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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#31

Post by COGlory »

brg wrote: post #26
COGlory wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in science works hard. Only a few get lucky. People get scooped every day. Source: spent years looking hard for hibernation promotion factor in P. aeruginosa ribosomes via cryo-EM. Got a PhD and worked a whole lot of 16 hour days. Never got lucky.

If this story were at all true, then you know very well that not everyone in science works hard. In my graduate cohort, those who did the sets first year, set themselves into research, and worked hard graduated. Those who did not left with a masters, although many found success in other fields. It was quite clearly delineated.

I'm talking about at the PI level. And yes of course a few people don't work hard, but the overwhelming majority do not differentiate themselves by how hard they work, is the point I'm trying to make. Your average PI has the skill set to take advantage of getting lucky.

Not sure what you're insinuating about the story not being true, would you like to see maps?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#32

Post by shiroiushi »

onionisafruit wrote: post #15
wdh505 wrote: post #5

I'm having visions of old people freezing their bodies and inducing "dormancy" so they can wake up when the world is a better place. I would invest in that company.

The real trick is being somebody that a future generation will go to the trouble of defrosting.

That's a fool's errand. The trick is to make sure your body is continually controlled by some kind of computer that will wake you up when a set of conditions is met, so you don't need to rely on future humans. You also need to make sure your cryopod is stored someplace where troublemakers won't find it and turn it off.

The best thing I can think of is putting your cryopod in a lava tube on the Moon, powered by a small nuclear reactor or maybe a large RTG.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#33

Post by shiroiushi »

bamboozled wrote: post #18
wdh505 wrote: post #5

I'm having visions of old people freezing their bodies and inducing "dormancy" so they can wake up when the world is a better place. I would invest in that company.

You don't need to freeze yourself, you just have children, that is how life goes on.

Just ask any parent who had worthless kids how well that works out in practice. Sure, you might get lucky and have good kids, but lots of parents don't, and it's not always their fault.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#34

Post by lukan »

wdh505 wrote: post #5

I'm having visions of old people freezing their bodies and inducing "dormancy" so they can wake up when the world is a better place. I would invest in that company.

If too many not so old people would use it, the effects might be not great:

https://xkcd.com/989/

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#35

Post by lukan »

shiroiushi wrote: post #32
onionisafruit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real trick is being somebody that a future generation will go to the trouble of defrosting.

That's a fool's errand. The trick is to make sure your body is continually controlled by some kind of computer that will wake you up when a set of conditions is met, so you don't need to rely on future humans. You also need to make sure your cryopod is stored someplace where troublemakers won't find it and turn it off. The best thing I can think of is putting your cryopod in a lava tube on the Moon, powered by a smal…

"The best thing I can think of is putting your cryopod in a lava tube on the Moon, powered by a small nuclear reactor or maybe a large RTG."

And then hope nothing critically fails for centuries ...

Unless we have perfectionized robots by the time you go into the cryopod, you might as well bet on humans. And if we "perfectionized robots", that do not fail all the time, we already would have a very different world.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#36

Post by ineedaj0b »

phito wrote: post #27
bamboozled wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to freeze yourself, you just have children, that is how life goes on.

That's completely different?

sadly not as much as you think. if you have siblings with children and they get older hang out with them. the similarities will worry you

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#37

Post by kylehotchkiss »

richrichie wrote: post #12
markburns wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems an uncharitable view of the reply. The search space is huge, we sometimes find needles in haystacks by accident, isn’t it exciting that we have tools now that can systematically check every piece of hay?

ML search is more about ‘averages’ based on samples. Innovations like these are more about ‘shocks’ that surface fitting cannot capture. Note universal approximation theorem applies only to smooth surfaces.

Well said.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#38

Post by kylehotchkiss »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #2

> Karla Helena-Bueno discovered a common hibernation factor when she accidentally left an Arctic bacterium on ice for too long. I love how this story follows the magic pattern of so much of innovation and discovery - an accident. It's refreshingly human and not a mode of discovery that machine learning is going to completely take away from us.

I've been reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". But it's really about the process of discovery in nuclear physics. And most of the discoveries were made by accident.

Stephen B Johnson's "How we got to now" was enlightening on the topic of discovery for me (https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/how-we-got-now)

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#39

Post by exe34 »

therein wrote: post #30
wayoverthecloud wrote: post #25

When you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems eve…

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

the heavenly step-dad doesn't care when they die of starvation either.
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