← Beyond Blind Blaming
Beyond Blind Blaming
Rebuilding Trust and Transforming Healthcare Through Innovation | Dr. Alex Cahana
00:43:11
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- [00:00]
A
This type of business that we adopted where actually being healthy is bad for business, it's not sustainable.
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B
Today I'm joined by Dr. Alex Kahana. Dr. Kahana is a distinguished physician and blockchain expert with over 25 years of clinical experience.
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A
Right now, especially after Covid, what is really limiting us to work together is this fundamental lack of trust. Blockchain, which is basically just a transparent database, is the software solution to the social problem of trust. One of the problems with health care is that everybody agrees that it's not working, but nobody agrees on what the solutions are. Artificial intelligence doesn't scare me. What scares me is natural stupidity. AI reflects us as a mirror. That is not something that we need to regulate, avoid control, push away and hate.
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B
Looking forward, what do you see as the most exciting intersection between blockchain, AI and healthcare in the next decade?
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A
I think that.
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B
Welcome to Beyond Blind Blaming. This is the place where we explore how easily hidden truths can hold us back, trapping us in cycles of frustration and blame, often without even realizing what's truly stopping us. I'm your host, Kevin St. Clergy and today I'm joined by Dr. Alex Kahana. Dr. Kahana is a distinguished physician and blockchain expert with over 25 years of clinical experience. He's a founding partner at Impact Rooms, an innovative platform using AI powered solutions to transform investment networks. He served as head of healthcare and blockchain consulting at Genesis. Block advised governmental and non governmental agencies on policies to enhance physical and mental health and authored over 100 publications. On top of that, he's a decorated officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. Dr. Kahane, welcome to the show.
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A
It's a pleasure to be here.
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B
Well, your journey's taken you from practicing medicine to becoming a leading figure in blockchain technology. What was the turning point for you where you realized that traditional healthcare models were solving the wrong problems perfectly Well.
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A
I think from the battlefield I moved to be a pain doctor. And close to almost 30 years I was a pain doctor and built different pain centers around the world. And obviously when I came to the states back in 2008 to resurrect the first pain clinic in the world, back at the University of Washington in Seattle, got embroiled in the opioid epidemic and the devastating effects opioid overdoses had on Americans. And I really started to think that we're not really doing something right here. And so obviously as a physician I focused on, okay, so how do I better treat patients? Until I realized that you really can't speak seriously about mental health. And Physical health without talking about planet health and financial health. And that threw me into this throes of blockchain, digital money, virtual currencies, local currencies, and trying to connect all these very different domains that usually don't discuss with each other to create a holistic approach.
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B
I do know that as I've talked to some people that I know and told them you're going to be on the call today. And I think blockchain is a buzzword now, but few truly understand the definition or its potential. Can you break it down for our listeners for a definition? And that helps them see beyond common misconceptions.
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A
The simplest way I explain it to myself is that blockchain is the software solution to the social problem of trust. Right now, especially after Covid, what is really limiting us to work together to collaborate, cooperate, and solve things at a global scale is this fundamental lack of trust. And so blockchain, which is basically just a transparent database, really adds the trustworthiness in whatever information we put in that database. We call it a ledger because it's an append only. So it's a distributed ledger technology. And it is what we call trustless, which is kind of like a bad word because it sounds that it doesn't have trust. But actually what trustlessness means is that you don't need a third person to verify or to trust what you're doing. So I don't need a lawyer or a notary or an accountant to be in between us simply because it has in it not trust. I trust you as a human being, but computational trust. But you always know that two plus two equals four. So for me, blockchain adds, I want to say radical transparency to whatever transfer of information is happening. And for me, that is why all these derivatives from it, Bitcoin, and all the things that we hear on the news, although people might not intuitively think about it, is actually the software of trust.
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B
You said before healthcare needs blockchain, and blockchain needs healthcare. Tell us more about that.
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A
I think that one of the problems with healthcare is that everybody agrees that it's not working, but nobody agrees on what the solutions are.
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B
No, so true.
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A
Physicians think that there are too many regulations. Insurance companies think that physicians and hospitals are just asking for too much money. The government is thinking that citizens are not staying healthy enough. People are thinking that all this is way too expensive. So there's a lack of communication and understanding between the different stakeholders. And what blockchain does is that it is actually designed for systems that don't Trust each other. It's like I have a way to prove that I am me and you are you. And when I give you $20, then it is exactly $20 and not $200. And that if I say that I weigh 190 pounds and that's how much I weigh, and not, well, you know, I'm actually 260, but I want to be 190. So if people are now listening and saying, well, how does that do that? I give the example of Google Docs. You know, everybody uses Google Docs. So let's say I'm sitting down and writing my expenses of the day. And, you know, I'm writing like $2, $3, $10. But now if I know that you're looking at it, Instead of maybe $2, I'm writing $1.95, and I'm being a little bit more accurate. And at the end of the day, when I summarize everything and all those people that are looking at it, we all sign. We sign it in a way that we know. Okay, Kevin said that this is correct, and that is a block of data. And I do it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So those blocks of data are in a chain. So when I come to Friday and say, oof, I spend too much, or, oh, there's this side effect that I should have actually measured blood pressure on Monday, I can't go back in the books and fib the books. It's a triple accounting, because then you break the chain. And so that's what makes the system so robust, because it's almost like it should have been called the way it was written on its first paper. When blockchain was presented by Satoshi Nakamoto, it was called Time chain. So it's basically this historical ledger that gives the information from the moment it was incepted to the moment it arrives to you, and you can actually go back to the source. And that really helps with everything that pertains to misinformation or things that you're not sure about.
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B
Would you say that's the fundamental issue that blockchain fixes in the current system?
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A
Yes. I think that this trustlessness, in other words, the. We're making the idea of having intermediaries to trust agents, if you wish, obsolete. And the second thing that is derived from that, it is because it is peer to peer, it empowers me to be the owner of what I'm doing. So both of us are all old enough to remember that when we were young, we used to travel, we used Travel agents. That wasn't because we were rich. It was because that was the only person that would help us to book a trip. Nowadays, because of democratization of information, I can be my own travel agent. It doesn't sound weird to anybody. And even if I say I can be my own doctor, it kind of doesn't sound weird anymore because, you know, it's like I can biohack myself. I know what supplements I have some podcasts that I'm listening to. So I can be like my own doctor. But now if I start to say, well, I can be also my own insurer, my own broker, my own bank, my own money emitter, that's where people have a little bit of difficulty to imagine it. But it's not different than being your own travel agent. And so I think that what blockchain does is really this idea of self ownership. We call it self sovereignty and self custody. And I think it's a generational thing, because my generation just says, no, it's too hard to do it. I'm too old to do these new things. But the younger generation is absolutely, I want to be responsible for all my interactions and transactions in my life. So trust, self sovereignty, self ownership, and self agency.
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B
You described blind blaming at its core, where everybody's pointing fingers at something. Health care providers are pointing fingers at insurance companies, insurance companies reporting fingers at patients and doctors saying they're overcharging and they should be the ones controlling what happens. And you're saying you want to put this back in the hands of the individuals and have the relationship directly with them?
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A
Correct. And I learned that because I used to have a workshop where I would take and I go to conferences and I would take groups of healthcare executives and I would divide them into tables and I would say, okay, you're the pharma table or the industry table, you're the executive or administration table. You're the government, you're the patients, you're the doctors. And I said, I will ask you three questions, and you have to answer as if you are that person. So it doesn't matter. You might hate the CEO of pharma, but if you are at the pharma table, you have to answer these questions as if you are the most ruthless, fearless pharma executive in the country. And I did this dozens of times. And what came out of it is three very interesting things. One is that everybody agreed on what doesn't work. There's data in silos, or what we call data illiquidity. It doesn't move In a way, so it doesn't have value. And you can't really cooperate and collaborate with this. It's not the interoperability, but it's the intercooperability that we don't have when datas are in silos. The second is the blind blaming nobody. And I've done the like I said dozens of times, I have yet to wait for the first group that will say, we need to change. Everybody says, oh, you know, you need to clean the dishes and you need to do, you know, throw down the garbage, not, you know, God forbid, I'll do it. And the third, and I think this is really interesting and worth the audience paying attention to, it changes the equation of value, because the way we look at value, if I'm going to use math for a second and econ101, is that V value equals Q quality divided by cost, which is a fancy way of saying that the higher value I have at a cheaper price, I got a good deal. Now, the problem with that equation is two things. One is that what you call value and what I call value is not the same thing. If I'm a patient and I get a million dollar pill, of course for me it's valuable. But if I'm head of a health plan and I have a pill that cost a million dollars and I can't treat a million patients that have a pill that costs $1 that has no value, so already we don't agree on what value is. And that's why value in healthcare tends to be what the government wants, which are all kinds of process efficiencies and not really how are patients doing, but more nefariously is what's on the denominator, and that is cost. When you put cost in the denominator, what you're actually implying is always do more with less. It's always about cost. Depression kind of reminds me of the story of the farmer that had a mule and the mule died, and he said, oh, it's such a shame, because last week I taught him how to work with no food and water. So, you know, at the end, if you suppress cost so much, you just can't do anything. So what I suggest and what Blockchain suggests is that instead of V being Q divided by C is to say, okay, let's put in the denominator. What do you want to get? Okay, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Well, you want to get everything for free or blah, blah, blah, it really doesn't matter what you want. The pharma wants A lot of money. The government wants not to pay. Patients want everything for free. It doesn't matter. But what is important on the enumerator is what are you willing to give? And this is really what creates the value. What are you willing to give? So a patient who's not willing to change their lifestyles has very low value. Prop a pharma company that doesn't want to make their medications accessible, a government that doesn't want to insure public health policies and infrastructure, insurance company that doesn't create price discovery, affordable plans. They're not giving a lot. And that's the problem. And that's what people are looking for to give. And this goes into, I want to say larger, more philosophical, if you wish, more spiritual aspect of how do we give to each other and what does ownership mean?
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B
You're kind of saying that we have to decide whether we want to win arguments or change the world 100%.
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A
For me, I look at this all like energy. You have to put energy into things. Every farmer knows they have to put energy in the soil for it to to be ripe. Everyone who is in a relationship knows they have to put energy in the relationship for it to thrive. So the expectation that I'm going to do nothing and I will receive something I will get without giving is simply not natural. And so what this does, and I think this is where people, especially in the crypto world, going back to your original question of healthcare, needs crypto, but crypto also needs healthcare. Is that expectation of. Sure, I bought this coin and now the coin has to go up all the time and I have to make it. And it was just why if you don't put energy in it and it changes the, I want to say term of ownership. And this is where people get really stumped on ownership. For most people, if I would ask them, they would say I own something means that it's mine, not yours. And if you want access to mine, you got to pay me. In this worldview, it is very extractive, very exploitative and very exclusionary. I think it's a sad way to live life. Instead, we can look at ownership as authorship or owning your commitments. So I am committed to you to come here and speak best, to manner my words, to come with crisp ideas and to make your program successful. I own it. And what do you own? You own to ask me thoughtful questions, provide the best conditions where I can thrive. And so both of us are investing in the commons. You know, in this case, it's going to be the commons of knowledge that we're creating for your audience. So this is the type of economy that we need to develop. Not the economy of me and I and I don't care, but the economy of investing in the commons, where all our activity is focused on how can we make this work for everyone.
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B
Well, I think what you're also describing is that sometimes we feel out of control as patients. And one of my biggest frustrations recently is people have is lack of transparency with their own medical data. Like when I go do blood work, I have to wait on the physician to look at the report, charge me for it, and send it to me. How does blockchain change the way patients control access and share their health information? But how do you feel about having transparency with their own medical data? And is that something that blockchains helps with, or do I have it wrong?
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A
You have it absolutely right. And I'll unpack as you ask two questions. So I'll start with that and then go back to responsibility. I think the best would be an example. Imagine right now that I have my medical records in an application on my phone, and I'm coming to you as a patient, and you're looking at me and say, alex, look, you're doing fine. You still got to lose about 10 pounds. But, you know, you don't have hypertension, you're not pre diabetic. So, you know, just hit the gym a little more, walk your 10,000 steps a day and lean more on blueberries. And I'm like, oh, I don't know, you know, so hard already. I gave up so many good things. I'm not eating potato chips anymore. I'm not, you know, using mayo anymore. So you say, you know what? Let's have an agreement between us. If you lose those pounds, if you normalize your hemoglobin A1C, if you do on a lower your cholesterol, whatever, I will give you a Kevin Coin. My Kevin Coin? The hell's a Kevin Coin? Kevin Coin is a coin that you can go with it to the market downstairs and buy fresh fruit. Because that coin is programmable money. You can't buy with it cigarettes or alcohol or vape or whatever. Oh, and you can go to the store and buy athletic wear. You can go to the gym at a discount. You can do good things. It has value. And of course, obviously, you need to prepare that. You have to go to the community. They'll say, sure, of course the gym will do it. If you're bringing me new business, of course they'll give you a discount for those People. So you start to create these peer to peer interactions through economic transactions. But it gets better because obviously I'm happy saying, okay, that's real money. Those coins are real. And you can say, I'll pay you straight up, you know, but not like $50 a year Brownie points from the insurance, like real money. But it gets even more interesting because now the clinic head or the head of the hospital comes to you and says, kevin, I see that your patients are doing much better than Dr. Kahana's patients. How does that happen? Say, well, you know, I have my secret sauces. I have a Kevin coin. Kevin coin, that's awesome. I'll buy a couple. And then they buy some and say, you know what? For you, Kevin, every time you hit 100 patients that are successful, you'll get a thousand Kevin coins. And with that, you can go to conferences at discount, you can buy books, you can do the charity, you can do whatever you want programmed and agreed upon. You can't do it to do unlawful things or waste it for I don't know what. But, you know, praiseworthy things that we imagine that doctors want to do, and then expand that to clinics, to hospitals, to insurance companies saying, oh my God, this hospital or this community is so much healthier. You've created a virtuous cycle where people are rewarded for basically doing the right thing.
- [19:27]
B
The reason I'm smiling so big is because I have a friend recently that I was with and her daughter called wanting money, and she told her no. And I was like, oh, is she in dire straits? She goes, no, because the last time I gave her money, she claimed, was for food. She went out and bought vape and I started laughing. And when you said that, I'm like, oh, this could be great technology for parents when they give their kids money for something to control what they use it for. And you're taking the self control out of the equation, it sounds like.
- [19:56]
A
And it can even be good for stakeholders that right now you might think that wouldn't want it. But let's say that Dr. Evil Pharma wants everybody, you know to be obese or diabetic, and so they would hate you for making people better. Actually, that's not true because what they want is to do research. And right now they're losing billions of dollars on research projects because patients are not adhering to the protocols and they're not following it. Why? Because they're not incentivized to do it. So if you say, look, I will give you coins, they buy a million coins and say to a patient, I will give you thousands of coins. They'll say, of course I'll do it. So you create again a peer to peer economic activity that is self empowering, which segs very well. To the second point is responsibility. And what is responsibility is response ability. The ability of to respond to what? To respond to the other. And this brings me to a very important point of why we feel such a malaise, why we feel so bad. And that is that we don't recognize the other. And that is why we suffer from this epidemic of isolation. I remember even I was in Congress giving, you know, testimony on some opioid stuff and all this. And they said, why is the health care system so bad? And I said, okay, how long do I have? They said, 90 seconds. Okay. I said, I'll do it in 30. And I asked a chair in the ranking chair, what is the opposite of health? And they said, illness or disease? And I said, allow me to disagree. The opposite of health is isolation. That through health and illness you become isolated. And so if you just believe me for 30 seconds, then you understand that the journey back to health is through connectedness, connecting to your friends, to your family, to your social network, to your data, to your faith. And the way I explain it in the most simplest of terms is if you take the I out of illness and you replace it with we, what do you get? Wellness. So when they ask me, oh, what policies should we put into legislation to stop the opioid epidemics, I say, ask yourself, does it strengthen the community? And this goes back again to the response ability. My ability to respond to my friends, my family, my community, all is connected. It's not just about cost and cost savings. It's not just about shuffling money from the left pocket to the right pocket or doing some fancy things with arbitrage. And sure, sure, I get it. I hope I'm not coming across as someone who is anti business or an anti capitalist. I'm just saying that this type of business that we adopted, we're actually being healthy, is bad for business. It's not sustainable.
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B
No, I don't think you're coming across that way at all. I just had a podcast guest that talks about the destruction of community. I think it was an older book called it's either Never bowl alone or Bowling Alone. I haven't got. I just bought it. I'm waiting on it to come in. But he talks about that a big problem that we have as a society is lack of community. And I think it's this. I'M going to blame this a little bit. I'm seeing kids who don't go out at 16 years of age. I was that morning dressing to go get my driving test and then my girlfriend's kids, they're not going to get their driver's license or they did. And I was like, yeah, I waited till I was 19. I'm like, why? Because I didn't need to go anywhere.
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A
I kind of agree. But also not, you know, it's funny because I have a 19 year old. And I also told her, you know, the difference between, you know, she told me, she says like, what the hell, you did not have a computer when you were my age.
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B
It was like, I didn't have a phone either.
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A
But she's a bright kid. She said, if you have to choose one difference between how it was to be a kid my age and when you were my age. I said that in my age the punishment was go to your room. Today the punishment is you can't stay in your room. So I do agree that the virtual world has costs where I think it's important to have nuance a little bit is that the way the digital natives interact with the digital world is very different in terms of reference points than the way you and I, and you're a little bit younger than me, so you and I kind of interface with the digital world. And so the proof to it is that the same tools that we are now blaming that causes isolation are actually the same tools that they're using to get them out of isolation. There are a lot of digiceuticals, a lot of, I want to say, virtual tools that actually help those who have difficulties expressing themselves in front of other human beings. And I think that artificial intelligence doesn't scare me. What scares me is natural stupidity. And I think that people are not worried about AI, I think they're worried about ourselves because AI reflects us as a mirror. So I think that if we start to understand that they really interact with the world differently, we can also almost anticipate how will this integration in the digital world look like and prepare for it and accept it. And so I'm sure that you heard this called Web1, Web2, Web3. And there are all kinds of explanations. And the current explanation is that Web one was read and Web two was read and write. And now Web three is about read and write and ownership and ownership through blockchain, through crypto, through whatever. It's not a wrong way to look at it, no more than it's wrong to say, well, in web one we had HTML, and in web two we had broadband and JavaScript. And in web three now we have immersive technologies. It's not wrong, but I think that it doesn't really talk about the essence of what web really is, which is the interface between us humans, the real life, the physical life and the digital life. And so Web one is. We were outside. Web one was when it all started. We had Netscape and I don't know what AOL was looking at. AOL, you got CompuServe, I don't know what. And it would make like a noise of a flipping of the New York Times. And I would say, I prefer to read it physically than to click on it and hear the. Like that. So Web two started to become interesting. Right now we're in Web two. So that became interesting. Now we're in and out. We interact with it, we upload, we download, we add. We wear virtual reality goggles or haptic gloves or all kinds. So it's more like phygital, it's physical and Digital. But then Web3, you can say we are going to be actually in it, we're going to be inside it. And things like we're seeing now with brain computer interfaces and where, you know, I can just think and. And so if you think of AI as an extension of yourself, it's much more natural, it's much more loving than to say, oh, it's not me. So I am wearing now AI. What does that mean? Okay, this is AI. I have my glasses now. If I go like this, I can't see you. If I go like this, I can see you better. This is AI. So I can prompt and all this and I can think better. And if we agree that web3 is like now we're in. In the Internet, then obviously Web4 will be. We are the Internet that not only brain computer interfaces, but there will be computer brain interfaces. So you'll like really not be able to distinguish what comes from me and what is not me. Which, you know, again, I don't know if we want to get into a new age. What is consciousness, though? This Joe dispens the kind of like conversations. I don't think it's bad if we want to talk about universal consciousness, but really I think that that's a better way for especially the old fuddy duddies like myself, understand what digital means. It is not something that we need to regulate, avoid control, push away and hate. It is a natural evolution and extension of ourselves and we need to love it. That's why we started the first Loving. I'm putting a plug here. The first Loving AI application called Loving is because we really believe that it should represent who we are and it is an extension of us.
- [28:30]
B
Are you tired of feeling stuck in your business, career, relationships or your health? Are you frustrated by problems that just won't go away no matter what you try? After coaching and teaching thousands of people for over 25 years, I've discovered something powerful. Every unresolved problem has a hidden solution you just can't see yet. That's why I created the From Stuck to Breakthrough challenge. A free 5 day live experience where I'll show you exactly how to uncover what's really holding you back and finally break free to the results that you want, whether it's in your business, your health, your wealth, your relationships. I'll help you discover the real root cause of your challenges and give you the blueprint for permanent change. Join me and a community of like minded people ready to break through. Go to blind blaming.com again, that's blind blaming.com to sign up and we'll see you soon. I'm gonna go back to responsibility because that's something important to me. In my book, Beyond Blind Blaming that I just finished, there's a chapter called From Negativity to Possibility and it's about, listen, if you really want to get things in your life, there's two things you have to give up. Blaming and complaining. Any other thoughts on how we need to stop that when it comes to healthcare? I mean, you mentioned that people are doing it, but how do we get them to stop and how do we stop it ourselves? You saw me blame this for the kids not going outside and that's not. You got me thinking a different way on that one. But any thoughts on From Negativity to Possibilities?
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A
Well, first of all, I love the name Negativity to possibility because it really talks about the infinite power that we have as individuals. And it is counterintuitive because every day we wake up and we face our limitations, our physical limitations, our emotional limitations, our cognitive limitations, or at least it feels like it. And we're told so ever since you're so young, don't say this, don't say that, do like that, don't do like that. And we lose that natural aptitude when we are toddlers running around roaming free, really believing that we are the universe. And I think that we are. I think that each and every one of us is a universe. And I think so, so much to the point that I Don't think that there is a reality out there. I think that opposed to what in science we're taught. And this took me a while. Took me a PhD in Phenomenology or PhD in Philosophy. Where I learned about subjectivity and how to investigate subjectivity. We are taught that we have senses and perceptions that perceive the world out there. And we intimate it. And we create that image of the world. And that is called representationalism. I think that is absolutely wrong that it had actually the other way around. That each and every one of us knows their inner world. They know it, they feel it. And no matter how many words I'm going to give you. It's not going to capture the essence of that whole inner world. So there's almost like a quantum information. Because the minute you'll ask me, it'll collapse and I'll forget stuff. But I can feel the joy, I can feel the love. I can feel the creativity and excitement. I'm trying to use classic information to express it. So it'll be understandable to you and the listeners. But you understand that it's less than the quantum information. And so the universe that is inside me. Is way bigger than the universe that's outside. So we are not small, we are not diminished. We are not dependent. We are independent in our own universe. And how we see the world really depends on how we are with ourselves. And how we pass that. I want to say internal journey. And that's the scientific way of explaining spirituality. And explaining our infinite capacity to see good. And this is why I love the word love. Because love is the acronym of Living 1 Vibrational Energy. When you feel someone say, wow, you know, this Kevin guy is really cool because we're vibing on the same energy. We have to, you know, a macro world representation of quantum entanglement. We have different entanglements with different people. And so this goes back to responsibility that you understand that the only thing you can be response able is your own happiness. And if you are responsible to your own happiness. Then you become response able to. To the happiness of others. And you're able to send out those vibrations to others. And lift them from wherever they are.
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B
And I love the way you said that. We had a very deep conversation with my girlfriend and I. And she's like, well, I just want to make you happy. And I correct her calmly. I just said, it's not your responsibility to make me happy. It's my responsibility to be happy, not yours. I wish more people would know that. I'm gonna switch gears a Little bit. And thank you for that. It was amazing. You've worked extensively in sub Saharan Africa and a region, if I read it correctly, where healthcare access is often very limited. What are some of the hidden challenges people don't see when trying to improve healthcare in emerging markets and how they might blind blame, whether it's government systems, lack of resources, whatever, in those emerging markets?
- [33:45]
A
It's a great question and maybe we should have a separate conversation all about that because there's so much to unpack. But I think that even in your question, there is an assumption buried in it that we can help them. And I work not only in Africa, I work in Latin America, I work in the Amazons, I work in South Pacific in indigenous islands. And I can tell you that we have nothing to give to them. That their groundness in nature, their understanding of nature, their relationship, the way they can procure what the jungle gives them, leaves them way more healthy than we are. So this is not to say that of course we don't have amazing things in the ways of brick and mortar and treatments and all kinds of fancy machines that make the noise beep. Not saying that, but their concept of health and wellness is diametric to the way we see it in the Western world. And the Western world is weird. And this is not an acronym that I made up. Weird, Western, educated, industrialized, rich democracies. We see things weirdly because when you come to me sick as a Western doctor, I say, okay, I'm going to fix it. And the idea is that with some magic that I have, some injection that I can do, you'll be better. When actually it doesn't recognize that the human body is a magnificent machine that knows how to heal itself. And so when you're sick, what needs to happen is actually the healing process is to take away all the things around you that disallow you to be healthy. That's the therapeutic act. Because we are not nouns, we are verbs. We're not, okay, I have pain, I'm here, you're there, you have it. So I have to burn it, freeze it, stimulate it, cut it, give you drugs to make you stupid and addicted. No, is I am painting. So me as a healer, I say, are you painting well or painting poorly? And if you're painting poorly, I will help you to paint well. We are beings. And so, yes, there are a lot of things to your point. Infrastructure, data, blah, blah, blah. All this. We can talk about it next time. The oppression and the unfairness of Western countries on Africa and Covid was a par Excellence, example. You know, I got the heat on saying that the Africans are actually doing better than the US On Covid to the point that they took my posts off and they would say, why? Why do you think so? And it's very simple. One is that it's not their first pandemic. You know, they have Ebola, Zika, Dengue, Yellowfield. So second is that no African is going to execute their constitutional right to be stupid and cough on other people. And the third one is that they're young and healthy, whereas we're old and fat. So I would say the question is aside, what really is that we need to learn from the indigenous cultures how to be connected to the universe, how to be connected to Gaia in order to disallow and take away all these things that disallow us to be healthy and whole.
- [37:18]
B
I love it. Looking forward, what do you see as the most exciting intersection between blockchain AI and healthcare in the next decade?
- [37:26]
A
Well, I think that the tech stack is there to do a redesign. I really think that if we would have this conversation in the 2017 ICO craze and everybody was writing on napkins, I have an idea, blah, blah, blah. But since then, in the last seven, eight, 10 years, there has been a lot of work. And I think that now we have a tech stack that includes the ability to accurately collect both structured and unstructured data and almost describe people in both subjective and objective ways. We have advanced analytics that can unveil or uncover patterns that with our own eyes, we're incapable of seeing and do it in a way that not only is private and secure, but also in a way that gives you ownership and responsibility to that information. So that's super exciting. I think that what is important, maybe with that I'll finish, is to say that we need to remember that we are our actions and our actions are connected to data. And so whenever there's a third party that takes that data and uses it and loses it and abuses it, they take a piece of us. So data is human dignity. Data is dignified labor. And as long as we don't look at data like that, but just like something that I'm using to make the processes more fluent, that is actually slavery or indentureship. And so this is what needs to change. And the way I say it, and I have put it on my LinkedIn profile, when you and I grew up, we loved people and used things. And now we live in a world where we love things and use people.
- [39:20]
B
There was a great commercial I Saw recently where it was like in the 80s and it was the doorbell ringing and everybody got all excited and they rushed the door and then they said, nowadays. And the doorbell rang and everybody was freaking out, picking up the phone, ready to call the cops, checking the ring. Who the hell is this? And I think that needs to change too. Well, clearly you have invested in yourself over the years. One of the questions I do enjoy asking every guest is, how have you invested yourself and continue to learn? Because you've clearly learned a lot about some things that are pretty recent. How do you invest in yourself?
- [39:55]
A
I think that all of this is an investment. This conversation I don't ascribe to this false dualism of work, life, balance. I think that that belongs to an age where we were forced to do things that we don't like in order to sustain ourselves. I think that as more and more menial tasks and repetitive tasks, that AI will do better than us. We will be relieved from these menial tasks which will open us the opportunity to do what is really human, and that is creativity. And the reason why I say that AI will never be as creative as us. And I don't think that they do generative AI. I think they do degenerative AI because they flatten the creativity. They don't expand the creativity is because AI is built to optimize. We are built with desire. We're stupid. That is why we're creative. Because if I really would have known everything about everything, I wouldn't do anything because it's just too depressing. But because I think that all these crazy ideas. I can actually make a difference. I can digitally transform healthcare in Africa. Who knows, maybe I'll transform healthcare in the United States. I don't care if people say, oh.
- [41:10]
B
That Alex, that'd be fun.
- [41:11]
A
That Kahana guy. Like, good luck on that. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe one day we'll wake up and we'll see that.
- [41:18]
B
I would hope that people would say, hey, how can I help? That sounds like a great idea. How can I help? So back to from negativity to possibilities.
- [41:26]
A
Exactly.
- [41:26]
B
It's one of the main reasons I wrote the book is just I see it every day in business and life and communities and government and politics, which we won't go over on this call. That could be another whole couple of calls. But I do want to thank you for being here and I want to be respectful of your time. Is there any other messages that you would like to leave with people before we go and wrap up?
- [41:44]
A
Well, I would like to, first of all, thank you for a very pleasant conversation that, as I expected, went very quickly. And I invite anybody and everybody to reach out directly to me through LinkedIn or through you. And like I always say, none of us is as good as all of us, so let's work together.