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What Dreams May Come

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Re: What Dreams May Come

#91

Post by darthclue »

melling wrote: post #12
bherms wrote: post #2

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be a…

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

2 years ago, my diagnosis would have meant death within a matter of months as the treatment I am getting didn't exist. I look forward to the day when no one has to go through this. For now, I am not dwelling on the sadness but I am trying to leave my wife and children with as few worries as possible and with as many happy memories as possible. It breaks my heart to know that I might not live to see my 6 year old's birthday and no one should have to go through that.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#93

Post by brownbat »

theknown99 wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Malthus was wrong.

Hans Rosling, "What Stops Population Growth?" http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth...

In Malthus's model, new people only consume food and breed. But we do this other cool thing, too, we also think about human problems and how to solve them. We all add resources to the computer of humanity.

Some really cool, like Norman Borlaug, go around the world and teach people how to grow more reliable crops, stopping famines, increasing the reliability and scale of the food supply while lowering the resources it takes to produce the food. It's sometimes said he's saved a billion lives. He did so without increasing the strain on others, but by spreading knowledge and increasing efficiency, maybe even lowering the strain on the planet.

Humanity's ability to solve problems isn't in a flat linear relationship with how many people we have either. If we just have 100 people, they all have to farm all the time, and can't stop and think about much. With a billion people, we get economies of scale, so we just need 40% to be farmers, and we can have, say, 20% work on logistics, 10% work on massive aqueducts and public infrastructure, and 10% be scientists and inventors.

At a certain point, every additional person makes it easier for more people to survive on the planet. And yes, there is some raw physical limit to population on this rock... but visit the Russian Taiga, Wyoming, Namibia, or Mongolia. We're nowhere near that point yet, it's several orders of magnitude away. And if you note Rosling's points, we probably won't keep growing anyway.

He notes that population growth is really a switch towards health systems with lower infant mortality. You have previous generations that keep having 10 kids because only one or two of them will survive, then the health conditions improve and suddenly all of them survive. The next generation or so reverts to normal family planning, having just one or two kids. Malthus was wrong to suggest that people just breed as much as humanly possible.

All that said, I don't think you should be downvoted for asking a question. If we buried every premise we disagreed with, we'd never get a chance to lay out the reasons we believe the opposite, we'd never convince anyone. We'd just be insisting on dogmatic agreement, rather than any actual understanding of the complex issues.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#95

Post by hessenwolf »

melling wrote: post #12
bherms wrote: post #2

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be a…

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

The highest source of personal bankruptcy in China is medical expenses.

Something something about the largest risk of poverty for middle class people in China is medical expenses.

Source: WHO speaker at a longevity conference I attended.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#96

Post by hessenwolf »

Blahah wrote: post #15
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goe…

It's the other way around, actually. HIV gets a massively disproportionate amount of funds. Cancer gets disproportionately little.

Also, as we are eliminating competing risks, cancer is emerging as a huge source of death in developing economies.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#97

Post by phatfish »

theknown99 wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Overpopulation being the downfall of civilization is a complete myth.

Even in developing countries such as Bangladesh the average family now as 2 children due to education and great progress in women's rights.

I don't have the figures off the top of my head, but population peak will be more than manageable.

The problem will providing energy when everyone on the planet wants a washing machine.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#98

Post by Houshalter »

easy_rider wrote: post #48
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Everyone who owns a computer can start contributing its power right away. http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/research/mcm1/overview.do

Where are the details on this project? I'd like to know if they've published anything or if the datasets they are using are available.

From what I can find, it seems like the method they are using is incredibly inefficient.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#99

Post by caiusdurling »

vishnugupta wrote: post #78
timr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're insured in the US (sadly, this is still a fairly big "if"...) the costs of cancer treatment will be covered, but unlike most of the rest of the developed world there are still a lot of caveats: depending on the quality of your coverage, you could end up paying very little, or quite a bit of money. It's not a simple question, unfortunately. That said, it sounds like he's not looking for money for treatment ,…

>If you've just bought a house and a car and had a kid you're probably in a lot of recent debt, with the assumption that you'll have a lifetime to pay it down Out of self discipline I bought a life insurance at the same time my home loan was approved; the insurance amount being same as loan amount. I have always wondered why don't Government have regulations in place that forces a borrower to purchase a life insuranc…

From what I've heard from friends/family that have mortgages, here in the UK the mortgage company stipulates that you have to get life insurance in place to cover the remaining loan amount before they approve your mortgage.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#100

Post by ktzar »

Instead of donating to this guy I'd prefer to advocate for a free health system and a system that doesn't fuck up a family that has had enough bad luck to see its father die.

Having someone in his last months of life begging for money to not leave his family screwed up seems like a waste of those precious last weeks.

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