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Making Vaccine

lesswrong.com

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Re: Making Vaccine

#271

Post by vasco »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

I agree this is dangerous and wouldn't work in a large scale, but I abhor this attitude of "only the experts can speak". He did it on himself and showed what he did, how do you think things actually get made, by sitting around waiting for experts to show up? How did they become experts?

Re: Making Vaccine

#272

Post by nlitened »

andy_ppp wrote: post #267
nlitened wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader This does sound good, though I have seen zero examples of this fairy tale coming true in the real life around me.

Okay so Elon Musk, Collison brothers, even people like Bezos (while immoral on the tax stuff) are all extremely effective. The management at the pension fund I work at are very good at their jobs too... there’s plenty of examples of one is willing to look.

Yes, I am 100% sure they are great at their jobs, but _also_ they know how to play the politics games.

For sure you have to be a good doctor to become a head of CDC, but also you have to masterfully balance that with politics.

Re: Making Vaccine

#273

Post by 1996 »

ascorbic wrote: post #269
1996 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course there's the extra benefit that you would be helping the wider community, though I'm not sure how important that is to true Rationalists. Actually, that's a net negative for me: whatever benefits the community may create some warm happy feelings (kumbaya!) that may reduce the correctness of my decision.

Why would feeling happy reduce the correctness of the decision? Isn't happiness the only utility that matters?

Many reasons - mostly that it makes you incorrectly discount the negatives, incorrectly assert some possibility, neglect some second or third order consequences etc.

Check out what I think is called the depression correctness hypothesis (at least IIRC): clinically depressed people cast more accurate judgements and evaluations.

I want to use the full power of that by taking decision that have the potential to increase my future utility (or the sum of its present value) in the most clear minded way possible, so with as little warm fuzzy feelings as possible

Re: Making Vaccine

#274

Post by pron »

vasco wrote: post #271
hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

I agree this is dangerous and wouldn't work in a large scale, but I abhor this attitude of "only the experts can speak". He did it on himself and showed what he did, how do you think things actually get made, by sitting around waiting for experts to show up? How did they become experts?

> How did they become experts?

Definitely not like that.

Re: Making Vaccine

#275

Post by krsdcbl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #89
1970-01-01 wrote: post #48

TLDR: I attempted to make a COVID vaccine. It was cheap. I have no proof that it worked. Other risks are unknown. The story reminds me of Barry Marshall, but with less science behind it. https://jamesclear.com/barry-marshall

The science is in the whitepaper: https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-SA... That said, the interesting bits are: #1) Vaccine design at home. This is an application of what is known colloquially as "bio-hacking" and as a topic group is no less impactful than "computer hacking." #2) You can do something for Interesting stuff indeed.

Though to be fair, calling this "vaccine design" is like calling the assembly of IKEA furniture "carpentry".

Re: Making Vaccine

#276

Post by austinjp »

vasco wrote: post #271
hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

I agree this is dangerous and wouldn't work in a large scale, but I abhor this attitude of "only the experts can speak". He did it on himself and showed what he did, how do you think things actually get made, by sitting around waiting for experts to show up? How did they become experts?

In this domain, in an ideal world, things "get made" through transparency, collaboration and scrutiny. Expertise is earned, not declared.

You don't have to "wait", but you do need to trust. These people exist, and nearly anyone can join their ranks.

It is indeed hubris to suggest expert-level ability is possible without the experience to back it up. Expertise in one domain does not confer expertise in another.

Side note: expertise is surprisingly hard to define. And I don't believe that "only the experts can speak". All voices bring something.

Re: Making Vaccine

#277

Post by lovemenot »

If a vaccine is tested in the wild, does it introduce an additional unique risk to society?

It's an infectious disease that mutates. A vaccine may be partially effective in the treated person, but also increase the risk of viral mutation leading to increased infectivity or virulence.

I have no authority or evidence, just a hunch. But if correct it seems that we cannot adford to just shrug and say "it's your funeral, mate"

Re: Making Vaccine

#278

Post by austinjp »

centimeter wrote: post #239
hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

Experts are usually mired in procedure and politics (sometimes for good reason, sometimes not). A smart outsider who isn't constrained in the same way often has a pretty good shot at beating out the established experts. That's not hubris; it's just a viable strategy.

I don't disagree with the premise that outsiders are unconstrained. There is a notion that modern science lacks the frequent paradigm shifting leaps in progress due to bureaucracy and safety.

But... obvious issue: without the bureaucracy, how do we ensure safety? Vaccine trials do go wrong, people do die when that happens.

I hope we're living through the final years of the tension between population based evidence and processes, vs ultra-individualised medicine. Humanity just needs to keep its shit together for long enough, and learn to operate as a planet rather than as disparate factions.

Re: Making Vaccine

#279

Post by CJefferson »

dcolkitt wrote: post #67
_Microft wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could not even test themselves to see whether they developed immunity against SARS-Cov2. All we know is that someone sprayed something up their nose and hoped that it actually had the effect that they wanted. This is the catch.

But the point is, even if there's a 1% chance that this plausibly works, the government should be throwing money at bio-hackers like this. Or at the very least exempting them from the regulations that stand in their way. Very likely these moonshots won't work. But they're still dirt cheap relative to the economic impact of Covid. If there's a way to disrupt the current slow approach to vaccine production, we should b…

We don't need more vaccine candidates. We had high-quality vaccine candidates at least 9 months ago. What we need are:

(a) The ability to produce hundreds of millions of doses.

(b) Tests that prove (as convincingly as we can) that the vaccine are safe.

I don't see any evidence that anyone has any idea how to do better at either (a) or (b).

Re: Making Vaccine

#280

Post by stonogo »

shuckles wrote: post #145
flr03 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suprised to see this post so popular on Less Wrong/the rational community. I can easily imagine the fascination they have for crazy scientists doing experimentations on them selves, cutting all the corners and operating at fair distance of ethical concerns. I'm not very convinced by the "Motivations" section of the article by the way, but that's a nice stunt nonetheless, and quite fascinating indeed.

This is unnecessarily dismissive. IIRC, Josiah Zayner home brewed a vaccine which led to a positive antibody test, which is in and of itself a pretty impressive outcome given the resources he had available to deploy.

With the end result that he has no idea whether it actually did anything, and has declared all of medicine to be 'too messy.'
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