Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

cosmosmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 231 posts

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#221

Post by dyauspitr »

nkrisc wrote: post #110
dyauspitr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point seems to be that massive changes are required to achieve wings. I’m saying that’s not impossible and an acceptable modification to whoever wants to do this to themselves. As long as you can maintain the brain as is, I don’t see there being a problem with radically modifying the rest of the body. Argentavis magnificens had a wingspan of around 24ft and weighed around 72 kgs or a 160lbs which is close to wha…

> As long as you can maintain the brain as is, That’s the question, can a human sized body that can fly additionally support a human sized brain? I suspect you would have to spend nearly every waking minute eating to support both. Or at least a substantial portion of your day. No time for hacking, gotta eat. You’ll probably have to pay full up front for this, as no one will finance you since you’ll be too busy foragi…

If it’s pure caloric intake there are plenty of dense fats that will let you do that without having to eat all day. Or your body could create all the proteins you need like silverbacks. Either ways, I’m saying in a sufficiently advanced society there should be enough ways to thread that needle to maintain what you want while modifying the rest. None of this is physically impossible.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#222

Post by LoganDark »

vsuperpower2020 wrote: post #208
LoganDark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I already become someone else all the time... In all seriousness, at times I do genuinely wish species transition were possible. Imagine gender dysphoria but for species, so species dysphoria. It may sound insane, but honestly so can the entire concept of dissociative identities. I don't know if I'd want to change my brain, but the physical properties of the body definitely.…

I hope you're joking about wanting to become a "fluffy quadruped". Or, if not, I see why we had asylums.

I didn't feel like fully explaining. Still, foxes and wolves and cats and so on are all fluffy quadrupeds and something like that is what I feel I would rather the body be.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#223

Post by LoganDark »

abdulhaq wrote: post #140
LoganDark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I already become someone else all the time... In all seriousness, at times I do genuinely wish species transition were possible. Imagine gender dysphoria but for species, so species dysphoria. It may sound insane, but honestly so can the entire concept of dissociative identities. I don't know if I'd want to change my brain, but the physical properties of the body definitely.…

you are what you are, there's no escape from that

Unfortunately.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#224

Post by LoganDark »

ben_w wrote: post #97
LoganDark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I already become someone else all the time... In all seriousness, at times I do genuinely wish species transition were possible. Imagine gender dysphoria but for species, so species dysphoria. It may sound insane, but honestly so can the entire concept of dissociative identities. I don't know if I'd want to change my brain, but the physical properties of the body definitely.…

I remember the Therian and Were community, back in the day. Some overlap with the furry community, but not a perfect subset.

Yes, those are very similar. I occasionally use the term otherkin for myself, as a non-specific term for "one who identifies differently from the body", but I do tend to get along well with therians. (And queer people in general, I suppose.)

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#225

Post by xxyyxxyyxxy »

chris_t wrote: post #126
GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discoveries like this should be shared with the world - not gatekept by rent-seeking venture capitalists. Wouldn’t you rather be Jonas Salk than Scrooge McDuck? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk > Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker" when the vaccine's success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distrib…

Rent-seeking has a technical definition; earning money from things you invented does not meet it. While Salk is obviously an inspiring example, a wise society should happily incentivize the development of useful technology.

Patents are held by assignees, not the inventors. Inventors do not earn money from patents.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#226

Post by LoganDark »

simianparrot wrote: post #112
LoganDark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I already become someone else all the time... In all seriousness, at times I do genuinely wish species transition were possible. Imagine gender dysphoria but for species, so species dysphoria. It may sound insane, but honestly so can the entire concept of dissociative identities. I don't know if I'd want to change my brain, but the physical properties of the body definitely.…

It is the very definition of insane. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have sympathy for it, but it's important to recognise when certain aspects of our psyche isn't sane or good and accept that.

I never meant to claim it's good or sane that I want an animal body, but it's something I can't really help. I don't have the delusion that it's ever actually going to happen, I just can't help but wish that it would.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#227

Post by meindnoch »

iandanforth wrote: post #150
meindnoch wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a new sense, just using the existing tactile system with a magnet.

Senses are defined by what they sense, not how they are sensed. A person can have their sight partially restored through implants that bypass rod/cone activation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6934168/

That's still signaling through the optic nerve.

If they would restore vision by using e.g. the cochlear nerve, that would be something.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#228

Post by nkrisc »

dyauspitr wrote: post #221
nkrisc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as you can maintain the brain as is, That’s the question, can a human sized body that can fly additionally support a human sized brain? I suspect you would have to spend nearly every waking minute eating to support both. Or at least a substantial portion of your day. No time for hacking, gotta eat. You’ll probably have to pay full up front for this, as no one will finance you since you’ll be too busy foragi…

If it’s pure caloric intake there are plenty of dense fats that will let you do that without having to eat all day. Or your body could create all the proteins you need like silverbacks. Either ways, I’m saying in a sufficiently advanced society there should be enough ways to thread that needle to maintain what you want while modifying the rest. None of this is physically impossible.

No, not physically impossible to have large flying creatures. What I’m suggesting is that by the time you modify a human so they can fly, they’re not really human anymore.

But that may be more of a philosophical debate so I’ll leave it at that.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#229

Post by jjk166 »

rylittle wrote: post #202
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a certain age beyond which you cannot learn absolute pitch I can understand things like that get harder and harder as you become adult. That it's absolutely not possible beyond a certain age I think is just a commonly held belief that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. What is this age limit where you've never seen anyone be able to gain that skill? I'm sure there are counter-examples.

Interestingly enough, I once read that no one over the age of 60 has ever _retained_ perfect pitch

It is commonly lost in a person's late 50s to early 60s, but there are cases of individuals retaining it into their 70s and 80s.

Further, the decline is gradual. Individuals who lose perfect pitch in 440hz tuning typically retain it at 415hz tuning for several more years.

Re: Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

#230

Post by jjk166 »

arnaudsm wrote: post #189
very_good_man wrote: post #188

All of us have to get real and demand immediate speed-up of LLMs, Gene Therapy, etc. Absolutely nothing else matters.

Millions of people already die of curable diseases. Technology isn't enough, many problems are political

People die to diseases whose cures are insufficiently practical. It's still a technological problem. Make them cheaper, make them more easily administrated, make them effective after the condition has passed beyond a certain point - these are all things further technological progress can potentially do.

Political problems are situations where different elements of society are fundamentally at odds with each other over one option vs another. Freedom vs security, progress vs conservation, reform vs tradition - these are all cases where there are strong arguments on both sides and there fundamentally isn't a right answer. No one is politically in favor of death due to curable disease - eliminate the technological issues that tie curing the disease to something people actually politically oppose, like say higher government spending, and the political opposition goes away.

Post reply on HN