Wellknowlogy: 12/1/22

Wellknowlogy is a curious, honest, and caring source of weekly news & thoughts on innovations in the wellness industry; an efficient way for providers, technologists, investors, and enthusiasts to stay in sync and informed about endeavors to increase wellbeing. For more context surrounding Wellknowlogy, the motives behind it, and its purpose, check out Why Wellknowlogy. For filtered information concerning your particular venture, reach out to [email protected]

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This week, I feel compelled to discuss an article mentioned below based on recent news and an episode of HBO's Westworld. Yes, this means that I am at least two layers of abstraction away from the origin of this idea. Realistically, I'm much further.

Fortunately, I am not mentioning this article to be original, but because I think it's an important tie to broader considerations that will become more prevalent as AI and predictive modeling become way more intelligent over the next few decades.

Here's the mega short summary: An app seeks to predict the productivity and life outcomes of people with mental health conditions. People use the app to make decisions on important things like hiring. As a result, people with health conditions increasing the probability of life outcomes that may not be preferable (played by Aaron Paul) are driven towards those negative predicted outcomes because people stop giving them opportunities based on those predictions. The show plays with this idea of preemptive natural selection and the ethics behind it.

I believe this is important because it calls for a deeper layer of questioning. In order to understand whether or not this type of predictive modeling and preemptive natural selection is acceptable, we ought to have a deeper understanding of why political and societal structures exist and what they seek to accomplish.

I am not going to write a full-fledged academic-quality essay on this, so it will inherently be somewhat reductive and incomplete. I actually did write something based on the same themes for my senior thesis, but that's a different thing (reading it back, it wasn't that good anyway).

My takeaway from that essay and my studies supporting it was that political systems that prioritize the success of the system (by whatever metrics are used to measure this) over the success of each individual in the system are fundamentally misunderstanding the point of political society. Societies exist to protect and strengthen the lives of individuals, so systems that concede lives of individuals for the measurable success of the system are fundamentally flawed.

If we take the preemptive natural selection idea and expand it as a societal principle, it results in the acceptance of questionable practices such as euthanasia. While these practices may improve certain metrics used to measure a society, they come at the expense of individual lives.

Sure, the creation of a tool that enables individuals to put these principles into practice is not the same as an autocrat declaring them to be the principles of an entire nation. Unfortunately, this creates an opening for the tragedy of the commons to come into play.

When principles are left to be decided by many small individual decisions rather than one overarching decision, it is easier for selfish values to sneak into societal norms, resulting in outcomes that would be viewed negatively if enacted by a dictator. Take the environment as an example of this phenomenon. If we voted on the decision to raise temperatures and increase the odds of environmental catastrophe, we'd probably vote NO. However, when this outcomes come down to billions of seemingly inconsequential decisions, things can move in an unfortunate direction.

To bring it back to the point, opportunities for preemptive natural selection becoming more societally prevalent merit consideration as tools to support such thinking become more powerful and financially rewarding. So, maybe don't use the app that predicts the lives of people with psychosis to inform your hiring decisions. Or, if you do, at least do it with awareness of the broader themes at play.

With that out of the way, here's what happened last week:

Neat Articles

• Marlena Robbin's goal for access to psychedelics for Indigenous peoples

• A new app aims to predict whether people with psychosis are worth hiring

• The mutation associated with autism can overstimulate brain cells

• The future of digital health with emotion-detecting AI

• How the joy we derive from others’ success comes with many benefits

• Why AI in healthcare is critical to improving mental health and wellness

• Therapists are prescribing dungeons and dragons now

• Venture capital firms are partnering with healthcare organizations to improve digital health

• The Williamsburg Therapy Group is making comprehensive mental health care accessible

• Treating mental illness with electricity marries the old ideas of mental health treatments

Market News

• Peloton leaders face insider trading claims over treadmills

• Asics corporation acquires Njuko SAS to take number one spot in global endurance event registration service market

• Inflow, a science-based app for ADHD, announces the acquisition of Lina a technology-forward mental health service for adults

• Oola is backed by USANA, a nutritional supplement industry in an acquisition deal

• Therapy Brands acquires The Echo Group which specializes in visual-based EHR for behavioral health

Fundings

• Bionaut Labs gets $43.2M for its tiny drug delivery robots

• HealthKart raises $65.7M in funding from Temasek, and A91 Partners to drive their omnichannel healthcare platform

• AIM7, a health and wellness app, raised $1.3M in pre-seed funding

• Suwasthi raises $20M for development of their natural plant medicine remedies

• MeliBio raises $2.2M in funding for their bee-free honey

• Driftline raised $800K to launch the world’s first algorithm to quantify human endurance

• Yorkshire digital healthcare startup secures share of £25M government funding

• Y-Combinator alum Almond raises $7M to pursue its vision of holistic OB/GYN care

Tidbits for You and Yours

• 60 wellness-themed gift ideas

• Tips for smoothe holiday dinner conversation

• Best humidifiers 2022: Relieve dry skin & allergy symptoms

Closing Kernel of Wisdom

• Check out this brief guided exploration led by Mooji to guide you towards a bit of presence. It's 15 tranquil minutes that can leave a lasting imprint for the rest of the day.

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Wishing you a great week to come.

Warmly,

Dayton