Principles for Survival

Background

I’m breaking my nearly three years of silence on Humanizing Tech. I started this publication as a resource for those who shared my lifelong mission of “building the world’s most advanced technology and using it to help people”. Because of the clear and present dangers that continue to present themselves as we’ve crossed the threshold into this new decade, I feel a responsibility to share a few primary principles on how to think in order to protect yourselves and loved ones in a constantly evolving and unforgiving universe.

Believability

Whenever anyone communicates anything, the first thing you should assess is whether they are believable in what they are saying. Said differently, do they have the expertise, education, or understanding that makes them a resource you should listen to. If not, you should simply ignore it.

Therefore, you must analyze this content and decide for yourself whether you should believe it or ignore it. To help, I’ve provide the background necessary so you can make an informed decision.

• The first 20 years of my life was primarily focused on physical achievement, while the last 20 years on intellectual achievement, though I’ve maintained both over all four decades of life.
• I’ve been studying mathematics seriously since I began advanced classes in the 6th grade (from about 10 years old onwards). Mathematics is focused on a single study: encoding the universe into symbols that can be manipulated spatially in order to solve difficult problems in how the universe actually behaves. Said more simply, “solving problems”.
• I leveraged my mathematics education into something called Actuarial Science, which is the study of risk. Insurance companies, financial firms, and pension funds hire Actuaries in order to make sense of uncertainty. They calculate the probability of events (including death), and their financial impact, using sophisticated mathematical models. During my time as an undergraduate, I passed two Actuarial exams and worked for well-known companies in the space: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mellon Financial.
• I would later leverage that to work for Watson Wyatt, which has gone through multiple mergers (Towers Watson, then Willis Towers Watson), and now Aon after its acquisition for $30 billion. I designed incentives for the largest global companies, creating systems for boards, executives, employees, and sales people to achieve agreed upon financial and operational goals.
• For approximately the last 15 years, I’ve been operating high technology companies, building large global teams (remotely) across cultures, languages, time zones, tech stacks, customer profiles, and markets in order to build the world’s most advanced technologies, even before Big Tech firms had done so, and commercialize them for a broad population of people and businesses.
• The focus of my adult life has been on creating systems for how to achieve the second and third principles listed below. Over the last few years, however, I’ve been focusing primarily on the first principle, which I believe supersedes the other two, and is arguably more important.

Principles

1. Adapt faster.
2. Find risks, then remove them.
3. Prioritize problems, then solve them.

Situation

Today, the entire world is experiencing an elegant technology that any Venture Capitalist would salivate to invest in and operators would compete to work on. Without any PR or marketing budget, it has made headlines globally because it is a disruptor the likes of which we have never experienced. Not Uber, not AirBnB, not Digital Transformation, and not even the Internet can hold a candle to its speed of adoption.

It has been installed by people across nearly every geographic boundary and gives every user equal opportunity to experience it regardless of education, wealth, social status, sexual orientation, race, or age. It has disrupted people’s daily lives, the global financial system, and the global healthcare system. Users didn’t have to change any of their daily habits to experience it, it’s completely free, and takes up no space so it can be carried anywhere. It’s completely decentralized, low-power, can upgrade itself in real-time in response to market conditions, and is highly scalable.

It is a self-replicating, biologic intelligence that is invisible, viral, and non-discriminatory. Of course, I’m talking about the Coronavirus.

If it had a positive impact on humanity, we would be marveling at its features, celebrating its creator, and leveraging the technology for every other product.

But it’s not.

Strategy

And so, as a human species, who have three of our own features (survival, intelligence, opposable thumbs) we must use in order to compete against it and win. This is Uber vs Lyft, Coke vs Pepsi, and a Space Race with stakes higher than we have dealt with before.

For all of human history, people have designed and changed our environments for habitability. As we face this novel technology, and a guarantee of even more elegant ones in the future, we must create and use tools to evolve our environments at a faster rate than the threats that seek to disrupt them, either within our outside our bodies.

If our iteration speed is higher than our competitors, we will win. If not, we will lose. But it requires a 100% execution of fundamentals. Like a professional tennis player, it is the competitor who makes a mistake first that loses. As such, it requires that we develop systems that guarantee we do not make a mistake while also iterating faster. Which brings us to another principle that’s taken me decades to develop and describe succintly:

Quality at Speed.

Tactics

From a product management perspective, once you understand a problem, you need to prioritize and begin executing a solution immediately while systematically removing risks that could stop you from execution. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs holds true here.

1. Continual clean air supply: you only have a few minutes to remove this risk.
2. Continual clean water supply: you have a few days to remove this risk.
3. Continual food supply, ideally fresh superfoods like broccoli, bananas, tomatoes, nuts, along with specific supplements (Turmeric, Chondroitin, Glucosamine, Vitamin B/D, Cinnamon, Copper, plus the more popular ones): you have a few weeks to remove this risk.
4. Strengthen your immune system: get a full night’s sleep as a primary priority, drink fluids to maintain hydration and expell contagions, reduce stress as much as possible, and continue to get exercise (both cardio and strength).
5. Strengthen your mind: figure out a system for maintaining mental fortitude so you can continue to perform at a high-level under extreme duress and circumstances.
6. Sustainable shelter: protect yourself from any harsh environment, including other people who may be dangerous with or without them knowing.
7. Sustainable energy collection and storage: hand cranks, leg power, solar cells, batteries, and generators.

As Ryan Holiday wrote, “the obstacle is the way”.

Mindset

In addition to Intelligence, Heart is another superpower of humanity.

It enables us to connect to one another on a personal basis, which is the first half of the equation. The second half is about compounding our collective strength by acting together on unified goals, but doing so without threatening our survival.

Please remember, the internet is not a guaranteed resource, nor is food or water supply chains, and you certainly can’t eat or drink money. Invest in the right things, in the right order.

Next

We are have been preparing for years, from a variety of perspectives. If you need help preparing you and your family, please reach out. I will do my best to give you the information you needed to keep you strong regardless of what the universe puts in your way.

Stay calm. Nothing grows forever and most growth is defined by s-curves so all you really have to worry about is protecting yourself until you find the inflection point.

Sean

Citations

1. Getting Enough Fluids, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 4/30/2019
2. Stress Research, The American Institute of Stress, 3/16/2020
3. Superfoods: Recent Data on their Role in Prevention of Diseases, Current Research in Nutrition and Food Science, 9/14/2018
4. How to Boost Your Immune System, Harvard Medical School, 9/1/2014
5. Internet Sacred Text Archive, 3/16/2020
6. Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health, 3/16/2020