Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The first early human eggs from stem cells

conception.bio

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#61

Post by mschuster91 »

fragmede wrote: post #38
Arodex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I didn't have "creationism" as the top answer to a HN post in 2026, yet here we are...

Anti-intellectuallism is everywhere, especially amongst the intellectuals. The latest bent of this is to ask if an AI wrote this, rather than engage with the substance of what's written.

> The latest bent of this is to ask if an AI wrote this, rather than engage with the substance of what's written.

Just an half hour ago, TomasBM wrote in another thread [1] why people first want to filter out AI slop, which IMHO fits perfectly:

> Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind.

To that, I'd add my personal take: I go to HN, Bluesky, Reddit or Twitter to engage in meaningful conversation with other people (ranked in inverse likelihood of coming across sloppypasta). If I wanted to talk to a robot, I'd prompt ChatGPT myself. When others use AI for more than translation, this violates this core assumption of how human communication, how society has worked for all of human history.

Unfortunately, and I've been on the receiving end of this myself, anything longer or more substantive than a tweet will immediately evoke the "is this AI" assumption, and it's gotten worse as ChatGPT et al managed to eliminate the usual "tells".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48743798

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#62

Post by someonebaggy »

fragmede wrote: post #38
Arodex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I didn't have "creationism" as the top answer to a HN post in 2026, yet here we are...

Anti-intellectuallism is everywhere, especially amongst the intellectuals. The latest bent of this is to ask if an AI wrote this, rather than engage with the substance of what's written.

AI writing is anti-intellectual. It demands the time of thousands of people to read when they could be reading something with actual meaning. You're demanding scholars to read comic books all day in case they have content worth engaging with (spoiler: they don't).

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#63

Post by someonebaggy »

scotty79 wrote: post #13
rf15 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuinely curious: how does any life still exist if this holds true?

When the damage accumulates across generations the natural selection has opportunity to weed out particularly harmful instances. You can get a feeling for how important avoiding the mitochondrial damage is and how hard it is to mitigate, by looking at how fiercely the reproductive process protects them from aging.

And with this you get a hundred times the damage (mutation) but still only the same amount of selection.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#64

Post by XorNot »

khazhoux wrote: post #21
scotty79 wrote: post #5

That can't be good. Life cycle of a human egg is organized around preserving mitochondria to be as young and fresh as possible across generations. Using adult cell, even a stem cell to make an egg probably gives it mitochondrial damage that usually takes hundreds of human generations to accumulate.

Instead of just dismissing this and saying this can't possibly work, it would be better to ask: how do they get around problems of mitochondrial damage, or have they not tackled that yet? Because it is unlikely that you just punched a hole through the plan of the several dozen people in bioengineering, life sciences, and other related fields that are at this company.

Or we could ask "what the hell are they talking about" and "can they cite even one single bit of useful peer reviewed evidence about this?"

Coz really that seems like the foundational problem here: claiming something rather crazy with obvious problems, like multigenerational mitochondrial damage in an organism which replicates literally billions of them just to be born.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#65

Post by b112 »

krageon wrote: post #55
wossab wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know?

When you make an outrageous claim the burden of proof is on the claimant. Given that there isn't a real indication of anything to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume reality is still the way it always was and humans are too.

This feels hand wavy.

I could make the same claim of a bridge before it collapses, without realising the steel was weak, or had micro fractures.

Where's the proof? What an outlandish claim! Don't you see traffic flowing as normal?

Of course, we shouldn't drop all advancement due to worries. I do think we should study the results a bit more closely though.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#66

Post by xi_studio »

tskj wrote: post #28
warent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re layering several hypotheticals on top of each other, which leads to progressively distant possibilities. Good on you for caring about humans though

I think this is decisively the wrong way to think about it. Yes, layering hypotheticals like that means that any one scenario is extremely unlikely to be the thing that gets you, but that doesn't mean the shape of the problem is wrong. It's like arguing with someone who doesn't believe in using seat belts when driving. "Why should I put them on?" they say, and when you try to explain what might go wrong they won't li…

"I don't know if we have the terminology to talk about this kind of failure mode."

We actually have and is called RISK.

RISK = Probability * Damage.

Applied to the seatbelt event we have a death level damage and a high probability of happening given recent studies, so using a simple belt could easily save you from deadly accidents.

Applied to any unrealistic scenario we have insane level damages but also an incredibly low probability (near 0) so RISK = ~0%

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#67

Post by grumbelbart2 »

b112 wrote: post #65
krageon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you make an outrageous claim the burden of proof is on the claimant. Given that there isn't a real indication of anything to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume reality is still the way it always was and humans are too.

This feels hand wavy. I could make the same claim of a bridge before it collapses, without realising the steel was weak, or had micro fractures. Where's the proof? What an outlandish claim! Don't you see traffic flowing as normal? Of course, we shouldn't drop all advancement due to worries. I do think we should study the results a bit more closely though.

Bridges deteriorate by default. That is a well understood process with well understood reasons, which we monitor and work against. Salt, thermal cycles, load, rust.

Humanity does not deteriorate by default. Claiming it does so through some hand-wavy pseudo-evolutionary arguments is not a strong case, and requires at least some evidence to be taken serious. How about a (equally unfounded and just for the sake of argument) reverse claim: Humanity got more intelligent, because high child mortality favored physically strong children instead of mentally strong children.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#68

Post by latexr »

Mistletoe wrote: post #58
DanielHB wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."

I like the spirit of what you are saying but the smart part isn’t true at all. IQ peaked around the mid 1990s and as someone that lived back then that tracks. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962... Look at Fig. 3. The world seems to be experiencing a reverse Flynn effect.

The reversal of the Flynn effect is more likely explained by other factors such as the explosion of social media, endless addictive entertainment, and all the attention manipulation that comes with it. Conception didn’t change that much at a large enough scale during this short time period to explain it.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#69

Post by graemep »

krageon wrote: post #55
wossab wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know?

When you make an outrageous claim the burden of proof is on the claimant. Given that there isn't a real indication of anything to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume reality is still the way it always was and humans are too.

Which is the outrageous claim? We normally require new medical treatments to be proved safe, rather than assume they are safe until proved dangerous.

Re: The first early human eggs from stem cells

#70

Post by 100ms »

DanielHB wrote: post #45
londons_explore wrote: post #20

I am worried about the long term impact of research involving human conception, IVF, etc. The reason is that genetics/evolution don't yet seem to fully explain how humans exist. A computer genetic algorithm run for a billion generations doesn't lead to anything anywhere near the the complexity of a human. I suspect there are as-yet undiscovered effects which shape the next generation. Whether that be DNA methylation,…

25% of humans died before reaching 5 in 1800s US, today it is We have not ended up with "humans which aren't as strong, aren't as smart, aren't as well adapted to a changing environment, etc."

Probably throwing quite the grenade here, but around 29% of pregnancies end in termination globally. Absent cultural considerations, it's questionable whether life expectancy has improved in absolute terms in modern times
Post reply on HN