121–130 of 363 posts
He shouldn't just accept this. There has to be something to be tried. With his notoriety, the option to try some experimental new treatment should at least be considered.
Going through chemo isn't free of suffering. And in cases like Iain's it's often a question of having a "normal" 6 months of life or a miserable 8 months via chemotherapy.
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It isn't that they die - it is that they die before they can realize many of their dreams, before they can change the world in the way they have been working towards, before they're done . We hate cancer because it takes from us those who wish to give so much without consideration. An indiscriminate killer that wastes our treasures away before our eyes, leaving us with only memories, partially realized dreams and the…
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Damn, this sounds like a Klatskin tumor, a "rare" cancer. My father hat that kind of tumor as well. He died within 8 weeks of first developing jaundice. Let's stop trying to make people click on cheery-colored buttons and do something about this fucking disease instead.
Getting rich and improving the economy is almost certainly the best thing you can do to combat disease, pollution, poverty, etc.
We are killing ourselves and it starts with the stuff our mothers eat, is made worse by what we eat, and is topped of by the environment we live in.
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The person you've responded to never said we should live forever, nor did they say they hate the fact that people die; rather, they said they hated cancer. That's an important nuance you left out from assertion, isn't it? Sure, you may not want people to live forever, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the above comment; indeed, what you've said might be viewed as somewhat callous when considering the context…
It was mainly this that I thought was ridiculous. It sums up a lot of what is terrible about valley startup culture, and the strange culture of wanting to cure all diseases.
Oh yeah, I plan to do a startup, solve the money problem, then spend my life fixing all the things I can with my immense wealth. Like say cancer or global warming!
Thanks for highlighting why I shouldn't comment on HN though.
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Another person that might be cryopreserved [1], but probably won't be, much like the 150,000 who passed in the last day or so [2]. Many sorts of terminal case can actually lead to better quality cryopreservation under present legal restrictions [3], in comparison to the drawn out and uncertain end of aging, precisely because they are more rapid and certain in time. (Or might be plastinated [4] in the alternate histor…
Hmm...except that cryopreservation is still, as of this point, a complete crock of shit. Trying to find a necromancer would be more productive. As an ex-biologist, I can assure you that horrible cellular damage is being committed to these "preserved" people. I used to flash-freeze all sorts of cells, ranging from bacteria (e. coli) to animal (IMCD3 and MDCK kidney) to human (Human Embryonic Kidney, Primary cortical a…
http://www.21cmpublications.com/
Or for a simpler starting point, the FAQs for scientists at Alcor:
http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm
You might also look at ongoing results from the Brain Preservation Technology Prize:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/03/an-update-from-co...
Evidence-Based Cryonics has a lot of as-unbiased-as-you're-going-to-get stuff on the perfusion and ischemia issues associated with vitrification of tissue, as well as explorations of other commonly voiced objections. Just wade through the archives:
http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/
Also, since we seem to be arguing from authority here, you might look at this, noting that a number of the signatories are quite well known biologists:
http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-...
Very sad, of course. He's only 59. I've gotta admit that I'm also a bit angry. The war on cancer is 40 years old and we are still so far away from solving the problem(s). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer The first commercial microprocessor was released in the same year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004 Solutions? Ideas? The list in my mind is starting to get painfully long: Randy Pausch (47), Steve J…
We'll likely all die from overcrowding problems in the end anyway... Solve all the diseases you want, but we'll all die at some point.
This news puts his last two novels, Surface Detail and Hydrogen Sonata, in an interesting light, the former being about virtual hells and the latter being about a species transcending[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sublimed
I'm not sure what meaning you can draw from that unless you know of a sexual indiscretion that Iain committed at a wedding. :-)
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> ... is not so large that the original brain can't be reconstructed either by scanning it while still frozen or by repairing it with nano-bots. You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology. The business model seems to…
>You might as well argue that nano-bots will be able to reanimate a body that has decomposed, and save money on all the freezing equipment. Perhaps that will be the case if given enough time, but we seem to be a long way away from that technology. No, you might not as well argue that. If you think you can, then please argue how you can retrive information from a completely decomposed brain. On the other hand, it's pr…
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If I'd been around 12,000 years ago to invest a few bucks, and it grew at a 2% APY since then, I would currently have enough money to end poverty and global warming, while mining the asteroid belt to build an Orion-class starship in orbit. Why are you in favor of poverty and global warming, and against asteroid mining and starships? There's so much more you can do while you're alive than you can do while you're dead;…