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Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

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Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#161

Post by gilrain »

enraged_camel wrote: post #146
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #96

Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so. This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

Your logic can be dismissed as nonsense with a very easy thought experiment. Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. You are voting on a technology that can prevent 90% of deaths in Group A. Do you vote yes or no? If you vote no, congratulations, you just condemned a large group of people to continue dying for the sake of egalitarianism. (The reason this thought experiment is powerful is that it s…

Your logic can be dismissed as a false dichotomy.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#162

Post by lbrandy »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #96

Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so. This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

This isn't a serious objection and this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed. You could say the exact same about the internet or the automobile or the MRI. It only solves the problem of "the elite".

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#163

Post by PeterisP »

benihana wrote: post #92
FD3SA wrote: post #9

Absolutely brilliant. Finally, Aubrey De Grey's unapologetically straightforward logic [1] regarding aging has gained traction with the crowd who has the means to tackle this grand challenge. I am sincerely proud of Page and Brin for their vision and commitment. This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm. Aging will now be seen for what…

> This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm. Let's just go ahead and pump the brakes here before we start clapping each other on the back and talking about shifted paradigms. I'll gladly join in the happy-clappy fest once some actual results come through. But saying we've catalyzed a shift in the world's thought paradigm (that is a rea…

An interesting point from one of Calico's announcements is a statement that curing all cancer would only add ~3 years to the expected lifespan.

This is thought provoking - if even a perfect solution to such a problem won't give us what we want, then we do need to "make people think differently" and try to focus on a different, bigger problem than the current approach of trying to strike out separate illnesses.

By the way, allowing medicine to think about not only "how to bring a broken-person to average" but "how to bring an average person to above-average" would also require a major change in the way of thinking for the whole area. Some homo sapiens are extremely resistant for diseases, some are smarter than average, some have much lower aging damage. Instead of thinking how to fix a genetic disease by replacing a broken gene with the "average" one; we should think about what is the best that we, as a species, could be.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#164

Post by 3825 »

staccatomeasure wrote: post #98
rhizome wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pretty substantial body of opinion that dying of untreated cancer is, in fact, kind of horrible.

I was referring to the act of turning the lights off...the big empty. No doubt some things that precede and result in death are nasty, but those aren't death. For example, if death was embraced and voluntary euthanasia was allowed, people could just opt-out as the nastiness started (I'm not suggesting we do that, though). Anyway, the point is that we shouldn't fear the ending. It's the things that precede it that we…

If we could effectively control aging and death, perhaps that would make human reproduction unnecessary or undesirable even. Perhaps that will stop all the nonsense in the name of "oh won't you think of the children?"

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#165

Post by joering2 »

Disclaimer: I do not hate Google; I use their search and email daily.

I hate to be this guy, but...

> OK so you’re probably thinking wow! That’s a lot different from what Google does today.

Not really. Google is in a business of selling ads. In addition, they do make money on selling/sharing/exchanging information, mostly indirectly.

> But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives.

.. and shareholders did not care about that. If you own shares of a hospital chain then you may care. But when you hold shares of Subway, Coca-Cola or Google, in those particular markets you care less about people's lives. You care about bottom line.

> So don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses.

We are not surprised. But since you sun-setting pretty good, useful projects like Google Reader, and you taking Jobs advice of "stay focus on only couple [most profitable] projects at the time", we ask: "where is the catch and how you gonna make money _otherwise_ than selling info or exchanging it?"

Just recently I have cancelled my 23andme kit (they gave me some hardtime though and never fully recovered the fee (taking legal action is simply not worth the $)), because after doing some research I found it that 23&me owner is family with Brin. There is no chance in this world you will tell me Google will not try to make money off of my DNA this or another way)

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/23andme

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#166

Post by newsign »

enraged_camel wrote: post #146
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #96

Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so. This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

Your logic can be dismissed as nonsense with a very easy thought experiment. Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. You are voting on a technology that can prevent 90% of deaths in Group A. Do you vote yes or no? If you vote no, congratulations, you just condemned a large group of people to continue dying for the sake of egalitarianism. (The reason this thought experiment is powerful is that it s…

its not about whether elite is saved or not ... its about whether you're healthy or not ....

Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. Group A is living longer but unhealthy and Group B is living shorter but extremely healthy , which one do you pick - I rather pick Group B ... dont know whether Calico will be about living longer or living healthier - its not a easy thing to crack but I hope they succeed ...

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#167

Post by StavrosK »

kafkaesque wrote: post #154

Have to put on my tin foil hat for this. NSA-related, too, so you're warned. This makes me wonder just how much Google works with the US government. I'm not saying the result of whatever Calico wants or will do (because it's all pretty vague right now) is a negative. But Calico seems to come at a time when Obama is pushing for universal health care, which will be a huge industry. Last I heard, it was estimated at $1.…

Oh wow... That's... a pretty big leap.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#169

Post by cromwellian »

kafkaesque wrote: post #154

Have to put on my tin foil hat for this. NSA-related, too, so you're warned. This makes me wonder just how much Google works with the US government. I'm not saying the result of whatever Calico wants or will do (because it's all pretty vague right now) is a negative. But Calico seems to come at a time when Obama is pushing for universal health care, which will be a huge industry. Last I heard, it was estimated at $1.…

Healthcare is based on science, and science requires data processing to see the correlations. We'd probably be able to spot a lot more common causes of diseases if people weren't so guarded with their medical history. This doesn't really have anything to do with government, it has to do with solving problems.

The US already has HIPAA, so I don't get the point. This just seems like a weak attempt to say something negative about Google's announcement.

Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being

#170

Post by maxerickson »

ginko wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with anything else, the question isn't whether the rich will be able to afford it, the question is how much progress can we make in making it cheap, how quickly, to get it to how many people? It is a moral imperative to make sure that short-sighted class warfare does not cut off the nose to spite the face by destroying this work under the guise of egalitarianism, because we can not turn on a dime and immediately…

But what about generation warfare? Imagine having to live in a world where all the positions of power are permanently occupied by people from the generation of your great-grandparents.

I wonder if inertia would mean so much in a world of such grotesque abundance.
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