Two Thirds Done

Thoughts and experiences of an eighty one year old Wild Duck.

Avram Miller by the sea
EN | IT

587 posts since 2006

Category: About life in the last third

  • Memories of the Past-Dreams of the Future-the Sweetness of Now

    I have had difficulties living in the present. For most of my life, the future dominated my thoughts. I preferred dreams over memories. The present was about how to move to the future. Now that is starting to reverse. While I think about the future, it is often one in which I am no longer present even though I might still have some impact on it.

    Thankful, I have my piano. Playing piano is like a massage for my brain. But then often in the dark of the night, the past returns. Fortunately, it is mostly the beautiful moments that I recall having learned to let the painful ones go.

    Then there are often the special moments I share with Deborah just walking through the small tourist free streets of the historical center of Lecce.

    Our Palazzo renovation is where the past meets the future in the present. Designing a home that was initial built in 1731, to be our home in the future. It will be a place where tech meets limestone but also where there is a room dedicate to music to be played in the moment.

  • I Love My Children but Miss My Kids


    Last night I woke up around 3 a.m. thinking about my children.  Not my children as they are today, but my children as they once were.

    I could see all three of them vividly: Adin at eight, Asher at six, and Dafna at two.


    We were living in Israel then. It was 1978. I was 33 years old and Arianne was almost 30. Israel was a different country in those days. We were struggling to make a life there and, a year later, we would leave for the United States. Looking back, those were not easy years. Yet they were wonderful years.

    They were wonderful because our children were young, and we were young parents. The days often felt long, but the years passed with astonishing speed.

    Now that I am in my eighties, I find the past visiting me more often. Sometimes it arrives unexpectedly and with remarkable clarity. I don’t just remember those days, I almost relive them. For a few moments, late at night,  I am back there again. But then I remember that there is no way back.

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  • How Susceptible Is Avram Miller to Flattery

    AIs are great at using flattery to increase engagement. So it made sense that a friend commented “Does Chat GPT also measure to what extent you’re susceptible to flattery?” So I asked ChatGPT. Here is the response.

    Does Chat GPT also measure to what extent you’re susceptible to flattery?

    You appear less susceptible to flattery than the average person, but not immune to a particular kind of influence.

    Flattery That Probably Does Not Work

    Compliments about intelligence, wealth, status, or success are unlikely to have much impact

    because you have spent decades around highly accomplished people.

    Flattery That May Work

    You may be more receptive to compliments that align with your self-image: seeing opportunities

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  • What ChatGPT Figured Out About Me

    I asked ChatGPT what it figured out about me on its own. This is what it said.

    The Hidden Profile: Inferences About Avram Miller

    Overview

    This document summarizes characteristics inferred from long-term patterns in questions, interests, decisions, and communication style. These are not facts that were explicitly stated, but conclusions that can reasonably be drawn from behavior and recurring themes.

    Deep Curiosity

    Your interests span medicine, architecture, venture capital, AI, music, travel, language learning, taxation, immigration, and history. Most people remain within a small number of domains. The breadth of your questions suggests a genuine desire to understand how the world works.

    Investor Mindset

    You consistently examine incentives, risks, assumptions, timing, and alternative outcomes. Rather than asking only whether something will work, you frequently ask what could go wrong and how the interests of different parties are aligned.

    Comfort With Uncertainty

    You appear willing to make decisions before all information is available. Moving countries, investing in startups, renovating a historic palazzo, and launching new ventures later in life all suggest a high tolerance for uncertainty.

    Future Orientation

    You spend a great deal of time thinking about AI, entrepreneurship, innovation, and future opportunities. Your focus is often on what comes next rather than what has already happened.

    Impact Over Status

    When discussing your career, you usually focus on ideas, projects, people, and outcomes. You rarely emphasize titles, prestige, or accomplishments for their own sake.

    Low Tolerance for Bureaucracy

    Administrative obstacles, permits, paperwork, and inefficient processes consistently generate frustration. You appear willing to accept complexity when it creates value, but not when it merely creates delay.

    Love of Learning

    You regularly put yourself into situations where you are a beginner. Learning Italian, exploring AI tools, working with music technology, and experimenting with new software all point to a lifelong learning mindset.

    Optimism

    Even when discussing risks, your default perspective is often opportunity-oriented. You look for possibilities and future potential before focusing on limitations.

    Bias Toward Action

    You frequently move from concept to execution. Rather than endlessly refining ideas, you tend to test them in the real world and learn from the results.

    Age as a Constraint vs. Engagement

    One of the most striking patterns is that you rarely frame questions around age limitations. Instead, you focus on whether something is possible, interesting, or worthwhile.

    Overall Conclusion

    The strongest inference is that curiosity is the central organizing principle behind many of your decisions. The common thread across your travels, investments, writing, language learning, technology interests, and new ventures is exploration. Many successful people eventually focus on optimizing what they already have. You continue to seek new ideas, new places, new technologies, and new experiences. That pattern suggests a life driven more by discovery than by preservation.

  • My memoir, The Flight of a Wild Duck, is now free on Substack — thanks to Claude Cowork.

    https://avram.substack.com/p/the-flight-of-a-wild-duck-start-here

    It took me three years to write my memoir. The first year was spent doing research, the second writing, and the third editing. I enjoyed the process immensely.

    I had three audiences in mind while writing it. The first was people like me or parents of people like me who could not follow the normal path through life. The second was readers interested in the history of technology and the computer industry. The third was people fascinated by early-stage investing, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

    That combination made the book somewhat unconventional. But I could not really write three separate books.

    I had also intended to include a section called Lessons, one hundred short lessons, each only a page long. But by then the manuscript was already 340 pages, and I had spent three years on it. I decided instead to publish those lessons separately someday. I still intend to do that.

    The book was published in 2021. It has sold fewer than a thousand copies. I never expected it to become a bestseller, and I certainly did not write it for money, but those numbers have still been disappointing.

    I believe the book is both well written and historically valuable. After all, I was “in the room” when many of the decisions that shaped the technological world we now live in were made and often by me. I felt that part of my contribution to the future of technology was helping document its past. But if nobody reads the book, it is hard to accomplish that goal.

    I chose to self-publish rather than work with a traditional publisher because I wanted complete editorial freedom. But that also meant I had little guidance on how to market the book, and in retrospect I made a strategic mistake.

    I decided to promote it primarily through podcast interviews. Looking back, that was probably not very smart. If someone listens to an hour-long interview with me, they may feel they already know the story and no longer need to read the book. And I suspect that many podcast listeners simply read fewer books.

    Selling the book through Amazon created another barrier: people had to buy it, even though I never cared much about the monetary side. I also found Kindle Direct Publishing surprisingly unfriendly and opaque. There are people who know how to game the system and maximize visibility, but I neither understood those tricks nor wanted to spend my time learning them.

    For quite a while, I had been thinking about putting the book on Substack. I did not want it behind a subscription wall. I simply wanted the entire book available — for free. On Substack, people can share links not only to the book itself but to individual chapters. That creates at least the possibility that the book could spread organically.

    What held me back was learning the ins and outs of Substack. But yesterday, Claude Cowork and I finally made it happen. It is not perfect yet. I still want to add visuals as Claude could not move those over automatically. There are a few formatting issues. But it is already 95% of what I hoped it would be. I will fix the rest over time.

    So I am inviting you to read all or part of The Flight of a Wild Duck. And if you think it is worthwhile, I would deeply appreciate it if you shared the link with your social network and with anyone who might enjoy the story.

    https://avram.substack.com/p/the-flight-of-a-wild-duck-start-here

    Thank you.

  • Let’s think of the people

    I am thinking of my friends and family in Israel and hoping they stay safe. I am think of the people of Iran and wishing that they can soon enjoy the freedom and peace they so deserve.
    I have mixed emotions about the attack on Iran by Israel and the USA. But no mixed emotions about the deaths of the Iranian leaders.

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  • Turning Silver into Gold-The Inversion of the Population Pyramid


    I was recently interviewed by a newspaper in Genoa about an idea I’ve been developing—“Turning Silver into Gold.”

    Almost every developed nation in the world, with the notable exception of Israel, now has a birth rate below replacement level. Italy’s fertility rate is about 1.18 children per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain population size over time. In Genoa, home to the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), the demographic shift is even more pronounced. It is the oldest major city in Italy.

    The median age in Italy is 49. In the United States it is 39. In Israel it is 29. In Genoa, nearly 30% of the population is over 65. By 2050, projections suggest that Italy could have roughly one retired person for every working-age adult. An inverted population pyramid is not just a statistic—it is a structural challenge to economic growth, healthcare systems, innovation capacity, and social cohesion.

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  • Longevity: The Roles of Genetics and Lifestyle

    For years, I accepted the conventional wisdom that genetics accounts for less than 30% of human lifespan. I never really questioned that figure, and in retrospect, that’s a little embarrassing. But I was hardly alone. Those numbers were widely repeated, rarely examined, and neatly aligned with a popular narrative: that lifestyle choices largely determine our fate. This narrative has been further amplified by “longevity influencers,” many of whom build businesses around lifestyle prescriptions often coupled with products and services they sell.

    Recent Twin Study sheds new light on the role of genetics in determining longevity

    A newer large-scale twin study suggests that genetics plays a much larger role, closer to 50%, in determining lifespan. What struck me was not just the revised estimate, but why earlier studies were likely misleading. Many failed to adequately account for deaths from causes unrelated to either genetics or lifestyle, accidents, wars, epidemics, and other random events. Including those outcomes diluted the biological signal. This was not malicious science, but it was methodologically weak science.

    This raised a deeper and very personal question for me: does the relative importance of genetics and lifestyle remain constant throughout life? Intuitively, it shouldn’t. The same behavior can affect people very differently depending on their genetic makeup. Smoking is a clear example. Roughly 30% of long-term smokers develop lung cancer, while most do not. Studies of identical twins show significantly higher concordance for lung cancer among smokers than is seen in fraternal twins, indicating that both lifestyle and genetics play essential roles. 

    The role of Genetics increases as we age

    We die young from bad luck and bad choices; we die old from biological limits and those limits are largely genetic. We would not die from smoking if we did not smoke.  So lung cancer can be largely avoided by life style.  It is complicated because genetics will play a major role at any age in determining the propensity of getting cancer from smoking. Genetics plays a role continuously as we age but that role increased later in life.

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  • Longevity in Your 40s

    A new friend in Lecce recently asked me for advice about longevity. He was surprised by what he perceived as my relative youth. Others who know that I’ve worked in the field of longevity for years sometimes ask for my “secret.”

    I usually joke that the secret was choosing the right parents.

    That joke is partly true. Genetics matte, but they may account for only about 20–30% of lifespan. However a recent studies indicate it may be more like 50%( https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/585445/greater-role-for-genetics-in-driving-human-lifespan-study-finds). The rest is something far more actionable.

    Genetics Set the Ceiling but how You Live Determines the Outcome

    I believe genetics determines your maximum potential lifespan. In that respect, I did win the lottery.

    My father lived to 97 and remained in excellent physical condition, working out six days a week until he was 95. Had he treated his brain like a muscle as well, he might have avoided the dementia that appeared late in life. My mother, sadly, died young at 67 by taking her own life but her mother lived to 94 and her mother’s mother to 98.

    So while genetics may define the ceiling, everything you do during your life subtracts from it.

    Smoking at 20 may shave a decade off your lifespan. Chronic sleep deprivation quietly steals years. Poor metabolic health doesn’t announce itself early—it slowly gnaws away at your longevity. Longevity is less about adding years than about not losing them unnecessarily.

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  • My recent interview with an Italian Journalist 

    L’INTERVISTA

    Avram Miller: “Da Intel Capital all’AI, la mia vita da agente del cambiamento”

    I had the pleasure of being interview recently by Luciana Maci of EconomyUP which is an Italian digital media outlet focused on innovation, startups, technology, and the transformation of business and society.

    The actual article in Italian can be found here.  

    Avram Miller: “Da Intel Capital all’AI, la mia vita da agente del cambiamento”

    When I said “pleasure” I really mean it.  I felt that Luciana actual got me in the way most business journalist do not.  This is what she so generously wrote on LinkedIn. 

    I am grateful for my work (which is also a bit of my passion) because sometimes it leads me to meet extraordinary people. It happened with Avram Miller, known in the world of large companies because, in the late 1980s, he gave life to the corporate venture capital of Intel Corporation. Said that way, it seems like something for insiders, but, believe me, Miller is much, much more: an American Jew who experienced firsthand the period of counterculture, met Janis Joplin and corresponded with Allen Ginsberg, never graduated but taught at a university. And again: a businessman, an investor, a scientist, a technology enthusiast. And again: a jazz pianist (this would have been enough to win all my esteem).

    Miller now lives in Lecce, he is 80 years old and yet he has the intellect, the enthusiasm and the desire to act like he is still a boy, so much so that he has a project to counter the demographic winter with the Italian Institute of Technology.

    What else to say? Read the interview, if you want, it’s my Christmas present for all those who have the kindness to follow me. Avram gave me the gift by giving me this interview.

    Avram Miller: “From Intel Capital to AI, My Life as a Change Agent”

    Interview by Luciana Maci – EconomyUp

    Complete verbatim English translation of the Italian article

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