Why We Must Focus on Solving Health
As a kid, I remember thinking about how Einstein died before he could solve the equation of everything. That realization hit me hard—the idea that even the greatest minds are limited by time, that the mysteries of the universe might remain forever out of reach within a single human lifespan. It made me feel like I didn't have enough time to solve the big mysteries, to contribute something meaningful before the clock ran out.
But there's something even more immediate that pulls my focus away from those grand cosmic questions: when people I love get sick, everything else becomes secondary. I can't focus on the things I really want to explore because I have to solve their problems first. And here's the thing—we live in an era where, in my view, every health problem is solvable. It's just a matter of how to optimize AI to benefit people.
The Body as Our Ultimate Constraint
We live inside our bodies, and we're limited by them in ways that go far beyond the obvious physical constraints. Our consciousness, our senses, our very ability to perceive and understand reality—all of it is filtered through the biological machinery that keeps us alive. If we want to enable ourselves to understand the answers that artificial superintelligence will reveal, we must enhance our ability to see them.
This isn't just about extending life for its own sake. It's about expanding the bandwidth of human experience and understanding. We're trying to solve problems that may require cognitive capacities we don't yet possess, insights that might only be accessible to minds that can process information in ways we can't even imagine.
The Sacred Nature of Health
When I go to hospitals, I always feel like I'm witnessing the most important moments of human existence. Nothing feels more sacred than extending life, than giving someone more time to love, to create, to understand. It's the ultimate endgame, and everything else pales in comparison.
Reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker made it clear that we're not wired to truly understand how much health is the most important problem we humans have to solve. Our wars, our arguments, our pain and suffering—they're all related to this constant denial of the one result we all accept but rarely confront directly. We're the only animals that understand we're going to die, and that knowledge shapes everything we do.
The Gift and Curse of Mortality
The story of Adam and Eve always resonated with me as a metaphor for this gift and curse of consciousness. We're the only species that knows about death, that can contemplate our own mortality. This awareness is both our greatest burden and our greatest opportunity. It's what drives us to create, to love, to seek meaning. And for the first time in history, we can actually question whether death is inevitable.
I'm not saying that solving health will take all our problems away. But I do argue that in order to feel, we must live. This argument alone is enough for me to focus on health with undeniable clarity.
The AI Revolution in Health
We're at an inflection point where artificial intelligence is becoming sophisticated enough to tackle the complex, multi-dimensional problems of human health. Every health problem is, fundamentally, an information processing challenge:
- Disease prediction: Pattern recognition across vast datasets of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors
- Drug discovery: Molecular design and optimization at scales impossible for human researchers
- Personalized medicine: Tailoring treatments to individual biology rather than population averages
- Preventive care: Identifying risk factors and interventions before problems manifest
The tools are getting better every day. The question isn't whether we can solve health problems—it's whether we'll choose to prioritize this work above all else.
Beyond Individual Health
Solving health isn't just about extending individual lifespans. It's about creating the conditions for humanity to reach its full potential:
- Cognitive enhancement: Expanding our mental capacities to better understand complex problems
- Emotional optimization: Reducing suffering and increasing well-being at scale
- Social harmony: When people aren't constantly worried about their health or the health of loved ones, they can focus on higher-order problems
- Scientific advancement: Healthy, long-lived researchers can pursue multi-decade projects and build on decades of accumulated knowledge
The Moral Imperative
There's a feeling that knowledge can compete with saving lives, but I believe this is a false dichotomy. The knowledge we gain from solving health will unlock insights that benefit every other domain of human endeavor. When we understand how to maintain and enhance human biology, we'll understand more about consciousness, about the nature of intelligence, about what it means to be human.
The denial of death that Becker wrote about isn't just a psychological defense mechanism—it's a fundamental limitation on our ability to think clearly about our priorities. Once we accept that health is the foundation of everything else, the path forward becomes clear.
The Call to Action
We have the tools. We have the knowledge. We have the computational power. What we need is the focus, the prioritization, the recognition that solving health is not just one problem among many—it's the problem that makes all other problems solvable.
Every day we delay is a day of suffering that could have been prevented. Every resource we allocate elsewhere is a resource not spent on the most important work humanity has ever undertaken. Every brilliant mind working on problems other than health is a mind not contributing to the foundation of human flourishing.
The equation of everything that Einstein sought might be waiting for us on the other side of solving health. But we'll never know unless we make it our absolute priority.
The time is now. The tools are ready. The question is whether we have the courage to focus on what matters most.
Health isn't just a problem to solve—it's the key to unlocking everything else.