Worry Lines, Chessboards, and Why This is The Most Important Ramadan in History
An Expressionless Iftaar
Adam (AS) tries a forbidden fruit. Like father, like humanity, and over the centuries, the tribes of Adam continued this tradition of messing with questionable things. Take botulism, for example. In 1820, a German physician published the first medically accurate study of the illness. A Belgian then discovered the bacteria responsible for it. But in 1987, two Canadians revealed something incredible about the bacteria’s neurotoxin: it was also a fountain of youth. The miracle treatment was called ‘Botox.’ In about a hundred years, we went from illness to anti-aging.
I have zero evidence of it, but I think it’s possible that the Botox Beauty Revolution shook philosopher Derek Parfait to his core in 2011, when he wrote:
“Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy.”
In 1989, Parfait saw how fabulous Botox made us look. He had also witnessed the Computer Age. By 2011, he observed the rapid impact of the Information Age. It all told him of technology’s steep ascent, and the looming era of AI superintelligence makes me think he was right.
Checkmate: Slowly, Then All at Once
The human brain is pretty bad at conceptualizing exponential growth. Humans are built to predict a future of linear relationships. Our alarm goes off, fajr is prayed, a shower is taken, and we’re off to work. We get through our 9–5, enjoy a generous 1-hour lunch break, and end up with 7 hours of labor. Maybe we make 50 bucks an hour. 7 hours times $50 an hour? $350. No one really broke a sweat thinking about it.
In nature and in the urban jungle, that’s about the shape of things. But it’s not how technology (or investing) works. Take the tale of the king and the inventor to illustrate the unexpected and cool implications of exponential change. A king asks an inventor to create a great game, and the inventor creates chess. The king loves it, and he agrees to pay the inventor in grains of rice. The inventor says, “Your Highness, I merely desire rice — one grain on the first square, two on the second square, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so forth for all 64 squares.” The king waves him away to the royal granary and begins his lifelong love/hate relationship with chess. That’s only the beginning of his woes, however.
By the end of the first row (8 squares), the king owes the inventor a measly 128 grains of rice. NBD. But by the end of the second row? 33,000. And by the final square, the king — and generations of the world after him — would be deep in debt, owing over 18 quintillion grains of rice. 1, 128, 33,000….then more rice than has ever been produced. Like sleep and love, it happens slowly — then all at once.
The Most Important Ramadan in History: Philanthropy at the Hinge
We are at a time in history called the ‘Hinge.’ To put it a little more precisely, it is a time where, given the same resources, our influence will have an outsized impact on the future. This means that we are among the very most influential people out of the very large number of people who will live over the coming thousand years. And by ‘we,’ I specifically mean people with the resources to read this article, the education to understand it, and the financial ability to do good.
There’s some disagreement over this line of thinking, of course. You can read all about it in this paper by William MacAskill. Some people take the view that we are the Hinge not because of technological development but because of threats to humanity. There are also some questions about the timing of things. Is the Hinge this Ramadan? Laylatul Qadr 2026? The year 4000?
In other words, where on the technological-grains-of-rice chessboard are we today? It’s hard to say precisely, but we’re past the first row. We’re probably well past the third row. But if you’re asking yourself this question and looking for a precise answer that guides your charitable giving, you’re a modern king making a king’s mistake.
The numbers are so big — the potential impact of an invested donation is so great — that it doesn’t really matter how close we are to takeoff. If we don’t start investing for the future right now, we could miss a once-in-history opportunity to do good. The point is that no matter how close we are exactly, we’re basically there already. Today is already tomorrow.
Author: Omar Yunus
Omar Yunus has spent his entire career in Islamic finance. Over that career, he was part of a team that successfully raised and managed over EUR 100 million, worked for a halal VC, and developed an Islamic finance index for a European stock exchange.
Inspired by the Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW), where people would plant palm trees, sell the dates, and donate money to different causes, he left his job to digitize this Sunnah and build Afterfund.
