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Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

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Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#371

Post by effie »

AlexWest wrote: post #22

- Antibiotic alternatives (we're going to need them fast) - As another poster mentioned, how do we suck the carbon from 150 years of burning fossil fuels out of our atmosphere? - Cognitive enhancement - Re-wilding - rebuilding devastated ecosystems in the Anthropocene with engineered biodiversity

"how do we suck the carbon from 150 years of burning fossil fuels out of our atmosphere?" Stop destroying forests, stop burning fuels, start growing more plants. The real question is, how to accomplish these.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#372

Post by reasonattlm »

jashephe wrote: post #344
derrida wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans need more lifespan, badly. Do we? Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? Why quantity over quality? Seems there's a lot of quality improvements that could be made [1]. For instance, I read recently (can't recall source) that San Fransisco's homeless is the least happy in the world. Also that the top 1% in the world make over $35K a year, but there are far happier people than exist in middle Am…

Indeed. From a biological standpoint, it's important to realize that an indefinite lifespan, as a life history trait [1], does not confer evolutionary fitness. The fact is that organisms do not appear to evolve to a maximal lifespan — they evolve to an optimal lifespan. Humans are already considered to be K-selected [2], and increasing lifespan appears to necessarily decrease fitness in other areas, as has been seen…

These are all arguments that apply to the house you live in, the blankets on your bed, the medicine you use. You are absolutely fine with all of those - you don't live in a cave, shun treatment for infectious disease, and wear furs. In fact I would go so far as to say that you probably think that modern technology is a good thing, and you are better off for it. Yet that already greatly manipulates your proposed optimal condition for the human species. So why does treating aging as a medical condition bring out this view? This seems like a very selective appeal to nature.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#373

Post by meeper16 »

biofox wrote: post #318
mietek wrote: post #129

http://sens.org/ . Humans need more lifespan, badly. I’d have said AI safety, but it’s already on your list. Excellent. I’d also have said basic income. Good to know you’re on it. Meta-research. Academic publishing is obsolete, and knowledge should not be paywalled. How many researchers already make use of https://www.reddit.com/r/scholar or http://sci-hub.io/ ? Bacteriophages. Antibiotics are running out, while phag…

I couldn't agree more about funding SENS related research. I think focusing on extended lifespan misses the point though (although it's a nice side benefit). The diseases of old age cause more suffering than everything else combined. Seeing people I love deteriorate to a state of constant suffering is unbearable to watch. Seeing signs of ageing in myself hammers home just how helpless I am to do anything. I don't und…

There are new companies working on applying AI to epigenetic data to extend human lifespan including this one "On a global basis and in aggregate, wet lab experiments in human biology produce one of the most important forms of data known to mankind, especially when it relates to epigenetics, genes, proteins, genomic pathways and environmental factors that can improve human health and extend human lifespan. We are a start-up with a focus on Life Sciences in the area of advanced artificial intelligence analytics connected to extending human healthspan and extending human lifespan." http://45.55.135.97/index-life.html

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#374

Post by wfn »

robbrown451 wrote: post #126

Explore game theoretically sound ways to start new companies as "worker co-ops" and to reward participants. The idea being to aim toward a future where there is a large gray area between "employee" and "entrepreneur." The companies formed don't have to be start-ups per se: they could be as simple (and low risk) as a group of people who build web sites and apps for clients, but would like to have a stake in it rather…

That's an interesting idea and angle.

While reading "The Dispossessed"[1] and thinking about the way syndicates work there, I had this (generic, not-worked-out) thought about some form of protocol for creating co-ops of the kind mentioned, and then running and enforcing the rules (including e.g. equal dividend payment / whatnot).

I wonder if someone has considered implementing some kind of a co-op system in Ethereum (where contracts are transparent and enforced and no single node is responsible for running the code). :)

Hmm, taking ideas from anarcho-syndicalism and implementing them in Ethereum....

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed - this is a nice book indeed.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#375

Post by reasonattlm »

trappedfly wrote: post #316
derrida wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans need more lifespan, badly. Do we? Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? Why quantity over quality? Seems there's a lot of quality improvements that could be made [1]. For instance, I read recently (can't recall source) that San Fransisco's homeless is the least happy in the world. Also that the top 1% in the world make over $35K a year, but there are far happier people than exist in middle Am…

> Why quantity over quality? Reminds me of Seneca's De Brevitate Vitae[1], an essay about (as the title suggests) the shortness of life. He argues that what matters is not how long one lives, but what he accomplishes and/or how "well" he lives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) (english translation in External links, worth a read if you have some spare time)

It is important to recognize that arguments for quality over quantity are written from the perspective of operating within an absolute and unchangeable limit, and an absolute and largely unchangeable high risk of unexpected death before that limit due to infectious disease. We've done a lot to reduce the latter, and now the former is up for grabs as well. This is not the same landscape for the human condition as occupied by Seneca and his peers.

We can work towards both quality and quantity. That is the point of technology, to make everything better, to remove limits, to enable the human condition to be more than it was before, to give us choice where there was no choice. The choice to fly, to talk to distant people, to be healthy, to live rather than to die before we want to.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#376

Post by realcr »

Research Distributed Internet.

Our current model of the internet is some kind of hierarchy, and access to it is controlled by a few selected players. While some celebrate their new hipster web programming language libs, the underlying Internet is dying.

The Internet used to be a place where you can pick a remote address, invoke connect() and have a TCP connection. Now you need a Phd to be able to connect two computers on the internet. If you want an address, so that other computers can connect to you, you have to pay. This money goes to people at the top of the pyramid, for real estate they have invented.

Internet companies recently began "protecting us from bad websites", but this is just the beginning of a larger scale censorship, of governments that tell us what is good for us to read and see. I don't know if this applies to you, but at the place where I live, this has already begun.

In my opinion the main unsolved problem of this domain is how to route packets in unstructured big networks. We really don't know how to do this, and this is one of the main reasons for the current structure of the internet. Solving this problem is a game changer.

I summarize results about this subject at http://www.freedomlayer.org

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#378

Post by yummyfajitas »

zo1 wrote: post #335
visualsearchsv wrote: post #58

Large Scale Medical Data Mining research, similar to OpenAI. Specifically Computational Healthcare a Search and Aggregation Engine for Medical Records & Claims. We believe that this is a classic Software eating the world situation and the time is perfect for it. Here is the link http://www.computationalhealthcare.com We have access to almost 130 Million de-identified medical records from approximately 36 Million pati…

>" We have access to almost 130 Million de-identified medical records from approximately 36 Million patients (~10% of US population) this includes all Inpatient, ED, Ambulatory Surgery records between 2006-2011 from California " Not to put a spanner in your works, as I agree your goal is worthy of a lot of effort from the general public. But, how exactly did you get access to this data, and is it legal? Additionally,…

By suitably modifying queries to make them "differentially private" (technical term), one can allow queries on the data set which have an arbitrarily low probability of releasing personal information.

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/74339/dwork_tamc.pdf

Building a database which can be locked down to differentially private primitives (differential privacy composes) would allow researchers to partially unlock this data while ensuring that your medical records are private.

As long as we choose epsilon (the privacy parameter) sufficiently low there is then no ethical need to ask a bunch of fickle data points for permission.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#379

Post by KasianFranks »

AI applied to understanding the hidden relationships linking epigentics and extending human lifespan via algorithmically engineered diet, nutrition and longevity genomics:

The precedent:

Laura Deming: Making a business out of fighting the ills of aging

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbYgza4NNk8

Cynthia Kenyon: Experiments that hint of longer lives

(Cynthia now works at Google's Calico Labs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V48M5j-6zdE

Now connect this:

Nutrigenomics, Epigenetics, and Stress Tolerance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvNLNl7oJnM

Now combine with:

What is Epigenetics? with Nessa Carey

The last 10mins are very important, in particular minute 35:06

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DAcJSAM_BA

Statistical modeling of biomedical corpora: mining the Caenorhabditis Genetic Center Bibliography for genes related to life span - Blei DM1, Franks K, Jordan MI, Mian IS. - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533868

Combining the worlds variants of pattern recogition, machine learning and AI with data associated to epigentic and standard genomic experiments and information, we should be able to discover hidden relationships that will enable advancement in extending human lifespan.

Revenue is something we'll need to focus on and that may come in the form of consumer applications that algorithmically engineer their epigenome with data from companies like 23andMe, Navigenics, Ubiome etc. connected to Nutrigenomics including plant compounds, phytochemicals mapped all the way to the consumer through foods connected to apps connected shopping and recipe experiences.

Finally connect to CRISPR and Gene Therapy

Jennifer Doudna, inventor of CRISPR: We can now edit our DNA. But let's do it wisely

http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_doudna_we_can_now_edit_our...

Include:

At some point we'll need to enter the Breakthrough Prize on longevity:

https://breakthroughprize.org/Prize/2

Along with collaborating with

The Buck Institute: http://thebuck.org Berkeley Lab: http://www.lbl.gov SENS: http://sens.org Calico Labs: http://calicolabs.com

Why biomedical superstars are signing on with Google

http://www.nature.com/news/why-biomedical-superstars-are-sig...

‘Your Genome Isn’t Really Secret,’ Says Google Ventures’s Bill Maris

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-20/-your-geno...

The companies competing to help you beat death

http://fusion.net/story/169777/ancestry-calico-life-extensio...

Longevity Cookbook:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/longevity-cookbook#/story

http://www.psfk.com/2015/08/human-longevity-lifespan-io-huma...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/beyond-resver...

http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/ancestrydna-and-googles-cal...

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3k8br7/plos_scienc...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/3ocsbi/ama_my_n...

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