Welcome to the Matrix
Plugging our brains into computers for health and prosperity
Hey 🦄
I actually missed sharing last week's mindset. In the shuffle of the hackathon, I forgot that we hosted a mid-week workshop on Done > Perfect. I won't spend time discussing it today but an important moment was sharing the value that feedback has in our growth. Feedback is the catalyst for exponential growth. It's not just about getting the reps in, you need to reflect and adapt to the feedback you're getting.
To that end, this week we collected Q1 feedback from our students about the program so far. I'm anxious and excited to see how students have been finding their experiences so far. Face-to-face conversations tell one story, but you never know what you're going to get in an anonymous survey. In the spirit of last week's mindset, I'm ready to see where my gaps are and create a better experience for the students 💪🏼.
Boss Mentality
I want you to think back to the last time somebody called out for audience participation. It could have been at a live show asking for a volunteer, in a meeting looking for someone to take on a new initiative, or even at school deciding who presents first. Did you put your hand up? Did you avoid eye contact and try to disengage? Or did your hand shoot up and you owned the opportunity?
At TKS we talk about the idea of having a Boss Mentality. When you first hear this you might have a visceral reaction. I'm not talking about being bossy or feeling superior. I’m talking about the urban dictionary kind of boss, like “yo, she’s a boss.” Someone you know gets shit done.
Boss Mentality is the culmination of many mindsets and skills we teach at TKS (and some we don't). It encompasses confidence and presence, courage, leadership and authenticity, and having agency to name a few.
It's not about being the boss or just acting like a leader, but instead embodying a successful person and taking action.
Sometimes the easiest way to have a boss mentality is to "fake it". Channel your inner boss. Think of someone you admire. It could be someone like Michelle Obama, Indra Nooyi, or Tim Cook. What would they do if they were in your situation? Would they be passive participants in their own life? Hell no!
Instead of waiting to be called, they would be the first with their hand up.
Instead of standing around a conference hoping someone talks to them, they would walk up and introduce themselves to anyone they please.
Instead of panicking when they forget a part of their presentation or their slides stopped working, they would continue on and we wouldn’t even notice.
Being a boss is not just about having confidence, but being adaptable and even anti-fragile. It’s about claiming your agency over your life and doing something to improve it. After all, agency is our most precious resource.
This fake-it approach is not a crutch or something that only someone without a boss mentality would do. Imagining what someone else would do is a useful practice that investors use to better understand how past thinkers and investors would approach the same deal. Farnam Street’s Shane Parrish regularly says that the mental models he learns from other investors and thinkers allow him to try to answer “What would Charlie Munger do?” when facing a decision.
If professional investors channel others, we should too. Boss up!
BCIs and The Future
Alright, let's get into the tech already.
Imagine a future where patients with brain illnesses, paralysis, and loss of limbs could have a dramatically improved quality of life. They could move their limbs (or prosthetics) with full control and recover sensation. They might be able to see again after going blind or walk again. BCIs are a technology that can enable that future and we are still in the opening paragraphs of this chapter of history.
I’ll try to give you a quick overview of BCIs and why I find them so exciting, hopefully without losing you in any specifics.
We talked about BCIs (Brain-Computer Interfaces) which honestly feel like the future. Students studied the basics ahead of the session, and then went off to create potential future applications of the technology. If you don't follow tech or science this area is going to sound extremely foreign to you. Using a BCI, you can control a computer or object with your brain, you can have the computer stimulate or influence your brain or a combination of the two.
At its core, BCIs are used to read brain activity, interpret it, and use that information to take action. Sometimes taking action means influencing the brain itself with electrical signals to get a specific response like an emotion, a feeling, or eliminating impending neurological effects.
Here are a few quick examples:
Muse headbands are used to read your brainwaves to better understand your sleep and focus state. They use this data in their meditation apps to help you focus better and stimulate better sleep. Right now they appear to be read-only.
A common use of BCIs is to allow patients who have lost limbs to control prosthetic limbs with greater motor control. This is another example of read-only where the computer is part of the human body.
Building on the prosthetic example, research is being done with BCIs to stimulate areas of the brain to stimulate the sensation of touch on a prosthetic limb. So if someone touches the prosthetic hand, the patient will actually feel it as if it's a human limb. This is a bi-directional approach with brain stimulation.
Lastly, Neuropace is developing technology using BCIs to help reduce or eliminate the impact of epilepsy on their patients. When the system starts to detect brain patterns that indicate a seizure is imminent, it creates electrical signals in the brain through RNS (Responsive Neurostimulation) to reduce the severity of the seizure. This is another brain stimulation example.
Student Examples
During our session, students had an hour to explore other applications of BCIs in either healthcare or lifestyle. They pitched these in front of us to get more practice and feedback. Here are a few ideas I found compelling:
Measuring fatigue and alertness in truck drivers
Treating insomnia using neuromodulation of the vagus nerve
A neural prosthesis that aims to restore and improve impaired vision
If the objective was to inspire students about the possibilities of the technology, mission accomplished! Students managed to identify a handful of interesting use cases that we will likely see in the next 10-20 years.
Let’s push a little further into the future. We’re getting into experimental territory and the things I'm most interested in, despite them having no immediate application: Mindreading and Telekinesis.
Okay, that's not actually what they are called but it helps anchor your brain in a way that will make the next 3 examples make sense.
Researchers at CalTech have started doing experiments where they can accurately guess a word that you are thinking. There are serious constraints to this experiment (you are picking from a list vs. free-thinking among other things) but it represents the first step in being able to start to measure and read thought. The biggest piece of this will be training your own personal BCI on your specific thought patterns, vocabulary, and emotions so that it can read your own brain. I don't see us getting to a universal brain reader any time soon. These things work off of unique pattern recognition within each brain.
As I was writing this I came across another experiment where researchers were able to (mostly) recreate images based on brain scans. So in the not-so-distant future, if they have a reading of your brain scans, they can tell what you were looking at. Whoa.
In this video with NPR, Elise Hu does experiments where they attempt brain-to-brain communication at a high level. They stimulate the visual cortex to make a glow appear for the “second brain”. This is very primitive communication but points to the fact that it’s likely going to be possible in the future. Next up: telepathy!
Ok. I’ve rambled on for a long time about BCIs. If you couldn't tell, they are one of the most exciting areas for me.
Now, where did I put my BCI? 🧠
✌🏼
OK. BCIs! I'm waiting for the CalTech experiment so I can prove to everyone that when I say "I was thinking of you, honest," I truly was. The seeing beyond the brain ... a little freaky!