*Scripter-kid created a website - now off to save the world! At least they've resources and 83 years...
Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
261–270 of 344 posts
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
See chapter 3 ("Nanotechnology will not lead to super-abundance") of Against Transhumanism for a good argument for why this isn't so simple: http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201... Summary 1. Lack of rigidity, excessive stickiness of molecules (Van der Waals force), constant random interactions (Brownian motion) at the microscale of cells means mechanistic intuitions from the macroscale don't…
I didn't want to navigate that PDF, so I read the author's IEEE article, which I think has similar content. What a boring criticism! All of the things he mentions are easily approachable engineering challenges. His conclusion seems to be "mechanical engineering as with gears and pulleys won't work with nanobots". Duh! No one claimed otherwise. > mechanistic intuitions about the microscale don't apply. Obviously. Why…
> All of the things he mentions are easily approachable engineering challenges.
If they are so "easily approachable," feel free to solve them any time. I think you'll find that solving problems in living systems (let alone in the clinic) is much more challenging than it might appear from a CS/physics perspective (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Andy-Grove-fallacy?share=1).
I'm not saying it's not worth trying (it's certainly a more worthwhile endeavor than getting people to click on more ads), but that it's important to be realistic (for example, that all disease is unlikely to be cured by 2100).
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to see you got downvoted for voicing your opinion. Remember, Stockholm Syndrome is a disease.
That opinion adds nothing to the current discussion. This isn't just an open "tell us any random opinion you might have!" forum; the idea is to contribute thoughts relevant to the topic.
No, HN is the "random junk on the home page" forum; the idea was to post IT related content. But the quality of the content is entry-level for a dev. This site == r/programming + NYT/etc. articles.
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#264I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…
" For antisocial personality disorder? For obesity and addiction?"
If we have a hypothetical scheme to find out all drugs that can be found, and see that the cure for those is not there, that is as a conclusive contribution into finding cure to those ailments as finding a cure. Most biggest discoveries are not about going on a beeline to a solution as a race. Rather, one is charting an unknown territory. As the unknown part shrinks, one does not need to spend energy in stumbling there and concentrate on other areas, finally reaching a solution (if a solution can be found).
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#265I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…
I think the current medical research system is badly broken in several ways, and it's possible that a few billions spent on alternative approaches would bear a lot of fruit. It might also not, but I'm very glad if someone tries.
I think alternative approaches can bring some things, however, I'm not too sure of all these(Gates a few days back, Zuckerberg today) will encourage alternative approach. But given those guys history, let's hope so.
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#266I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…
People would have rolled their eyes, if someone said. I wanted to connect the world. I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap. 30 yrs ago, in a different part of the world. My father had to catch a bus from a village to the city, then catch a plane to a major city to make international phone call to the US to his business partners. Today, people in that s…
Hindsight is 20/20. You can look back on many innovations and say that they'd be impossible to imagine in the past, but that doesn't have any bearing on the inherent viability of a given idea. I'm not saying that the Zuck/Chan moonshot isn't a worthwhile endeavor, only that examples of past skepticism prove nothing about what is actually possible.
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
sarcasm is better part of life, it's not limiting it's enriching :) I fail to understand why people hate it?
After a while, overtly sarcastic tone gets a bit boring when you get to read it every day in the every corner of internet over any possible issue. And in my experience, it's rarely very effective in changing people's opinions, if they are not tending to agree with you already in the first place.
Okay people, you win. I wasn't trying to change opinions, I just kept my own. I'm still new here so let's consider this an experiment in public discourse.
Peace ;)
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't want to navigate that PDF, so I read the author's IEEE article, which I think has similar content. What a boring criticism! All of the things he mentions are easily approachable engineering challenges. His conclusion seems to be "mechanical engineering as with gears and pulleys won't work with nanobots". Duh! No one claimed otherwise. > mechanistic intuitions about the microscale don't apply. Obviously. Why…
> All of the things he mentions are easily approachable engineering challenges. If they are so "easily approachable," feel free to solve them any time. I think you'll find that solving problems in living systems (let alone in the clinic) is much more challenging than it might appear from a CS/physics perspective ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Andy-Grove-fallacy?share=1 ). I'm not saying it's not worth trying (it…
"Easily approachable" doesn't mean I can just go ahead do it. It means I can see how one would start working on it, and in fact many people are.
In fact, I am currently working in a nanotech lab, so I am hopefully helping a bit ;)
None of the problems you linked to are things that need to take a hundred years to solve. It's probably more accurate to measure development barriers in R&D costs than years. At the very least, we could just reverse engineer biology.
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
For starter, stop drinking liters of cold drink and beer every day. If you really need it, I will create an app for that.
I need an app to drink beer?
Untapped is a great app if you are a fan of craft beer, makes it easy to keep track of what beers you have tried and still have to try!
Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, exactly. Unless everyone has some skin in the game, the research will be biased towards curing those with money, perhaps using the rest as guinea pigs.
How is this true of the Gates Foundation? Or Good Ventures? Chan Zuckerberg is specifically aimed at improving equality. Do you have any actual examples of wealthy philanthropists using "the rest of us" as guinea pigs to cure themselves of disease? ryandrake's point is an important one, but I don't think this level of cynicism is justified.
> Do you have any actual examples of wealthy philanthropists using "the rest of us" as guinea pigs to cure themselves of disease?
Peter Thiel wants to make himself ageless and immortal by injecting himself with the blood of the young. How's that?