Future of philanthropy, crypto-billionaires, Circular journeys
Podcast with Nadia Asparouhova, Future of philanthropy, crypto-billionaires. Trains and a circular economy journey. Work from home. Future thinking on health and climate.
My fantastical techno-optimistic take on climate and health in 2072. I had sent this out previously as a stand alone piece, but people have enjoyed it. Do feel free to share!
One of my observations is that in 2011 the point estimate from the climate scientists was heading for a 3.9c world in 2100. Today, the point estimate is 2.7c. That’s a drop of >1c in 10 years. Need to acknowledge some success here.
Podcast with Nadia Asparouhova, Future of philanthropy, crypto-billionaires
Trains and a circular journey
Work from home, hybrid, slides
Future thinking aon health and climate: optimistic thoughts
Chatham House conference (save date for UnConference, Fri 16 Sep)
Improbable: Invite on building a home, different way of schooling.
Upcoming podcasts: climate, philosophy, charity
Links, end: James Joyce was an entrepreneurial hustler as well; Big advance in cell structure (Nuclear Pores) but only possible with AI; An out of sample replication - still holds that employee satisfaction is associated with stock gains and strong accounting metrics (Alex Edmans); Existential risk prize re: legal accounting; Different inflations (Jason Furman)… Trees are not really the answer. Or, at least nowhere near the whole answer; Autism life; I’ve slowly change my mind on what makes great street photography; Active listening; Notes on EA; Transport in Lagos. Country power rankings.
“In 2072, mean temperature rises are 1.9c and stable as effective Net Zero has been achieved. Global life expectancy has also reached 97. Let’s examine how humanity achieved this. Let’s take a review of the innovations and inventions, the quirks and stories; the great, the good, the bad and the ugly that took us from 2022 to 2072
…There were hundreds, if not thousands of factors, but the important ones were:
-New forms of governance and decision making processes (eg deliberative democracy) allowed: more effective solving of coordination problems
-Innovations across (1) land use and food (2) power and electrification (3) transport (4) buildings (5) industry such as manufacturing, cement, steel, aluminum, and (6) carbon capture. As 2072 historians note, the human tribes mainly involved with these endeavours were mainly forms of techno-optimists
-Supportive policy at the local and National levels in particular focusing on sector specific regulatory standards - the human tribes involved with these were mainly progress-policy wonks. These were a left-right coalition of policy makers focused on abundance and building.
-The Just Enough (JE) movement curbed the consumer excesses of certain populations, in particular parts of the US - the tribes most associated with these derived from degrowth and Malthus but also allied with some techno-optimists and the Just One Bad Day (JOBD) movement.
Let’s review these factors in more detail.…” Link to full essay here.
A story of love, trains, circular economy with a side dash of agglomeration.
I spot the beginnings of circular economy ideas everywhere. There’s many more repair and second hand ideas in the consumer world, but it’s also happening with large items as well.
JP loved and loves these old London Underground District line trains: the D78 stock (photo via wiki). Unfortunately for him, these were replaced by new stock (the S-stock).
JP has been in deep mourning ever since. Our family is given >38 reminders day about this situation, and it can really impact us and him, mentally.
There are two pieces of fantastical hope. One piece is that there are two modified D78 stocks sitting as rail adhesion trains at Neasden depot, NW London. In old satellite pictures from google earth, you can see them there. He yearns for the day they may appear on the District line. Another smaller piece is that some of the D78 stock went west to Vivarail.
Vivarail are upcycling these D78 trains and putting them back in service. A circular economy idea! Vivarail are attempting battery powered trains* (link end) as well for those lines that are not electrified.
A few upcycled D78 trains have made it to this small railway line: the Marston Vale Line. This line travels between Bletchley (famous for code cracking) and Bedford and passes through a number of quirky English places. (According to wiki) The line is a remnant of the former Varsity line between Oxford and Cambridge, most of which was closed in the late 1960s, although the line is to be adopted and upgraded as part of East West Rail, a project to re-establish the Oxford–Cambridge route. (I’ve seen the site on the Cambridge side which may open between 2026 - 2028 (depending on delays etc.) This will be a piece of under pinning infrastructure that - I think - would reinforce the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle of “innovation agglomeration”.
Eg, look what we managed to build in Cambridge over the last few year (and plenty of room for more).
As an international aside…Two two-car battery D-trains have also been shipped to America (Penslyvania) where they are being used by Railroad Development Corp (a Vivarail shareholder) to demonstrate its ‘pop-up metro’ concept for providing ‘lower cost, lower risk, faster start’ passenger services on under-utilised railways. The thinking behind Pop Up Metro seems to be that it would reduce the risk of any real estate/infrastructure development projects and reduce the time taken to prove and implement a project (from-scratch implementation would ordinarily take longer than a political cycle). [That’s what the rail journals are suggesting, at least]
Recently, we went to visit the Marston Vale line. In some ways it caused as much trauma as joy, as these are converted D78s and not in their original state. But these trains have >30 years of life left in them (and are 35+ years old). They are comfortable and they work.
The Marston Vale line embodies several ideas I’m interested in:
the infrastructure that powers the positive agglomeration of place based innovation
circular economy upcycling of material intense items, such as trains
connecting niche pieces of history and culture to our wandering transport interests
This is a slice of the steady march of progress. Its interconnectedness. Its current, past and future.
My friends at Improbable are thinking about what a new home and what a new type of school could mean. Do come and join them if it might be your thing. You can also experience an Open Space.
I view Nick Bloom’s work on remote/hybrid working as comprehensive and insightful. For many types of companies this is likely to look like 2 / 3 or 3 / 2 work from home, hybrid solutions.
i) Research finds hybrid WFH increases average productivity ≈5%,
and this is growing as firms and employees improve on this
ii) 70 mins saved commute time, 30mins goes back into work.
iii) hybrid supports diversity, valued same as c. 8% pay increaseThis is his set of slides on his work. (Linkedin)
Nadia Asparouhova (previously writing under Nadia Eghbal) is an independent researcher with widely read essays on a range of topics most recently philanthropic funding including effective altruism and ideas machines, and recent ideas in funding science. She’s written books about the open source community. She has worked in start ups and venture. She set up and ran Helium grants, a microgrant programme. She is an Emergent Ventures fellow. Podcast and transcript here.
How are crypto billionaires most likely to change charitable giving, Effective Altruism (EA) aside?
“Broadly my worldview or thesis around how we think about philanthropy is that it moves in these sorts of wealth generations. And so, right now we're kind of seeing the dawn of the people who made a lot of money in the 2010s with startups. It's the “ trad tech” or startup kind of cohort. Before then you had people who made a lot of money in investment banking and finance and the early tech pioneers, they all formed their own cohort. And then you might say crypto is the next generation after that, which will eventually break down into smaller sub components for sure but we don't really know what those things are yet, I think, because crypto is still so early and they've sort of made money in their own way.
And so, I think when we talk about how will, let's say, crypto billionaires change the world? The way I often see it discussed in public or in the media is we really hone in on individuals and their individual perspectives on the world. So we'll say, oh, Elon is doing this thing with his money or Jeff Bezos is doing that thing with his money. But I think what gets undervalued or discounted is that all these people are sort of products of their peers and their cohorts and their own generations.
When you have a group of people that have made money in a certain way that is almost by definition it's because it's a new wealth boom. They made their money in a way that's distinctly different from previous generations. And so, that becomes sort of like a defining theory of change or worldview. All the work that they are doing in this sort of philanthropic sense is finding a way to impose that worldview. …what will crypto's contribution to that be? I think it's going to be really different from the startup kind of cohort… for example, I think the trad tech cohort is much more interested in finding and uncovering top talent and in the meritocracy worldview where you have these young unproven founders that went on to start companies that rivaled or took down these huge legacy institutions and that really shapes the view of that sort of startup, a generation, where they saw over and over again that you can see someone who may not have a ton of experience in a topic, but it just has the right combination of ambition or grit, or seeing the world a certain way and they can take down these big legacy institutions. That's really what defines that cohort.
Whereas I think in the crypto kind of generation you might see instead of thinking about the power of top talent, I think they're more about giving people tools to kind of build their own worlds. So it's a lot more diffuse. I don't think it's really about going toe to toe against legacy institutions in the way that trad tech is kind of more obsessed with. It's much more about programmatically ensuring that people have access to tools to build their own worlds or build their own lives for themselves. And so again, you can kind of think about how is that going to play into their public legacy or what they do in the world and I just think it's way too early to really know what crypto's public legacy is going to look like.
I think we are really only in the very beginning stages. It's maybe similar to in the early 2010s where you saw some people who had made money from startups that were doing experiments in philanthropy, but it was so early that comparing that to now is just completely different. And so, yeah, I think we just don't really know yet, but think the answer to that question would just be think about what does crypto actually value that is distinct from what previous generations have valued and then try to extend that into thinking about how might that play into social public values.”
We speak about what she learned from microgranting and reviewing thousands of applications.
We discuss what she thinks about EA influenced philanthropy, and why she is personally pro-pluralism.
Nadia talks about why doesn’t consider herself a creator and the downsides and upsides on the creator economy as currently formed. We discuss parallels with the open source community.
We chat about Nadia’s work as an independent researcher versus her work at start-ups and how they are fulfilling in different ways.
Nadia examines what faith means to her now. We chat on the importance of intuition and the messiness of creative science and learning. We talk about science funding and how we might be the cusp of something new. Nadia expresses optimism about the future as we discuss possible progress stagnation.
On a more personal note, we chat about how Nadia was a vegetarian and how and why she changed her mind. But also that she could not be a complete only carnivore either. We discuss the importance of family stories that shape us and the role the stories of her grandmother played in her life.
We play over-rated under-rated:
Effective Altruism
Miami
Crowdfunding
Toulouse
Newsletters
Katy Perry
Nadia talks briefly about a seed of an idea around anti-memetics. Nadia ends with her advice to others. Follow your curiosities. Podcast and transcript here. Or listen below or wherever you get podcasts.
Save the date the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator UnConference will be Friday 16 Sep. Let me know if you’d like an invite.
Upcoming podcast will include: Larry Temkin, philosophy; Sophie Purdom, climate venture; Anna Gat, building communties; Anna Christina Thorsheim, charity entrepreneurship.
Let me know any questions you have.
Links:
James Joyce was a really entrepreneurial hustler as well.
Big advance in cell structure (Nuclear Pores) but only possible with AI
An out of sample replication - still holds that employee satisfaction associated with stock gains and strong accounting metrics
Existential risk prize re: legal accounting
Different inflations…
Mental Health awareness.
Trees are not really the answer. Or, at least nowhere near the whole answer.
Autism life.
Jokes
I’ve slowly changed my mind on what makes great street photography.