141–150 of 344 posts
But he is in a much better position to work on the curious problems of ever increasing political polarization in our new Post-Factual world.
If I were to guess, over the next century that problem is going to result is a vastly more misery than a slight speed up to medical technology could compensate for.
Companies like Facebook (and people like Mark Zuckerberg) actively avoid paying taxes whenever they can, in a lot of countries that, for example, have public healthcare and other public institutions that would normally benefit from these taxes.
It's a bit like repeatedly stealing some kid's lunch, and then making fun of the kid for her weakness while appearing strong (and stronger in comparison to the weak kid) and compassionate when the kid passes out and you carry her on your back.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um, I know a solution to the obesity crisis....
Eat less, exercise more? Easy to say right, but the simple message isn't working obviously. Obesity levels have doubled over the last 40 years. Its not sporadic either, it's affecting the entire population now. Why is this happening?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um, I know a solution to the obesity crisis....
Eat less, exercise more? Easy to say right, but the simple message isn't working obviously. Obesity levels have doubled over the last 40 years. Its not sporadic either, it's affecting the entire population now. Why is this happening?
Step 1: shut down Facebook.
"Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announce $3 billion initiative to ‘cure all diseases’" http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/mark-zuckerberg-and-prisci...
I suspect it would have been much better for them to simply partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where they're actually curing diseases. They've literally almost eradicated polio globally[1]. [1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio
Curing "all" disease is a bit more ambitious.
Not to say that in the end, Gates isn't helping more people today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"yes we can!" built the atomic bomb.
Mark ("and Priscilla") are pledging $3B. The Manhattan project cost was "about $26 billion in 2016 dollars" according to the Wikipedia article. They are short $23B.
That's where this part comes in:
"The more people believe we can cure all disease in our children's lifetimes, the more likely the government is to invest in it"
These acts of apparent philanthropy from ridiculously wealthy people rub me the wrong way. It feels like those rich patrons from older times who would bestow their "generosity" as they pleased, except that in modern times most countries have frameworks in place to make this sort of work happen, and these rich people choose to ignore them, or worse, disparage them. Companies like Facebook (and people like Mark Zuckerb…
Some skepticism here would be appropriate. I guess it's still better then them buying more, eh, yachts.
Still, I can't shake the feeling that instead of making a horrible closed product, Facebook, that's basically eating the internet like a cancer, itself -- how about fixing that too?
These people are so powerful they have presidents kissing their ass.
Probably not feasible without some genetic re-engineering to design out vulnerabilities to common diseases. That's how aging will probably be solved. There's a big debug time problem, though. It takes about two generations to be sure you got it right. We'll probably have very long lived mice decades before it works for humans. (Many cancers in mice can be cured now. This doesn't translate to humans.) Then there will…
I read in some article of the Google equivalent version of this, Calico, that even if you cure all of cancer the average life expectancy will probably only increase by ~5 years (off the top of my head, can't find link).