Evidence #13

5 charts covering life expectancy, federal debt growth, relative GDP growth, dating, and large language model advancements.

Evidence is a unique dinner experience with the purpose of enabling relationships through meaningful and open discussion. To accomplish this, we assemble leading investors, founders, operators, and creatives. Each guest contributes a chart for discussion that is “evidence of a changing world.” These dinners are hosted by Index Ventures. Interested to get these notes? Subscribe here.

Dinner Summary (via ChatGPT):

The group dinner was hosted in NYC. It was led by Shardul Shah and joined by a group of technology company founders.

The topics discussed underscore concerns and reflections on the future of human society, focusing on the sustainability of progress in areas such as health, economics, global power dynamics, relationships, and technology. They highlight the challenges of managing growth—whether in life expectancy, national debt, or AI advancements—while contemplating the broader implications for societal stability, global influence, and the evolving nature of human connections.

This dinner was joined by 4 founders of private technology companies.

We discussed the linear trend in life expectancy and discussed:

• The unusual curve

• That deaths of despair are actually more frequent than deaths related to cancer

• Whether or not the person that will be 150 years old is alive today

• Whether the expectations of real goods (like knee replacements) would cause massive shifts

There has been an accumulation of debt that has sharply increased and is expected to continue rising sharply in the future to >500% debt-to-GDP. We discussed:

• If there had been a pattern of empires having fallen due to overextending and spending

• And what and why macro economic policies have changed

The US has been challenged as the global leader by China and we discussed:

• The importance of preserving democracy

• The unlikely rivalry from China

• The strategic military value off the shore of Taiwan

• And whether or not the decline of the US is inevitable

People are increasingly meeting online and we discussed:

• The sentiment and narrative of love will change

• How kids will be born of parents whom met online

• Whether arranged marriages will make a comeback

• And the acceleration of diversity due to online dating

AI is happening and we discussed:

• Real use of AI in our work and personal lives

• How even without any further evolution how much further application of AI will impact industries

• And positive impacts of AI