Hunting for Heretics: On My Mind

Welcome to my first newsletter of 2025 — a fresh start for a new year. And in fact, the fresh start effect is real — it’s the science-backed idea that we’re better able to make changes in our lives at significant points in time, like a birthday or the start of a new year. And if you’ve made any New Year’s resolutions, here’s a tip: make them as small as possible, which is why Thrive’s behavior change platform is based on Microsteps that are too-small-to-fail. As van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, “The great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”

The Consequences of Elevating Politics to a Religion

In our conversation about where we are politically, what we most urgently need to examine is not only why we are so polarized and divided, but also why we are so lacking in compassion, empathy and understanding for those we disagree with.

The seeds of this decline were sown long before the 2024 campaign. Decades ago, as our mainstream culture began rejecting organized religion, with all its flaws, we also began rejecting life’s spiritual dimension along with it. We threw out the baby with the bathwater. And we’ve filled the vacuum with deeply inadequate substitutes — starting with politics.

Of course political engagement is critical, especially when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable. But we can only maximize our effectiveness by not asking something of politics that politics can’t give us.

The consequences of elevating politics to a religion are all around us. A central element to all fundamentalist religions is dogma. The point of dogma is to define and defend the borders of acceptable opinion, and brand anyone who goes outside them as quite simply a heretic. And heretics, even if they’re not burned at the stake, are dehumanized, ostracized and denied any empathy and understanding. This is the poisonous fruit of asking politics to be the central or only source of meaning in our lives — the answer to our fundamental need to connect to something larger than ourselves.

It’s terrible both for the body politic and for our actual bodies. Studies have shown that politics can take a serious toll, making us more stressed, costing us sleep, and damaging our mental and physical health. In fact, one 2019 study found that political events can increase the emotional reactivity of daily stressors, which is the exact opposite of spiritual practices that help us become less reactive to daily stressors.

The other costly stand-in for our neglected spiritual dimension is “scientism.” Which is not to be confused with science. Scientism, or scientific materialism, is the dogmatic belief that science and its methods for gathering information are the only valid sources for true knowledge.

What separates scientism from science is the dogmatic certainty that science can provide all encompassing answers to every question that matters on every aspect of life and that there is only one answer to all of these questions.

And there are plenty of critics of scientism to be found among scientists. In his book Monopolizing Knowledge, Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, makes the case for the limits of scientism. “There are many other important beliefs, secular as well as religious, which are justified and rational, but not scientific, and therefore marginalized by scientism,” Hutchinson writes, “and if that is so, then scientism is a ghastly intellectual mistake.” And many experiences are outside the realm of science. No amount of randomized, double-blind trials can prove the ultimate importance of love, compassion and forgiveness. Those are spiritual tenets, not scientific ones.

Since the Enlightenment, science has often been seen as being in a fundamental conflict with religion and spirituality. But many of our greatest scientists bluntly rejected this simplistic conflict. “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” said Albert Einstein, referring to the 17th century philosopher who believed that God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of nature. And Einstein uttered the ultimate rebuke of scientism: “The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe.”

When we stop thinking of them as two opponents in a zero-sum contest, science and spirituality — “the twin offspring of human yearning for answers,” as Hutchinson describes them — can co-exist in harmony, each giving us their unique benefits.

It's the dogmatists on both sides that drive the conflict. The growth of fundamentalism in science has taken place at the same time as the growth of fundamentalism in politics and religion. And as with so many other conflicts, the extremes — ostensibly in opposition — feed off each other. The loser is always the public good, as we saw in the ostracizing of scientists and experts who questioned the extent or duration of the lockdowns, or in the squelching of any debate about whether the COVID-19 virus may have originated in a lab. And on the other side, many public health officials urging people to take the COVID-19 vaccine were targeted with personal threats.

When we close off our spiritual selves, when we treat those who we disagree with as heretics, we also close off pathways for forgiveness, grace and redemption — all in short supply in our culture today. And yet we all need the forgiveness and understanding that we often find it hard to grant to others.

So, yes, we should engage in politics. We should celebrate scientific discoveries and new technologies. But we should also remember to render unto Caesar the things — and only the things — that are Caesar’s.

Read More on TIME: The Consequences of Elevating Politics to a Religion

We Agree Healthcare Is Broken — Now What?

It shouldn’t have taken a tragedy to launch a national conversation about our broken healthcare system and the pain it causes. But the question now is how can we use this moment of collective focus to fully acknowledge how poorly the American public is served by our healthcare system? And what can be done to fix it?

The attack also sparked renewed anger at our broken healthcare system. According to an Experian survey, denials of health claims increased 31% between 2022 and 2024. The number of Americans who positively rate their quality of healthcare is at its lowest point since Gallup began tracking such sentiments in 2001. And the average annual premium for family coverage reached $23,968 in 2023 and this number is expected to increase by roughly 8% this year.

These high costs and significant administrative bloat make the healthcare sector prime for disruption and transformation. AI is already transforming nearly every business sector. What this will mean for healthcare is the subject of an upcoming paper, “The GenAI Juggernaut: US Healthcare Is Not Prepared,” by Eric Larsen, a healthcare veteran and member of Thrive’s board.

“The promise of AI in healthcare is immense,” writes Larsen, who suggests that healthcare “has the greatest surface area exposure to GenAI disruption.”

But equally important is what AI can mean for patients. The goal should be not just more care, by increasing the amount of time doctors can spend with patients, but better care, through personalization. As Larsen writes, the true AI “killer app” will be one that can use personal data, behavioral health data, biometric data, pharmacology data and social determinants of health to “distill guidance to a hyper-personalized level of specificity.”

People aren’t just angry at health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. They also want to take more control of their own health. An increasing number of Americans (65%) are turning to Google for health advice. And more and more Americans are now using AI chatbots to answer their health questions. The problem is that only 40% find online health content reliable, and when people do find credible information, they’re unable to make practical use of it and incorporate it into their lives. Hyper-personalized AI can bridge this gap.

As we’re seeing with the AI coach that Thrive AI Health is building, the hyper-personalization of AI makes it possible to lower friction and help people adopt healthier behaviors that can lead to dramatically better health outcomes. As Daisy Wolf and Vijay Pande from Andreessen Horowitz wrote, “The biggest step changes in human health lie not just in curing every disease, but in revolutionizing the consumer experience. We can markedly improve our health by simplifying health monitoring, ensuring medication adherence, and promoting healthier lifestyles — all areas where traditional healthcare companies have struggled.” This is why companies like Microsoft are building teams to focus specifically on consumer health.

After the shooting, reports came out detailing lawsuits both UnitedHealthcare and Humana are facing over their use of algorithms to systematically deny patients’ claims. The lawsuit against UnitedHealth claims that 90% of the algorithms' decisions were reversed on appeal.

This is an important reminder that AI is just a tool. It can be used to deepen the flaws in the system that’s fueling so much outrage, or it can be used to create more time for doctors to treat patients and more support for patients to improve their health between doctor visits through personalized behavior change.

As Michele Gershberg and Michael Erman reported?for Reuters, in the wake of Thompson’s shooting, “healthcare companies are taking a step back to better understand patients' experiences.” I would argue that they also need to take a step forward, and use AI not to maximize profit by more efficiently denying care, but to maximize health outcomes by enabling better health care and better health habits.

The US healthcare system is currently an oligopoly, concentrated in the hands of a few CEOs who exert tremendous power on the lives of millions. With great power comes great responsibility. The healthcare system is front and center in both our national and personal conversations. Healthcare leaders need to use this opportunity not just to talk about the need for big changes — but to make big changes happen.

Read More on TIME: Our Healthcare System Is Broken. Can Technology Help Heal It?

BEFORE YOU GO

Moment of Awe

I often close my newsletters with a moment of awe. Our capacity for wonder and awe is what helps us keep perspective, feel gratitude, and connect with something larger than ourselves. It’s like the pilot light for our souls, and needs to always stay lit. “Our goal,” said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20th century, “should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

In turbulent times — and I think our times qualify — it can be challenging to see those moments of wonder and awe, but that’s when we need them the most. And the new year is a perfect time to resolve to seek them out. As T.S. Eliot put it, “Last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice… to make an end is to make a beginning.”

Wishing you a year of peace, health, joy, wonder and awe.

Happy New Year,