When Life Can Be “Computed”: A Fundamental Gamble on Life and Death

Friends, hello everyone. I am your old friend, the Financial Veteran from FinSages.

At the beginning of today’s long program, I would like to ask you to forget all those high-sounding technological terms—Artificial Intelligence, the Metaverse, Quantum Computing—just forget them all. I want to invite you to close your eyes and return with me to a scene that is incredibly familiar to every one of us, yet one where we often feel incredibly small and helpless: the doctor’s consulting room.

Imagine this: you walk into the office of the Director of Pulmonology because of a persistent high fever, a violent cough, perhaps even accompanied by chest pain. After a series of tedious examinations—blood tests, CT scans, sputum tests—the doctor holds your thick stack of reports, frowns slightly, pushes up his glasses, and says to you in a professional, unquestionable tone:

“Based on your symptoms and the results of various tests, I diagnose you with bacterial pneumonia. The antibiotic I am prescribing you now is the most commonly used first-line drug in clinical practice. Large-scale clinical trials have proven that it is very effective for 80% of patients.”

At this moment, looking at the doctor’s certain gaze, what do you feel? Does this dialogue sound incredibly scientific, incredibly authoritative, and incredibly reassuring? After all, “80%” is a rather large probability; it sounds like a bet you are sure to win.

However, friends, as a veteran who has struggled in the financial world for thirty years, who is accustomed to seeing Black Swans and Gray Rhinos, and who is used to dancing on the blade of risk, my professional instinct makes me feel a profound chill behind that number in his words.

That word is—”80%.”

 Part I: The “Banality of Averages” of 80% and a Cost Avalanche Spanning Thirty Years

Have you ever thought about this? In the grand world of medicine, which pursues statistical significance, every single one of us—vivid, flesh-and-blood individuals who feel pain and cry—is actually simplified into a cold “average.” We are crudely categorized into a cohort called “Pneumonia Patients,” and then we receive that “standardized” treatment plan which is effective for “most people.”

In the history of human medicine, this is undoubtedly a great progress; it allowed us to bid farewell to the blindness of witch doctors and herbal medicine. But hidden behind it is a cruel game of “Russian Roulette,” which is what I often call the “banality of evil” (or banality of averages) in medicine:

If you are lucky enough to belong to that 80%, then congratulations, the medicine cures the disease, and everyone is happy. But what if you are unfortunate and belong to the “ineffective” 20%? This means you have to suffer in pain for a longer time; you need to try a second or third drug; your body becomes a “testing ground” for medicine, and what you pay is not just money, but irreversible life time. And what if you are even more unfortunate, belonging to the 1% who suffer “severe side effects”? You might encounter liver damage, renal failure, or even death from anaphylactic shock due to a seemingly routine medication.

Please remember, in the grand narrative of statistics, this 1% tragedy is just an acceptable “error value (P-value).” But for that 1% family, this is a 100% collapse of their world, a black hole that can never be filled again.

This is the greatest achievement of modern medicine, and also its greatest tragedy: It treats the “disease,” not the “patient.” It attempts to use a standardized key to open thousands of locks with different structures. It assumes that our bodies are standardized machines, but in fact, every one of us is a unique, singular item.

So, is there a possibility? That future medicine will no longer force us to cut our feet to fit the shoes of that “80%” average, but instead tailor a key that is a 100% match for every unique individual among us?

I can tell you responsibly that a profound medical revolution, sufficient to subvert all our imaginations about birth, aging, illness, and death, is quietly rising on the horizon. Its core is evolving from “prescribing medicine for the disease” to “prescribing medicine for the person.” And the super-engine driving this revolution is a technology whose cost is declining at the speed of an avalanche—Gene Sequencing.

Today, I am not talking about specific diseases; I am talking about “data” and “algorithms.” I want to help you understand how our health, our wealth, and our relationship with destiny will be thoroughly reshaped when our life changes from a vague “book of experience” full of uncertainty into a “Manual of Life” that can be precisely decoded and even “read” in advance.

To understand today’s revolution, we must turn the clock back to the 1990s. That was an era full of pride and dreams; the Cold War had just ended, the United States under the Clinton administration was in high spirits, and the dawn of the Internet was just appearing. It was at that time that the United States, joined by scientists from six countries including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, and us in China, launched the grandest and most ambitious life science engineering project in human history to date—the “Human Genome Project.”

The goal of this project sounds like a myth: to completely and precisely sequence all the genes that constitute a “standard” human being.

What is the equivalent of this? It is equivalent to drawing an unprecedented “map of life” containing 3 billion base pairs. These 3 billion letters (A, T, C, G) are arranged and combined to form the underlying code of our lives.

At that time, this was a project more complex and expensive than the “Manhattan Project” and the “Apollo Moon Landing Program.” Imagine, 3 billion letters, and not a single one can be wrong. What was the level of technology at that time? It was the extremely primitive “first-generation sequencing method.” Scientists had to be like medieval scribes, carefully “reading” those gene fragments bit by bit on gel plates, and then using the computers of that time, which were still very simple, to piece these fragments together.

The entire project, from its official launch in 1990 to the announcement of its completion in 2003, took a total of 13 years and cost a huge sum of nearly 3 billion US dollars.

This price is unimaginable today. 3 billion dollars just to sequence one person’s genome. This was absolutely a top-tier luxury item that only the power of a nation could afford.

However, the greatness of the “Human Genome Project” lies not in what it sequenced, but in what it “opened.” It is like Galileo pointing his telescope at the starry sky for the first time 400 years ago. Although what he saw at that time were just a few blurry satellites, he opened a door for all subsequent astronomical discoveries.

The “Human Genome Project” is that “telescope” pointed at the inner universe of our lives for the first time. The technological race it spawned initiated a “cost avalanche” that has lasted for twenty years and is still accelerating today.

In the field of technology, we are all familiar with a god-like law called “Moore’s Law.” It predicts that the number of transistors that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double approximately every 18 to 24 months, and performance will also double. This law has driven the exponential development of the entire information technology industry over the past half-century.

However, in the field of gene sequencing, we are witnessing a law even crazier and steeper than “Moore’s Law,” which I call the “Carlson Curve.”

Let’s look at a list of data sufficient to shock all economists: In 2001, the Human Genome Project completed the draft, and the cost to sequence one person was about 3 billion US dollars. In 2007, with the emergence of “Second Generation Sequencing Technology,” also known as “High-Throughput Sequencing,” the cost of sequencing one person’s genome plummeted to 10 million US dollars. In 2008, the cost further dropped to 1 million US dollars. In 2014, the gene sequencing giant Illumina announced that the cost of human genome sequencing had fallen below the 1,000 US dollar mark for the first time. And today, in 2026, in some commercial genetic testing companies in China, the quote for completing a person’s whole genome sequencing can already be as low as about 1,000 RMB.

Friends, please carefully feel the speed of this plummet. From 3 billion dollars to 1,000 dollars, and then to 1,000 RMB. In a short period of just over twenty years, the cost has dropped ten million times! This is much faster than Moore’s Law in the chip field!

No other technology has moved from a “national-level” scientific research project to a “consumer-level” personal application at such an astonishing speed as gene sequencing. The core driving force behind this is “High-Throughput Sequencing Technology.” If first-generation sequencing was a “single-core processor” that could only process one task at a time, then high-throughput sequencing is “super-parallel computing,” which can simultaneously sequence millions or even billions of DNA fragments.

What does this avalanche of costs mean? It means that the “Manual of Life,” which was once locked in God’s safe, has for the first time the possibility of being opened and read by each of us personally. It means that the paradigm of medicine is about to undergo a thorough revolution starting from the foundation.

 Part II: The Iteration of Three Waves and the Rehearsal of the “Digital Twin”

To understand how subversive the future we are rushing towards is, we must first look back at how ignorant a past we have come from. The history of human medicine is actually a history of constantly pursuing “precision,” which I divide into three eras.

The first version of human medical care, I call the 1.0 era, which is the era of “Empirical Medicine.” Its core characteristic is that it is “individualized,” but also “non-scientific.” Whether it is Eastern Traditional Chinese Medicine or Western herbalism, the doctor of this era was more like an artist or philosopher. Through “observation, listening, questioning, and pulse-taking,” through detailed observation of the individual patient, combined with the “experience” accumulated over a lifetime and passed down from master to apprentice, he would give a “one-person-one-prescription,” highly personalized treatment plan. The advantage of this model is that it extremely respects individual differences. But its fatal weakness lies in its “non-replicability” and “unverifiability.” Behind one divine doctor, there may be countless quack doctors. The effect of treatment relies heavily on the doctor’s personal talent, inspiration, and luck. This is like “blind men touching an elephant”; every doctor touches a part of the elephant, but no one can describe the whole picture of the elephant.

Starting from the end of the 19th century, with the development of anatomy, physiology, and especially statistics, human medical care ushered in the second wave—the 2.0 era, which is the “Evidence-Based Medicine” or “Standardized Medicine” we know well today. The core of this era is a scientific revolution that replaces “feeling” with “probability” and “experience” with “statistics.” Its gold standard is what we must conduct before all drugs go on the market today—the “Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial.” Doctors no longer prescribe medicine simply because “I feel this medicine is effective”; they must produce evidence. This evidence is large-scale clinical data proving that this medicine is statistically more effective than a placebo and is safe for “most people.” This 2.0 era is the most glorious era in the history of human medicine. It gave birth to antibiotics, vaccines, and modern surgery; it has extended the average human lifespan by a full 100%. All the medical benefits we enjoy today stem from this scientific paradigm of “standardization.” However, as we said in the introduction, the “Achilles’ heel” of this paradigm lies precisely in its “standardization.” In order to pursue the optimal solution for the “group,” it sacrifices precision for the “individual” to some extent. It assumes by default that everyone’s body is a similar “standard machine.”

And now, with the avalanche of gene sequencing costs, we are standing on the shore of the third wave. I call this new era the 3.0 era, which is “Precision Medicine” or “Personalized Medicine.” If the 1.0 era was the art of “one prescription for one person,” and the 2.0 era was the science of “one prescription for a thousand people,” then the 3.0 era will be the perfect fusion of art and science in “one strategy for one person.”

The core driving force of this revolution is no longer just the doctor’s experience or statistics, but the convergence of three powerful technological forces:

Gene Sequencing (Internal Factor): It allows us for the first time to read everyone’s unique “factory settings.”

Wearable Devices and IoT (External Factor): Your smart watch, smart toilet, and even smart pillow are collecting your vital sign data 24/7 without interruption.

Artificial Intelligence (Algorithm): It plays the role of a “super brain,” capable of mining patterns and associations from these massive amounts of data that human doctors cannot discover.

When combined, these three forces generate a unique “Manual of Life” for each of us. This manual is mainly composed of three parts; this part is very critical, please listen carefully:

First: Your “Factory Settings”—Genomic Data. This part answers the question “Who are you?” It tells you where your ancestors came from; which diseases your body is naturally susceptible to (for example, whether the risk of a certain cancer is 20 times higher than that of ordinary people); which drugs your liver has a naturally poor ability to metabolize; and even whether your muscle type is more suitable for long-distance running or sprinting. These are the bottom-layer, almost unchangeable “hardware parameters” of your life.

Second: Your “Real-Time Running Data”—Multi-Omics Data. This part answers the question “How are you doing now?” It includes your epigenome (how the environment affects your gene expression), metabolome (the levels of various metabolites in your body), and microbiome (the ecology of the few kilograms of flora in your gut). These data can be monitored through your blood, urine, feces, and even a breath you exhale. They reflect how your “factory settings” are interacting in real-time with your lifestyle habits (diet, exercise, sleep) and the external environment.

Third: Your “Exclusive User Manual”—Personalized Intervention Plan. This part answers the question “What should you do?” Artificial Intelligence will generate a dynamically updated “health guide” that belongs only to you, based on your “factory settings” and “real-time running data.” This guide will tell you: based on your genes, whether a low-carb or high-protein diet structure is best for you; based on your sleep data, what your optimal bedtime is; based on your drug metabolism genes, if you unfortunately suffer from high blood pressure, which antihypertensive drug is most effective for you with the fewest side effects.

Friends, when this “Manual of Life” is completely drawn, the logic of medicine will undergo a fundamental change. On this basis, I want to throw out a more explosive concept with more sci-fi color; if you don’t understand this concept, you won’t understand the medical care of the next decade. It is called—”Digital Twin.”

In high-end manufacturing, such as the design of aircraft engines, there is a very cutting-edge concept. Engineers will build a “virtual model” exactly the same as the real engine in the computer using massive amounts of data. Before installing the real engine on the plane, they will first conduct tens of thousands of extreme tests and simulations on this “Digital Twin”—overspeed, high temperature, bird strikes… until all possible risks are rehearsed.

Now, please apply this concept to our own lives. When your “Manual of Life” is detailed enough, we can build a unique “Health Digital Twin” for you in the computer. This virtual you has exactly the same genetic background, metabolic characteristics, and even gut flora as you.

What does this mean? This means that the doctor’s future work will undergo an earth-shaking revolution. He is no longer a “repairman” who comes to hammer and beat only after your body, this machine, breaks down. He will become a “flight simulation engineer.” When he wants to formulate a treatment plan for you, he no longer needs to test medicine directly on your body to see if you are among that unfortunate 20%. He will first input dozens of possible drugs and treatment plans into your “Health Digital Twin” model for high-speed simulation and deduction. The model will tell him: “Warning! Plan A has a 95% efficacy rate for a person with your genotype, but there is a 5% probability of causing liver damage”; or “Recommend Plan B; although it takes effect slower, it has almost no side effects for you.” Then, he will apply that optimal plan, which has gone through “virtual rehearsal,” to your real body.

This shift from “trial and error on the human body” to “rehearsal on data” will maximize the reduction of ineffective treatments, avoid medical injuries, and lower the “uncertainty” of medicine to the minimum.

This may still sound like science fiction, but in fact, the prologue to this revolution has already opened. Let me give three examples that have already happened:

Scene 1: “Precision Strike” in Cancer Treatment. In the past, treating cancer mainly relied on the “three axes”: surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. This is like carrying out indiscriminate “carpet bombing” on an area with both enemies (cancer cells) and civilians (good cells). Killing a thousand enemies costs eight hundred of your own. Now, “targeted therapy” and “immunotherapy” based on genetic testing are becoming mainstream. Doctors match you with a “biological missile” that only attacks cancer cells carrying a specific mutation gene by testing the gene mutation type of your tumor tissue. This achieves a “precision strike” on cancer cells, greatly improving efficacy and reducing side effects.

Scene 2: A “Precision Medication Guide” for Everyone. There is a drug called Warfarin, which is a common drug for preventing blood clots. But its dosage can vary by 20 times between different people. Too little has no effect; too much leads to massive bleeding. In the past, doctors could only rely on “guessing,” starting from a small dose and constantly trying and erring, slowly finding the dose suitable for you like “mixing a cocktail.” But now, we only need to test two gene loci related to Warfarin metabolism to predict your optimal dose quite accurately before medication.

Scene 3: From “Passive Treatment” to “Active Health.” Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, everyone should remember. Through genetic testing, she found that she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation, which meant her risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer was dozens of times higher than that of ordinary people. So, before the onset of the disease, she proactively underwent preventative mastectomy and oophorectomy. Although this choice caused huge controversy at the time, it marked the arrival of a new era: for the first time, we do not have to passively wait for the disease to descend, but can intervene proactively before it happens.

 Part III: The Backside of the Gray Rhino and Human Choice

Friends, speaking up to this point, you may feel that this future is too beautiful, simply a utopia. But, as a veteran who has looked at risks for thirty years, my duty is to pour a basin of cold water on the fever, to look at those shadows covered by the light.

When we cheer for the dawn of health brought by the “Manual of Life,” we must be like a calm risk officer and flip to the back of this book to look at the “Risk Warnings” written in small print that make one shudder.

The first huge shadow on the B-side of the coin of personalized medicine is called “Genetic Discrimination.”

Let’s do an extreme but entirely possible thought experiment. Suppose in the near future, gene sequencing becomes as common as blood routine tests today. All your genetic information is uploaded to a cloud-based “Health Archive.”

Now, you go to an insurance company and want to buy a critical illness policy for yourself. The actuary of the insurance company, after obtaining your authorization (or even through some gray channel), retrieves your genetic data. He discovers that your APOE4 gene is positive, which means your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease after the age of 65 is 15 times that of an ordinary person. So, let me ask: Does the insurance company have the right to refuse to insure you because of this? Or charge you a premium ten times higher than others? From a business logic perspective, they have every incentive to do so to control risk.

Let’s assume again, you go to a company to apply for a core technical position, such as an architect requiring high-intensity work. The company’s Human Resources department also retrieves your genetic data. They find that you carry a gene mutation related to Parkinson’s disease; although you are completely healthy now, the data shows you have a high probability of onset around age 50. So, let me ask: Does this company have the right to believe that there is a risk to your “long-term service ability” and refuse to hire you?

Even in the marriage market, when your blind date asks to exchange “Genetic Reports” before exchanging WeChat contacts, what should you do? If your “Manual of Life” has some less-than-perfect “factory settings” written on it, does your partner have the right to consider you not a “high-quality” partner and choose to leave you?

Do you see it? When your life code is completely deciphered, you may also be “digitized.” You are no longer a living person; you become a collection of risk probabilities. The discrimination based on birth, region, and gender that we hated in the past seems so childish in the face of “Genetic Discrimination.” Because the latter labels you as “inferior” or “high risk” directly at the level of your life’s “source code.” You cannot change it through hard work; it is your inherent original sin. This will lead us to an extremely terrifying future. Society may split into “genetic superior citizens” and “genetic inferior citizens.” This is no longer the plot of the sci-fi movie Gattaca; this is a serious ethical interrogation we must face in advance.

The second shadow is the end of “Data Privacy.” If “Genetic Discrimination” is still a future risk, then the leakage of “Genetic Data Privacy” is a harm that has already happened and is irreversible. We must establish a basic understanding: your genetic data is the bottom-most, most core, and most sensitive “trump card” among all your personal information. If your ID number is lost, it can be reissued; if your bank card password is leaked, it can be modified; if your phone is lost, it can be replaced. But your genes are your inherent, unique, and unchangeable biological identity information. Once it is leaked, or grasped by people with ulterior motives, what you face will no longer be simple financial loss. Even more terrifying is that genetic information has “familial aggregation.” If your genetic data is leaked, it means the privacy of your parents, your children, and all your blood relatives is also exposed along with it. Your irresponsible behavior alone, such as casually sending saliva to an unknown company for a fun test, may expose your entire family to unknown risks forever. In the digital age, we have become accustomed to exchanging “privacy” for “convenience.” But friends, please hold the final bottom line. Genetic data is the last fortress of privacy that we absolutely cannot trade.

Finally, personalized medicine brings us the ultimate interrogation about “Fairness.” When the most cutting-edge targeted drugs, immunotherapies, and even future gene editing technologies cost hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions, they will inevitably become the “privilege” of a wealthy few. We will face an extremely awkward situation: the rich will not only possess more wealth, but they will also possess longer and higher-quality lives. They can avoid risks of all major diseases in advance through the most expensive genetic testing; after getting cancer, they can use the latest drugs unheard of by ordinary people to turn cancer into a “chronic disease” that can coexist for a long time; and even in the more distant future, they can use “gene editing” technology to “optimize” the genes of their offspring, making them smarter, healthier, and stronger.

And what about the poor? They may still remain in the 2.0 era of “Standardized Medicine,” relying on basic medical insurance and “resigning themselves to fate” within the probability of the “average.” This will no longer be a simple “wealth gap”; this may evolve into a “species gap.” Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari predicted in Homo Deus that human society might split into “God-men” (Homo Deus) who are long-lived and “genetically optimized,” and “mortals” (Homo Sapiens) who are unmodified and short-lived. This is a hypothesis more disturbing than all science fiction novels.

Facing such a complex and magnificent future where opportunities and challenges coexist, how should we, as ordinary people, handle ourselves?

I, the Veteran, have three very specific action suggestions; please take note:

First, embrace science, but remain prudent. For families with a clear history of hereditary diseases (such as multiple relatives in the family suffering from the same cancer), taking the initiative to undergo targeted, medical-grade genetic testing under the guidance of professional doctors is a responsible and wise choice for yourself and your family.

Second, protect privacy and refuse “fortune-telling.” Resolutely boycott consumer-grade gene sequencing that uses gimmicks like “predicting talent,” “analyzing personality,” or “decoding wealth luck.” Do not easily hand over the most core “Manual of Life” of you and your family to unknown commercial companies just to satisfy a moment of curiosity. Your genetic data is more valuable than your bank card password.

Third, from now on, become the “CEO” of your own health data. Whether you undergo genetic sequencing or not, from today on, please start consciously recording and managing your own health data. Your exercise step count, your sleep duration, your diet diary, your annual physical examination reports… these seemingly ordinary data are the most precious “initial capital” for you to conduct personalized medical care and build a “Health Digital Twin” in the future.

The I Ching says: “As Heaven maintains vigor through movements, a gentleman should constantly strive for self-perfection.”

The progress of technology is like the movement of heaven and earth, mighty and irresistible. We cannot, and should not, stop the arrival of the era of “Personalized Medicine,” because it indeed contains the huge hope of allowing every one of us to live longer and better.

However, technology has always been a double-edged sword. The dawn of personalized medicine illuminates the road to the ideal kingdom of “dying of old age without illness,” but it also casts the huge shadow of a “Genetic Utopia.” Ultimately, what determines the direction of this sword is not the technology itself, but our human wisdom, conscience, and choice.

We need more perfect laws to severely punish “Genetic Discrimination”; we need safer technologies to protect “Genetic Privacy”; we need a fairer system to ensure that the grace of technology can benefit every ordinary person, rather than becoming the privilege of a few.

I am the Financial Veteran from FinSages.org.

In this surging tide of medical revolution, may we all embrace the light brought by technology while constantly being vigilant against the shadows behind it. May we all use our wisdom and actions to push it to develop in a fairer, warmer, and more humane direction. Because this is not only about our health; it is about our common future as the species “Human.”

Friends, I will see you next time.

简介：

Thought leaders, tech innovators, and professionals interested in future trends.

Subject: The “Russian Roulette” of Modern Medicine: From Average Cures to Digital Twins

“The doctor says this drug is effective for 80% of patients.”
To most, this sounds reassuring. To me, a Financial Veteran accustomed to risk, it sounds like a gamble. It means you have a 20% chance of becoming a victim of the “Banality of Averages.”

We are standing on the precipice of a medical revolution. The cost of gene sequencing has plummeted faster than Moore’s Law—from $3 billion to under $100. We are rapidly transitioning from Medicine 2.0 (Standardized) to Medicine 3.0 (Precision).

In this deep dive, I explore the logic behind this “Fundamental Gamble on Life and Death”:

1. The Carlson Curve: How the “Manual of Life” became affordable for everyone, and what it means for your health.
2. Digital Twins: A future where AI simulates drugs on your “virtual self,” ending the era of using your body as a testing ground.
3. The “Gray Rhino” of Ethics: The looming threats of genetic discrimination, the end of privacy, and the potential “Species Gap” between the rich and the poor.

The future of life can be “computed.” But are we ready for the ethical price tag?

#PrecisionMedicine #DigitalTwins #Bioethics #AI #FutureTrends #SageFellowTraveler