51–60 of 136 posts
I saw a really interesting talk by Katie Pollard at ISMB this year about the limitations of variant prediction. The gist was, can existing variation provide enough context to infer impact of variation? The answer seemed to be no. Kind of like how frontier LLMs need to ingest larger and large amounts of text to advance. We are going to need to leverage comparative data from other species, and likely tremendous amounts…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Google does anything good for the world it is entirely accidental, and I am certain they will correct this mistake later.
Market reward is the best proxy for good we have. What's your alternative? Executive fiat? Mob rule? Deepmind is objectively good. These endeavors would always cost money. Better private capital than state, no one has to give Google anything. The state is not so generous.
Only if the goal is profit. All else be damned.
> What's your alternative? Executive fiat? Mob rule?
It is always bewildering to me that people see the world being raped by corporations and their negative externality, and they think that this is the pinnacle that humanity can achieve.
Nothing else can be better, if all your options are "mob rule" or "executive fiat".
I fancy myself a misanthrope, but damn, next to people in this forum I am probably the last humanist walking through the ruins of civilization.
> Deepmind is objectively good.
Google is objectively bad, and the world would be a much nicer place if they ceased to exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market reward is the best proxy for good we have. What's your alternative? Executive fiat? Mob rule? Deepmind is objectively good. These endeavors would always cost money. Better private capital than state, no one has to give Google anything. The state is not so generous.
Mob rule, aka Democracy.
Every single serious theorist of democracy has recognized this.
Democracy is about rule of law and institutions, not simply the mob.
Tyranny of the majority is the paramount concern of all democracies. Nevertheless, institutions can fail.
The idea that democracy always leads to desirable outcomes is evidently false by historical record.
I just don't understand people who think the state is better than Google. Google pretty much works. Google does not have police powers. Google cant surround your car and point guns at your family. Most of the bad things about Google are actually forced upon them by the state. Who could have even a passing knowledge of history and think states are somehow safer than corporations?
Take the United States. Should Donald Trump get a say in how to run Google? Maybe you like him, so how about the guy that comes after him, or the next one after that?
The American mob seems intent on leading their country into the gutter. Good thing (despite what the mob has thrown at it) that the United States still has strong institutions and strong markets. Without Silicon Valley, America would have already lost its place on the world stage.
But please lets hear more indictments from a population who can't even agree with itself on the issues already under the government's purview. Now let's set a precedent for even more state interference in the market, that way when your party (whatever side you are on) chokes the next future election away the next nut you don't agree with has even more power? Is that your plan?
That is outright scary. Science is being slurped up here.
This has Demis written all over it. There is a great video of him with AlphaFold chatting with the team about releasing some results, and he asked something like “what if we just do them all?” Very excited to see that happen here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market reward is the best proxy for good we have. What's your alternative? Executive fiat? Mob rule? Deepmind is objectively good. These endeavors would always cost money. Better private capital than state, no one has to give Google anything. The state is not so generous.
Mob rule, aka Democracy.
Can this be used with a 23andMe genome to find pathogenic mutations?
Not really, no.
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Be careful when loving shareholder-driven endeavors; they're a single executive decision away from breaking your heart.
It's "shareholder-linked" (probably not "driven"), but yes, upvoted. Nonetheless, even when with grave faults in the path, Google has managed to give us marvellous, paramount free resources (Google Street, Google Museum...), and would have given more (Google Books - if the negotiation had succeeded). I am grateful.