far right sunbeam –  a little below halfway down the image. This image (and the ability to send it back to earth) was the culmination of years of effort, the advancement of technology, and the dreams of mankind.

The resulting speech from Carl Sagan is still profound, moving, and worth a listen. 

 

Carl Sagan via YouTube
 

Here's the transcript:

 

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

 

Today, we have people living in space, posting videos from the ISS, and high-resolution images of space and galaxies near and far. 

We take for granted the immense phase shift in technology. You have more computing power in your pocket than we first used to go to the moon. 

As humans, we're wired to think locally and linearly. We evolved to live our lives in small groups, to fear outsiders, and to stay in a general region until we die. We're not wired to think about the billions and billions of individuals on our planet, or the rate of technological growth - or the minuteness of that all in regard to the expanse of space.  

However, today's reality necessitates we think about the world, our impact, and what's now possible for us.

We created better and faster ways to travel, we've created instantaneous communication networks across vast distances, and we've created megacities. Our tribes have gotten much bigger - and with that, our ability to enact massive change has grown as well. 

Space was the first bastion of today's innovation, but today we can look toward A.I., medicine, epigenetics, and more. 

It's hard to comprehend the scale of the universe and the scale of our potential ... but that's what makes it worth exploring!

Onwards!

A Look Back at "The Crazy Ones"

I remember being mesmerized the first time I saw Apple Computers iconic "Crazy Ones" video as part of their Think Different campaign.

Steve Jobs originally recorded a version of "The Crazy Ones" himself, but chose to release the Richard Dreyfuss narrated version. 

 

via YouTube

Here is the text version of the script.

 

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

While some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

    –     © 1997 Apple Computer, Inc.

Click here for extra material about the video and campaign. 

I think it has held up pretty well, and I had this piece of art commissioned for my office. 

There's a lot to be said for carving your own path, for pushing past perceived limits and accomplishing something hard to ignore.  

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 20th, 2019

Most citizens don't have big savings account to buffer them against an unexpected expense or loss of income.

The Government Shutdown is one of the curveballs most workers haven't planned for adequately.

 

Actions have consequences.

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links

• Full Translation: China's 'New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan' (2017). (Newamerica)
• Apple Buys 50 Business Class Seats from San Francisco to Shanghai Every Day. (MacRumors)
• Ford Built a Sweaty Robot Butt to Simulate Your Sweaty Human Butt. (BGR)
• Intimate Portraits of People over 100 Years Old Reveal the Beauty of Aging Bodies. (MyModernMet)
• Costco is Selling a 27-Pound Tub of Mac and Cheese that Lasts 20 Years. (BusinessInsider)

 

Trading Links

• Fear of Algorithm Trading is Really Just the Fear of the Unknown. (Quartz)
• Hedge Funds Suffer Worst Year since 2011. (FT)
• Nearly Half of Workers Earn Less Than $30,000. (Ritholtz)
• Michael Dell Gets $12 Billion Richer with Break from Public Eye. (Fortune)
• The New Impossible Burger 2.0 Won Everyone's Mouth at CES 2019, but That's Just the Beginning. (Forbes)

A Quick Visit to Cuba

I went to Havana with a diverse group of business people, financial professionals and representatives from the US Fed. 

Here is a photo taken with some of the classic cars that proudly dominate the roads despite cheaper Russian and  Chinese alternatives.

 

 

The city was beautiful … dirty and broken, for sure … but still beautiful.  Here is a view from my hotel room.

  

 

I commented that it was almost like seeing a severely wounded elephant. You can tell that it's hurt (and barely a shadow of its old self). Nevertheless, you can see the amazing bone structure. It is easy to imagine what it once was.

In Cuba, the geography and the architecture are amazing. However, money hasn't been spent on the upkeep. Even though people live there, it seems surreal (almost like a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

 

 

In the story of Exodus, the Jews spent 40 years wandering the desert after escaping from Egypt. That means two generations of people, who didn't remember life as slaves, were ultimately the ones who entered the “Promised Land”.

On some level, that's how Cuba is now. Most inhabitants weren’t born (or can’t remember) the 1960s. They have known nothing but this.

Cuba is an interesting place … and I’d bet that it has an interesting future.

The “lack” had a side effect. It produced a mutation. A portion of society grew more resourceful and resilient.

 

 

Like natural selection … nature finds a way.

The rules change, the players change, even the game itself changes ... That is how new ideas and new leaders emerge.

Sometimes, almost no one notices. Sometimes they do. 

Ultimately, change remains the only constant.

Onwards!

Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Perception?

 

As humans, we can only interpret based on what we know ... and for the most part, we don't know what we don't know. 

In the beginning of artificial intelligence, humans would teach computers certain rules (or tell the computer that it should optimize on a certain measure).  Now, computers are capable of figuring things out themselves.

The success of AI at deep learning or reinforcement learning is about to sky-rocket.  The technology and the learning frameworks are progressing quickly ... combine that with hardware advances and expect to be amazed.

Recently,  a Deep Learning computation-imaging system correctly predicted which patients were pending heart failure with 97% accuracy - compared to human pathologists who are correct approximately 74% of the time.   That is a meaningful difference, especially if the life at risk is yours (or that of a loved one).  

And that's only one example. There's an AI assistant in Denmark that listens to the equivalent of 911 calls and diagnoses heart problems and predictive analytics is often used in actuarial sciences, social networking, and in many financial service applications. 

Computers Don't Get Distracted

Error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment giving assent to that which is not true. - John Locke

It makes sense that these machines can be more accurate than humans because ultimately, many of these applications are essentially checklists. The machine looks for symptoms a, b, and c, compiles, and then analyzes for the cause. 

Machine logic is great at that. Human logic ... not so much. There are too many distractions, biases, and a tendency to relate current situations to past ones. 

When it comes to markets, we're victim to a lot of survivorship bias. Looking at markets and patterns has worked great for survivors - purportedly ... but what percentage of active traders beat the S&P more than 1 year in a row? The answer is a staggering minority. 

As humans, we're often victim to what I like to call:

The "Nightlight in the Dark" Phenomenon.  

A nightlight makes you feel safer - but likely won't keep you safe from anything that's trying to hurt you. 

When you're in Vegas you may have strategies and rituals that you think provide an edge - but it doesn't make you any more likely to beat their system. 

In that same vein, tracking markets is a distraction agent in trading ... You shouldn't care what markets are doing, you should care about how your systems are doing.  

The paradigm shift is that with algorithms - and artificial intelligence - I don't care that I understand why something is working, I care that my systems are valid and performing well.  I don't have to understand why it's valid - only that it's valid consistently over time. 

All the best traders I know aren't looking for a better algorithm, they're looking for more ways to win. 

Most AI methodologies are simple systems trained on extensive data lakes with simple goals ... And that's a good thing.

Simple works. Simple is hard to break. Simple means there's likely more consistency. As well, as we get better at Swarm Intelligence, these simple systems can communicate with each other and benefit from the wisdom of the crowd. 

Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Perception?

With trading,  AI has been adopted because ultimately it's up to the individual/firm to apply ... but what about highly regulated instances like autonomous cars or in a doctor's office. 

Even when it works, if an AI gets the decision wrong it opens you up for huge liability (even if the AI is right more often than a human would be). 

While AI is an inevitability - it's much slower in certain industries than others.

It's a long road ahead - but a necessary one. 

Onwards!

 

How Long Does It Take To Get 50 Million Users?

Cool tech often gets adopted by porn and gambling before more mainstream uses.

Porn was the launchpad for video streaming, mobile-enabled sites, VR, and (unfortunately) pop-up ad technologies. 

With that said, the next chart surprised me.  It shows the number of years it took for various products to gain 50 million users.

 

 

Pornhub tracks data like its business depends on it.  Well, it is the number one site for pornography.  What does that mean? In 2018, over 5,517,700,000 hours of porn was watched on their site. That’s approximately 6,298 centuries of video.

Moreover, last year, it got  33.5 BILLION visits. That’s 1,064 people a second, or 92 million a day.  To put that in perspective, that's more people than live in the entire country of Germany.

Here are some additional factoids about its use.

• 4403 Petabytes of data transferred (574 MB of data for every person on earth)
• Consumed more bandwidth than the entire internet in 2002
• Stormy Daniels was the number 1 "trend" search in 2018  (followed by Fortnite ...)
• 4k ultra-hd overtook 1080p in search trends

 

via Pornhub

For the full list of stats click here. 

They are so popular, it is almost obscene.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 13th, 2019

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links

• The 4,000-Year-old History of New Year's Resolutions and How They Became Big Business. (FastCompany)
• How to Be More Resilient. (New York Times)
• Kansas Boy, 16, is Set to Graduate in the Spring from High School and Harvard. (New York Times)
• '123456' and 'Password' Remain Worst Passwords of the Year for Fifth Consecutive Year. (MacRumors)
• US Intelligence Community Says Quantum Computing and AI Pose an 'Emerging Threat' to National Security. (TechCrunch)

 

 

Trading Links

• Predictions for Cannabis 2019 from Entrepreneurs on the Front Lines.(Forbes)
• The Man Turning China into a Quantum Superpower. (TechReview)
• Here's Why You Almost Never See Pepsi Served on a Plane.(ThePointsGuy)
• Germany is the World's Most Innovative Economy. (WEForum)
• Bill Gates Says the US Has Lost Its Global Leadership in Nuclear Power, and Needs to 'Get in the Game'. (BusinessInsider)