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Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#131

Post by dimino »

beat wrote: post #59
Protostome wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face.

GMO isn't that, Monsanto is that, and the fucked up patent system is like that.

This is like creationists saying they dislike evolution, when they really mean they dislike abiogenesis, but accept everything else about evolutionary theory.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#132

Post by r2 »

In solar cell research, the biggest recent breakthrough was probably the creation of efficient perovskite solar cells [1]. They're cheap, easy to make, and their efficiency in the lab is rising more rapidly than that of just about any other research cell since NREL began tracking (up from 3.5% in 2009 to 20.1% today) [2,3]. If their chemical stability problems can be resolved, they'll have big commercial applications.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6165/1438.2

[2] http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg

[3] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-...

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#133

Post by vinceguidry »

danbruc wrote: post #123
vinceguidry wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…

The problems in the developing countries are at least partially caused by things not directly related to agriculture, for example speculation with food and subsidies in developed countries making local agriculture unprofitable.

Speculation is ultimately driven by scarcity. There's no purpose in speculating if you can't generate an arbitrage. Greater productivity on the part of small farmers will alleviate scarcity, driving food prices down.

Similarly, there are lots of markets that are unserved by the global food chain. How can one say that food subsidies in developed countries can affect these unserved markets? They can't sell to the developed world, and developed world food doesn't really make it there.

I spent some time in Colombia, not quite a developed or a developing nation, in mostly big cities, and even there much of the food consumption was local. Sure, bigger farmers would be able to sell at a profit to Western conglomerates, and Western food was available (at steep prices) in the large chain grocery stores.

But most people shopped at the ubiquitous small family-run groceries that served a mix of local agricultural output and mass-market, also locally-produced goods. I'd be very surprised if Western agricultural innovations weren't being employed to grow all of the great-tasting produce I ate there. Seeds are much much easier to transport than mangoes.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#134

Post by pessimizer »

danbruc wrote: post #123
vinceguidry wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…

The problems in the developing countries are at least partially caused by things not directly related to agriculture, for example speculation with food and subsidies in developed countries making local agriculture unprofitable.

Also war, corruption, water mismanagement, and foreign aid undercutting local growers.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#135

Post by rjcz »

SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #56
VLM wrote: post #36

Is reality invented or discovered? Is math invented or discovered? Was automata theory invented or discovered? OK well then is the quicksort algorithm invented or discovered? Is LISP invented or discovered? Is my code invented or discovered?

Are invented and discovered just a matter of perspective?

If something did not exist prior to our action then it is an invention, otherwise it's a discovery.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#136

Post by nickbauman »

Protostome wrote: post #23
baldfat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means curing: Color Blindness, Liver Disease, Hopefully Cancers, Genetic Defects, MAYBE one day Aging?

I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.

I think we're going to learn that at best eating GMOs are going to be as safe as eating McDonalds fast food. Which is quite safe but not a terribly wise dietary choice. Because GMOs are made (at best) to maximize the profitability of what's being sold. And when you do that you sacrifice other things and you lose awareness of others. This is especially true considering how little we know about nutrition.

We are at the stage with GMOs where we were in the 1950s with baby formula. We once thought that it would eliminate the need for human breast milk because we didn't understand the nature of human breast milk except at a very crude macrobiotic level. We now have learned that it's not a superior replacement for real human breast milk. Its a barely adequate one that we choose only if we can't get the child good human breast milk.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#137

Post by nickbauman »

vinceguidry wrote: post #121
beat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…

Fighting world hunger by producing more food is putting out fire with gasoline.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#138

Post by Nadya »

vinceguidry wrote: post #121
beat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…

We produce more than enough food to feed the entire world. The issue is distribution.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#139

Post by [deleted] »

natrius wrote: post #118
ForHackernews wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "low costs" of bitcoin are a myth. Bitcoin transactions are extremely expensive, both financially and ecologically, it's just that those costs are currently subsidized by block rewards to miners instead of paid by consumers/end-users. If bitcoin were ever to be widely adopted, the high fees would have to be passed on to users: http://www.coindesk.com/new-study-low-bitcoin-transaction-fe... At some level, this bas…

I am not talking about Bitcoin in particular, nor am I talking about transaction fees . I am talking about transaction costs and blockchains in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#140

Post by nickbauman »

Protostome wrote: post #77
beat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

We're GMOing crops long before the DNA revolution. Plants were selectively bred for certain qualities since the dawn of agriculture. None of fruits or vegetables we eat in the present (even without GMO) could be found naturally few hundred years ago. We were genetically modifying them without really knowing the mechanism. There some ecological as well as regulatory challenges. That doesn't mean GMO isn't a solid appr…

Selective breeding is not the same as editing a genome. You cannot "selectively breed" a fish gene into a tomato.
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