MIKE SINN

ABOUT ME,
UNFORTUNATELY

SOFTWARE ENGINEER & ECONOMIST & INSANE PERSON WHO WANTS TO REDIRECT 1% OF GLOBAL MILITARY SPENDING TO PRAGMATIC CLINICAL TRIALS

VERY CONCERNED ABOUT HOW HUMANITY SPENDS 40 TIMES MORE ON WAR THAN CURING DISEASE. TRYING TO CHANGE THIS WITH SPREADSHEETS AND ECONOMIC MODELS.

I BUILT A DECENTRALIZED FDA PLATFORM THAT PUBLISHED OVER 50,000 CAUSAL INFERENCE STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF FOODS, DRUGS, AND SUPPLEMENTS ON HUMAN HEALTH.

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX REMAINS UNBOTHERED. CHRONIC ILLNESS REMAINS UNRESOLVED.

BY THE NUMBERS

I'VE TRACKED THESE METRICS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT DATA PEOPLE DO. WE COUNT THINGS. IT'S VERY SATISFYING. WHETHER IT'S HELPFUL IS A SEPARATE QUESTION.

1.7B
PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC DISEASE
TARGET POPULATION FOR OUR RESEARCH
10M+
DATA POINTS ANALYZED
HEALTH DATA FROM 100+ SOURCES
1000+
FACTORS STUDIED
FOODS, DRUGS, SUPPLEMENTS & MORE
7+
ACTIVE PROJECTS
OPEN-SOURCE PLATFORMS & RESEARCH

THE SITUATION

THE PROBLEM

1.7 BILLION PEOPLE HAVE CHRONIC DISEASES.

I HAVE GENERATED 50,000+ STUDIES ABOUT IT.

WE ARE NOT SOLVING THIS AT THE SAME RATE.

AN APPROACH

BUILD PLATFORMS THAT AGGREGATE HEALTH DATA FROM MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO DISCOVER WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS.

THIS IS A BIT LIKE TRYING TO SOLVE WORLD HUNGER BY CREATING A REALLY THOROUGH SPREADSHEET OF EVERYONE WHO'S HUNGRY.

IN THEORY IT HELPS. IN PRACTICE, THE SPREADSHEET IS NOW VERY LARGE.

WHAT I'VE ACTUALLY BUILT

THE PLATFORM

I'VE PUBLISHED OVER 50,000 CAUSAL INFERENCE STUDIES. LIKE, MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

THE SECRET IS NOT HAVING ANY FRIENDS AND NEGLECTING YOUR FAMILY.

I'VE GENERATED META-ANALYSES FOR 90%+ OF CONDITION/TREATMENT PAIRS.

I'VE CREATED TREATMENT RANKINGS FOR 100+ CONDITIONS.

I'VE AGGREGATED 14 MILLION DATA POINTS FROM THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.

THE REALITY CHECK:

  • CHRONIC ILLNESS IS STILL HERE
  • 1.16 QUADRILLION COMBINATIONS REMAIN UNTESTED
  • WHEN I MENTION THIS AT PARTIES, PEOPLE SUDDENLY REMEMBER THEY NEED TO CHECK ON THEIR CAR

THINK BY NUMBERS

DATA-DRIVEN PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS. 2M+ VISITORS. ARTICLES INCLUDE "DOES GUN CONTROL REDUCE VIOLENT CRIME?" AND "WHY DRUG PROHIBITION INCREASES VIOLENCE."

THE POLICY REMAINS LARGELY UNCHANGED. BUT THE CHARTS ARE QUITE COMPELLING.

FORESIGHT INSTITUTE FELLOWSHIP

I'M A FORESIGHT INSTITUTE FELLOW. THIS IS A REAL THING. THEY STUDY "EXISTENTIAL HOPE," WHICH IS ALSO A REAL ACADEMIC TERM.

I PRESENTED "THE PROSPERA FDA" AT THE 2022 LONGEVITY WORKSHOP. THE PRESENTATION WENT WELL. THE FDA REMAINS UNCHANGED.

WANT THE FORMAL STUFF?

TECHNICAL SKILLS, YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, EDUCATION, ALL THAT.

SELECTED WORKING PAPERS

I BUILD FORMAL ECONOMIC MODELS. THIS REQUIRES SPREADSHEETS, GREEK LETTERS, AND A BELIEF THAT HUMAN BEHAVIOR CAN BE CAPTURED IN EQUATIONS. I AM ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR CONTRIBUTORS TO REVIEW THESE MODELS. YOU CAN LEAVE COMMENTS INLINE DIRECTLY ON THE PAPERS.

THE 1% TREATY: HARNESSING GREED TO ERADICATE DISEASE
Non-fiction, Public Policy, Health Economics, Peace Studies

THE 1% TREATY: HARNESSING GREED TO ERADICATE DISEASE

6.65K DISEASES (95% CI: 5.70K DISEASES-8.24K DISEASES) DISEASES HAVE 0 FDA-APPROVED TREATMENTS. AT CURRENT TRIAL CAPACITY (15 DISEASES/YEAR (95% CI: 8 DISEASES/YEAR-30 DISEASES/YEAR) NEW FIRST TREATMENTS/YEAR), EXPLORING THE THERAPEUTIC SEARCH SPACE TAKES ~443 YEARS (95% CI: 324 YEARS-712 YEARS). REDIRECT 1% OF MILITARY SPENDING ($27.2B/YEAR) TO PRAGMATIC CLINICAL TRIALS. TRIAL CAPACITY JUMPS 12.3X (95% CI: 4.19X-61.3X). SEARCH SPACE EXPLORED IN ~36 YEARS (95% CI: 11.6 YEARS-77.2 YEARS) INSTEAD OF CENTURIES. AVERAGE TREATMENT REACHES PATIENTS 212 YEARS (95% CI: 135 YEARS-355 YEARS) SOONER. TIMELINE SHIFT SAVES 10.7B DEATHS (95% CI: 7.39B DEATHS-16.2B DEATHS), VALUED AT $84.8 QUADRILLION (95% CI: $62.4 QUADRILLION-$97.3 QUADRILLION). COST-EFFECTIVENESS: $0.0018 (95% CI: $0.0007-$0.0041)/DALY, 50.3KX (95% CI: 23.7KX-111.7KX) BETTER THAN BED NETS. EVEN AT 1% (95% CI: 0.1%-10%) PROBABILITY OF TREATY ADOPTION, RISK-ADJUSTED COST-EFFECTIVENESS REMAINS SUPERIOR TO THE BEST EXISTING GLOBAL HEALTH INTERVENTIONS. INCENTIVE ALIGNMENT BONDS ADDRESS POLITICAL FEASIBILITY BY TYING LEGISLATORS' CAREER INCENTIVES TO A PUBLIC VOTING SCORECARD.

INCENTIVE ALIGNMENT BONDS: MAKING PUBLIC GOODS FINANCIALLY AND POLITICALLY PROFITABLE
Academic Paper, Political Economy, Mechanism Design, Public Policy

INCENTIVE ALIGNMENT BONDS: MAKING PUBLIC GOODS FINANCIALLY AND POLITICALLY PROFITABLE

GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS OPTIMIZED FOR LOBBYING INTENSITY, NOT NET SOCIETAL VALUE. PROGRAMS WITH 100:1 BENEFIT-COST RATIOS GET BILLIONS WHILE PROGRAMS WITH NEGATIVE RETURNS GET HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS. INCENTIVE ALIGNMENT BONDS FLIP THIS BY CREATING A CAPITAL POOL THAT REWARDS POLITICIANS (VIA CAMPAIGN SUPPORT AND POST-OFFICE OPPORTUNITIES) FOR FUNDING HIGH-NSV PROGRAMS OVER LOW-NSV ALTERNATIVES. THE RESULT: PUBLIC GOOD BECOMES PRIVATE PROFIT FOR BOTH INVESTORS AND ELECTED OFFICIALS.

WISHOCRACY: SOLVING THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPAL-AGENT PROBLEM THROUGH PAIRWISE PREFERENCE AGGREGATION
Academic Paper, Public Policy, Political Science

WISHOCRACY: SOLVING THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPAL-AGENT PROBLEM THROUGH PAIRWISE PREFERENCE AGGREGATION

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY SUFFERS FROM AN INESCAPABLE PRINCIPAL-AGENT PROBLEM WHERE ELECTED OFFICIALS' INCENTIVES DIVERGE FROM CITIZEN WELFARE. WISHOCRACY INTRODUCES RAPPA (RANDOMIZED AGGREGATED PAIRWISE PREFERENCE ALLOCATION), WHICH AGGREGATES CITIZEN PREFERENCES THROUGH COGNITIVELY TRACTABLE PAIRWISE COMPARISONS AND CREATES ACCOUNTABILITY VIA CITIZEN ALIGNMENT SCORES THAT CHANNEL ELECTORAL RESOURCES TOWARD POLITICIANS WHO ACTUALLY REPRESENT WHAT CITIZENS WANT.

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL CHANGE: A COST-BENEFIT FRAMEWORK FOR POLICY INCENTIVIZATION
Academic Paper, Political Economy, Mechanism Design, Public Policy

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL CHANGE: A COST-BENEFIT FRAMEWORK FOR POLICY INCENTIVIZATION

WHAT'S THE MAXIMUM COST TO ACHIEVE ANY POLICY CHANGE THROUGH LEGAL DEMOCRATIC CHANNELS? $25B FOR THE US, $200B GLOBALLY. FOR HIGH-VALUE REFORMS LIKE MILITARY-TO-HEALTH REALLOCATION, THIS YIELDS ROI EXCEEDING 400,000:1.

THE HEALTH AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF A GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR PRAGMATIC CLINICAL TRIALS
Academic Paper, Health Economics, Policy Analysis

THE HEALTH AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF A GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR PRAGMATIC CLINICAL TRIALS

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF A DECENTRALIZED FRAMEWORK FOR DRUG ASSESSMENT (DFDA). WITH $21.8B/YEAR IN PRAGMATIC TRIAL FUNDING, THE FRAMEWORK COULD SAVE 10.7B DEATHS (95% CI: 7.39B DEATHS-16.2B DEATHS) AND AVERT 565B DALYS (95% CI: 361B DALYS-877B DALYS) AT $0.841 (95% CI: $0.242-$1.75) PER DALY, WHILE GENERATING $58.6B (95% CI: $49.2B-$73.1B) IN ANNUAL R&D SAVINGS.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF
QUESTIONABLE DECISIONS

Decentralized FDA
REGULATORY DELUSION

Decentralized FDA

A system optimized for saving lives rather than avoiding lawsuits. 50,000+ observational studies analyzed. Meta-analyses for 90%+ of condition-treatment pairs. Treatment rankings for 100+ conditions. The current FDA approval process takes 10+ years and costs $2.6B per drug. During that time, between 11,000 and 115,000 people die who could have been saved if the drug had been approved immediately. There are roughly 1.16 quadrillion possible drug combinations we haven't tested. At the current pace, we'll finish testing them all in approximately never. The dFDA could accelerate clinical discovery by 80X. Which, if my math is correct, means we could map the entire space of possible treatments in about 45 minutes.

Global Survey on the 1% Treaty
OPTIMISTIC SPREADSHEETS

Global Survey on the 1% Treaty

Redirect 1% of global military spending to health research. Save 416 million lives. 700× more effective than current spending. I sent this proposal to everyone with the power to implement it. They have enthusiastically ignored me. When your last name is Sinn, you take validation wherever you can find it.

Think by Numbers
SHOUTING INTO VOID

Think by Numbers

Data-driven policy analysis. Articles like 'The War on Drugs Increases Drug Deaths' and 'We Spend More on Corporate Welfare Than Social Welfare.' 2 million people read these. The policy remains exactly the same. But I made some really compelling charts and I stand by them.

CureDAO
DAO

CureDAO

A DAO focused on clinical research. That's a lot of technical jargon, so let me translate: imagine if Wikipedia and a clinical trial had a baby that was raised by blockchain. The result is a platform where anyone can contribute to medical research without needing permission from a committee of very tired people in lab coats.

Wishonia
AI EXPERIMENT

Wishonia

An autonomous agent platform where AI tries to solve global problems. The agents are very enthusiastic. Their success rate is still being calculated. But they never sleep and they never complain, which is more than I can say for myself.

Decentralized Institutes of Health
PLATFORM

Decentralized Institutes of Health

A hub for digital health intelligence. At some point I decided that having multiple platforms was a good idea. The jury is still out on this decision.

Wishocracy
ECONOMIC THEORY

Wishocracy

Aggregated Pairwise Preference Allocation. If that sounds like something from an economics paper written at 3 AM after too much coffee, you are correct. It's a mechanism for democratic resource allocation. Whether anyone will ever use it remains unclear. But the math is elegant and that has to count for something.

How to End War and Disease
DOCUMENTATION

How to End War and Disease

Comprehensive documentation for the War on Disease initiative. I wrote a lot of words explaining how to save 416 million lives. The manual is very thorough. The implementation remains theoretical.

The Plutonium Kidz
MUSIC (LOOSELY DEFINED)

The Plutonium Kidz

The Plutonium Kidz were born of a secret government program involving the testing of plutonium exposure on human subjects. Through these experiments three normal children were thus transformed into the Plutonium Kidz! The government program, regrettably, remains classified.

QuantiModo
HUBRIS

QuantiModo

I built a platform to analyze what affects human health. 14 million data points. Novel causal inference methodology. The entire thing is open source. Most people do not, in fact, want to know what affects their health. They want to eat chips and watch TV. Which is fair. I would also like to eat chips and watch TV. Instead I made this.

SKILLS (ORGANIZED BY HONESTY LEVEL)

HIGHLY CONFIDENT

  • SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
  • DATA ANALYSIS & VISUALIZATION
  • FULL-STACK DEVELOPMENT
  • DIGITAL HEALTH PLATFORMS
  • EXPLAINING COMPLEX SYSTEMS TO DISINTERESTED AUDIENCES

MODERATELY CONFIDENT

  • ECONOMIC MODELING
  • COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
  • MECHANISM DESIGN
  • CLINICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
  • CHROME EXTENSION DEVELOPMENT

LISTED ON LINKEDIN FOR SOME REASON

  • DIGITAL MARKETING
  • MUSIC COMPOSITION & PRODUCTION
  • ANIMATION
  • PODCAST PRODUCTION
  • COMEDY (APPARENTLY)

QUESTIONABLE / SKILLS I'M WORKING ON

  • WORK-LIFE BALANCE
  • KNOWING WHEN TO STOP
  • FINISHING PROJECTS
  • RETIREMENT PLANNING

WANT TO
WORK WITH ME?