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Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

bbc.com

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Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#241

Post by prewett »

scrollaway wrote: post #184
prewett wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Build an atomic bomb" is a lot more specific than "cure all diseases." In fact, "cure all diseases" is kind of the opposite of a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based). Whereas, to goal to build a device capable of detonating via nuclear fission is pretty specific, particularly to a physicist. Also very measurable and highly time-based. Not even the Gates foundation is trying to cure all dis…

I agree with you, but I'd like to point out that it's easy to say "x is very specific" if you know exactly what x is after-the-fact.

True, and a good point to make. My understanding of the difficulty of the atomic bomb was that everyone knew what to do (smash enriched uranium together such that was more than a certain mass), but they had a lot of difficulty getting the spherical detonation right. So the problem wasn't unknown from the physics side, but was rather an engineering problem. Compare to "cure all diseases," which we don't even know how to do theoretically.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#242

Post by projektir »

stevefeinstein wrote: post #236

I would never discourage them, audacious goals are how real change is achieved. But in the history of the world, every time you conquer one disease, a worse and scarier one seems to fill the void. And if you wanted to get pedantic, it could be said that Humanity is a disease of the Earth. Eliminating that infestation might qualify under the goal. Perhaps AI is not going to solve the problem by eliminating disease, bu…

Pedantic or simply oddly foolish? That's not a precise statement at all. The concept of humanity-as-a-disease makes no sense outside of a highly misanthropic and Stockholm-syndrome-ish view of the world. "Earth" is not a sensing entity, for one, so you cannot commit moral crimes against it (i.e, bring forth to it the very real suffering that a human experiences from a disease), and it's also the source of both humanity and disease in the first place. We have diseases because "Earth" runs a process by which various creatures are continually created and torment each other to figure out who survives better.

Removing humans would do nothing more but restart the misery process again, until another intelligent vehicle appears to try to resist it, assuming that intelligent vehicles are a low energy state that evolution-style processes like to reach. Such a vehicle is our best bet for the disease truly going away. The intelligent vehicle, of course, will be highly influenced by the natural world it came from.

You could go for a Sargeras-style crusade and decide to extinguish all life in the universe and make all planets uninhabitable so that nothing can ever evolve again to cause diseases anywhere, but you would still need such an immensely powerful vehicle to enable that that you could as well stop wasting your time and make utopias instead because if you can handle FTL travel you can handle some microbes.

> But in the history of the world, every time you conquer one disease, a worse and scarier one seems to fill the void.

There are plenty of awful diseases people used to get from unsanitary conditions, malnourishment, and direct contact with nature that we don't talk about anymore because nobody gets them in first world countries or because they have been eliminated.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#243

Post by mattwg »

stevefeinstein wrote: post #237
ryandrake wrote: post #49

Not to take the wind out of anyone's sails, but there is a concern to be raised about relying more and more on charities to fund the public good. When a democratically elected government funds the public good, at least in theory, the public at large has a small say in choosing what counts as "public good". When you leave it to charity, you're relying on the morals of individual wealthy donors to decide what counts as…

Yes, exactly. Unless everyone has some skin in the game, the research will be biased towards curing those with money, perhaps using the rest as guinea pigs.

How is this true of the Gates Foundation? Or Good Ventures? Chan Zuckerberg is specifically aimed at improving equality. Do you have any actual examples of wealthy philanthropists using "the rest of us" as guinea pigs to cure themselves of disease?

ryandrake's point is an important one, but I don't think this level of cynicism is justified.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#244

Post by projektir »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #156
kendallpark wrote: post #75

I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…

Here's my best prediction for how it's could happen: when the all human immune systems are able to learn from each other, we'll be most of the way there. The immune system is at the center of most human diseases. Cancer? It's the best solution. Infection? Best solution. Autoimmune disease?Fixing the immune system would be the best solution to autoimmune disease. Right now, if you want your body to be immune to someth…

I think we'll create superior bodies for humans that disease never had a chance to adapt to much faster than we'll be able to figure out how to make immune systems communicate without also promoting adaptation from surrounding diseases.

Fixing the existing body is nice, but you're forever limited by what nature intended, and what it intended is just not very good.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#245

Post by projektir »

joe_the_user wrote: post #103
kendallpark wrote: post #75

I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…

One would roll one's eyes if someone promised to fix every single bug in a vast, buggy, fifty-year old software project. But just ending cancer would essentially be a project for externally ameliorating, not even fixing, the bugs of 4 billion years of (genetic) code, code that "just happened" with "bugs" that survived because they weren't selected against.

You can fix all the bugs in the fifty-year old software project... by writing a new version of it.

Sometimes the right solution doesn't deal with existing problems but tries to go somewhere else entirely.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#246

Post by projektir »

angersock wrote: post #223
kendallpark wrote: post #75

I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…

So, I think the interesting question is--take them at their word, and what do we then do with the resulting population explosion? It's kinda like efforts to modernize (read: give Western lifestyles to) a lot of South Asia and Africa...a lot of pollution and ecological destruction that is probably not a good thing.

Given low birth rates in developed countries I'm not sure that the population explosion would sustain itself if the area was properly governed.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#247

Post by projektir »

awqrre wrote: post #195
calsy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Eating less and eating the right things is probably much more effective then exercising more (it takes a lot of work to burn up a donut)... But I'm not saying that exercise is not important for other reasons.

You're talking about small-scale, individual solutions... ones that you'd throw at a random obese person.

He's talking about a population level crisis. "People eat too much" doesn't answer the question anymore.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#248

Post by blackoil »

calsy wrote: post #131

I know it's more of a western problem, but it would be good if someone could find some real solutions to the obesity crisis. If you ask many GPs in the west they will tell you that a majority of illnesses they address are related to weight and diet. With an aging, increasingly overweight adult population alongside a sharp rise in child obesity come big consequences for health care over the next half century. Im not s…

For starter, stop drinking liters of cold drink and beer every day. If you really need it, I will create an app for that.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#249

Post by projektir »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #80
hmate9 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so you would rather Zuck not spend his money trying to cure diseases?

No, but the sanguinary headline made me imagine a future where all biological stressors have actually been eradicated. Our species would be at its weakest. I guess I was briefly taking the donator's unicorn propaganda literally. Sorry.

That's a very strange definition of "weakest" you're using there.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#250

Post by projektir »

whybroke wrote: post #141

This is lovely and all. 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.

I am much more concerned about social/ethical/cultural problems in general. I think if those problems were solved, all other issues with effectively evaporate in a very short time, because we waste a tremendous amount of energy on, well, random crap.

Sometimes technological/medical/governmental/etc. changes do move the social forward so there's hope there.

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