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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

#291

Post by bsullivan01 »

robotresearcher wrote: post #230
bsullivan01 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what Jrockway said https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6407580 But your comments are factually wrong. None of Google's products you mention are new or really that much better (so far.) >> Google is a company that is making self-driving cars So is every major car manufacturer out there. Who's ahead of the game? I don't know because Google gets all the press and fawning from fanboys--like you. ">>providing incredibly…

> Who's ahead of the [self-driving car] game? I don't know because Google gets all the press and fawning from fanboys--like you. It's Google. They have the right people, the right ideas, the resources, and they started first. Source: I'm a prof in a related field with graduated PhD students at Google. The Google cars get press because they are really very good.

Google didn't start first at all. Maybe they have the right people but as far as resources, other car companies have them too. That's their bread and butter, not some experiment

By the way: " Mercedes missed a barn-door sized opportunity last week when it revealed technical details of next year's 2014 S-class, which showed that while this flagship model could potentially have been the world's first autonomous driving car, Mercedes has decided not to give it that capability. For now, the driver's hands have to remain on the wheel at all times.

"The car would do it [autonomous driving] today," said Jochen Haab technical support manager, "we have had test cars doing that, but what happens if a child steps out into the street and the radar misses it?" http://www.roadandtrack.com/go/first-looks/new-car-tech-2014...

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

#292

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jerf wrote: post #38
ianstallings wrote: post #20

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords. But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs I fear a future where "all…

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…

It's a moral imperative to destroy capitalism before we gain transhuman power over Nature!

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

#293

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jl6 wrote: post #182
eropple wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many issues for which I agree with you, that the trickle-down is a legitimately good process. But this, no. The concentration of power even more than currently is enough that I would rather forego it than encourage it just for that group of controlling interests. I would rather no one have it than institute a system of even more perpetual control. We have already signed most of our existence over to the ric…

Most people in history have lived under various degrees of oppression, and most have found it preferable to not living at all.

Do you know the suicide and depression rates throughout history?

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

#294

Post by nl »

PeterisP wrote: post #163
benihana wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The biggest predictor of a society's average predicted lifespan is infant mortality. Most of the gains in average lifespan over the last 100 years is from increasing the number of children who live past 2.

3 years increase from a non-infant mortality related improvement is actually pretty huge. I'd have to look it up, but I think the impact of non-infant vaccinations would be roughly a similar sized increase.

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

#295

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jonknee wrote: post #44
ianstallings wrote: post #20

I for one welcome my immortal transhumanist cyborg overlords. But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. Genentech is known for selling Avastin, their drug that fights cancer for $55k after they received harsh criticism for the proposed cost of $100k+/year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevacizumab#Costs I fear a future where "all…

> But seriously, the fact that the first thing they do is start a corporation to control the science is not exactly comforting to me. How else would they do it?

A nonprofit, a national lab, a university...

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

#296

Post by eli_gottlieb »

VikingCoder wrote: post #238
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're saying, it's either Ayn Rand or Stalin, there's no middle ground.

I get ya. From that perspective it's hard to describe exactly what I'm thinking... If you lean towards "capitalism and free markets are good," then I really don't think you have a leg to stand on, in criticizing a corporation for offering luxury services. If you lean towards, "Universal healthcare, and this is health care, so therefore the government should have a monopoly on it, except this should be way down low on…

And what if I lean towards, "Universal healthcare, and this is health care, so therefore the government should have a monopoly on it, and this should be way up high on the list of priorities"?

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

#297

Post by eli_gottlieb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #290
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's my point. Capitalism is bad, not increased lifespan. However, given a capitalistic or otherwise zero-sum/proprietarian social system , I cannot support inegalitarian life extension as moral. You need a broadly egalitarian society and broadly egalitarian life-extension.

So, as long as we have social systems you disapprove of, we should abandon medicine, which, in general, is "life extension"?

As long as we have social systems designed to maximize strife and toil, we should be working to destroy those social systems and replace them with systems for creating peace and happiness, yes.

Medicine and life extension as a public service is great. As a private luxury of the rich it's abominable.

Think about the implied statement of making radical life-extension available to the rich alone! "Whereas I will live to 160, you will only live to 80. Because I can afford these treatments, it means my life has double the moral worth of your life."

If you honestly believe that moral worth and financial net worth are two different things, you cannot support setting lifespan in accordance with money. Period.

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

#298

Post by dragonwriter »

thenomad wrote: post #271
jmmcd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm" is the quote, so it sounds like you're the one who needs to be careful of language.

Although isn't "thought paradigm" a tautology?

No (nor is it an oxymoron, which I think is more relevant); a paradigm is a defining pattern, and quite including a pattern of action. Its frequently used in a way which implicitly references a pattern of thought, but its not redundant to make that explicit.

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

#299

Post by eli_gottlieb »

PeterisP wrote: post #155

An interesting trend is that we're now no longer relying on governments to pursue big, hairy, audacious goals. Governments and also capital markets nowadays seem unable to pursue any really long-term projects at all. Instead, all the future-advancing progress seems to be made by independently rich individuals; and also not by the "aristocratic-rich" families, but by noveau riche upstarts such as Brin, Musk and others…

Our research institutions are not broken. They are actively defunded, disabled, and handcuffed by an elite class who would rather return to the days of aristocratic decision-making than subject themselves to democracy.
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