81–90 of 545 posts
Research into future programming languages, particularly into dependent types and future development environments. A relatively small amount of money can have tremendous positive impact on the world in this area.
- 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
https://edge.org/response-detail/26701
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41850/...
2. Programming humans: When you train a neural network, you give it as carefully chosen data labeled as clearly as possible. When you train humans, they listen to a teacher and hope to collect 5-6 useful examples of a concept per hour somewhere in the thousands of words spoken by the teacher. What if you turbo charge that? One related experiment I'm considering is collecting thousands of images of different body language cues and making an app to train my brain (and that of other social handicaps like myself) to read body language more effectively.
Aubrey de Grey's SENS approach to creating and maintaining a state of negligible senescence in humans. Every advanced society faces an aging population. This population will put massive strains on healthcare expenses. It could also strain the economy as the elder population collects public sector pensions and slowly depletes its savings (i.e. retirement funds). The latter effect could be mitigated by automation. Para…
I'm not sure it makes sense to put effort into these kinds of programs. As an example, a specific approach SENS wants to develop is lengthening telomeres in your body. But scientists are not even sure that shortening telomeres contribute significantly to aging-related diseases. Derek Lowe (who knows drug development better than any of us) made a very interesting comment recently on the cancer research "moonshot" fund…
Since those other researchers are definitely advocating progress towards the use of telomerase therapies in humans, and it is inarguably the case that telomerase gene therapy extends life modestly in mice, probably by stimulating stem cell activity, your point still seems incoherent. See for example this position piece by Maria Blasco: http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7020.1
From my position telomere length looks a lot a measure of aging rather than a cause, and telomerase therapies are something I'd consider risky at this point in humans - our telomere dynamics and telomerase setup is very different from that of mice, and I don't think it is safe to assume that slowing of aging and induced regeneration in mice without cancer risk is necessarily going to happen in humans. You don't know until you try, of course, and there is a contingent that will be trying. Note that at least one human has already disagreed with that assessment and had telomerase gene therapy, the CEO of BioViva.
From the SENS perspective, telomere length is something that will take care of itself if you create rejuvenation by repairing the causes of aging. Average telomere length in tissues is a product of stem cell activity and cell turnover rate, and aging diminishes the former, and that is a reaction to rising levels of damage. Get rid of the damage and stem cells should get back to work because the signaling environment will revert back to how it is in youth.
The thing that distinguishes the Internet and web from other technology is that it is open and interoperable. Its style is just profoundly different.
Individual companies have no incentive to create such technology. They create things in the style of Apple, Facebook, or much of Google's later technology.
The Internet was funded by the military. Unix was created by a telephone monopoly. The web was created by a benevolent researcher. I think it would make sense for YC to fund the next system along these lines.
This kind of innovation takes place on a time scale not accessible to most organizations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure it makes sense to put effort into these kinds of programs. As an example, a specific approach SENS wants to develop is lengthening telomeres in your body. But scientists are not even sure that shortening telomeres contribute significantly to aging-related diseases. Derek Lowe (who knows drug development better than any of us) made a very interesting comment recently on the cancer research "moonshot" fund…
Perhaps ironically, lengthening telomeres such as via telomerase therapies is one of the things that a lot of other researchers are hot on and is not actually on the SENS agenda. Since those other researchers are definitely advocating progress towards the use of telomerase therapies in humans, and it is inarguably the case that telomerase gene therapy extends life modestly in mice, probably by stimulating stem cell a…
Sure, so they need to just keep in mind that the goal is not to lengthen (or protect) telomeres for their own sake. But telomeres could at least help serve as a metric or proxy for therapies that do slow or arrest aging overall.
Meanwhile, Metformin is crazy cheap.
Policy enforcement and law automation - It's ridiculous that we spend so much money and time dealing with legal issues - both in terms of creating new laws, and in terms of enforcing those laws. Because of the delineation between those who create laws and those who enforce them, we came up with a way of encoding law so as to avoid misinterpretation errors. What if we were to automate the enforcement by programming la…
I spent a year at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The number of statutes and regulations for just CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) [1] for example fills 425 pages. The department also oversees building codes, liquid pipeline infrastructure, wildlands defense, fire & rescue, etc.
Whenever a new or amended statute is introduced it takes months to evaluate if it replaces or conflicts with existing code. If passed and signed into law it can take a year or more to integrate.
Every year a newly-elected legislator introduces a bill akin to simplifying existing laws. Every year these bills never make it out of committee (i.e., they are shelved) because it would require years of pulling committed resources (SMEs, analysts, support personnel and millions of dollars) out of threadbare operations.
Every department in the State draws up a similar analysis, and the cumulative cost scares the legislature/governor. But it's a good way to introduce the green legislator into how the state government works.
The joke in the halls of the Natural Resources building is that there are too many rules and regulations, but there are not enough resources to correct the situation.
F&FP had no central repository of its own codes. Analysts had to use keyword searches of the public California Codes website!
[1] http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/docs/2014_CEQA_Statutes_and_Gui...
SENS, first. Then maybe human gut microbiota and their links to allergies, digestive problems, and mental health.
- 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
The best alternative to antibiotics is more antibiotics - a flood of more antibiotics, more than we could ever use up. The best way to do that is support automation and other efficiency gains and individual projects in mining the bacterial world for novel antibacterial weaponry. That used to be impractical, but now that there is, as of 2015, a way to culture the 99% of bacteria that couldn't be cultured before, it is…