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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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, we should never have eradicated smallpox. Medicine extends lifespan - and a rising tide lifts all boats.

By that logic, we should never have eradicated smallpox. We eradicated smallpox for everyone , without distinction between rulers and ruled. That's the difference! a rising tide lifts all boats. "A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire

>>We eradicated smallpox for everyone, without distinction between rulers and ruled. That's the difference!

You may want to familiarize yourself with the history of smallpox eradication before continuing this debate. The vaccination was available mostly in wealthy countries first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication

"...coordinated efforts against smallpox went on, and the disease continued to diminish in the wealthy countries. By 1897, smallpox had largely been eliminated from the United States.[66] In Northern Europe a number of countries had eliminated smallpox by 1900, and by 1914, the incidence in most industrialized countries had decreased to comparatively low levels..."

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

#303
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aubrey's reaction piece is listed on the front page of Time's website, and can be seen here: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/finally-the-war-on-aging-ha...

That whole article is incredibly creepy -- 'War on Aging' -- do we really need more 'War on X' rhetoric? Regarding the fact that we know that we eventually die, he states > So soul-destroying has this knowledge been, for almost everyone, that we have constructed our entire society and world view around ways to put it out of our minds'. Absolutely ridiculous. Besides the fact that I think a 'soul' is a poorly-defined…

> death can be a traumatic experience, but it's also simply part of being a biological organism.

This tends to be glossed over in discussions of his work, but Aubrey de Grey is specifically interested in reducing the (currently inevitable) human suffering associated with aging. Clinical immortality would be an eventual side-effect of succeeding in that mission.

Every manner of treatable and correctable disease and condition is "part of being a biological organism," but it seems absurd to hold such a standpoint if you're not also in favour of discarding modern medicine in order to die slowly and painfully from cancer.

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

#304
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's making fun of the buzzwords, not the message itself. Frankly, if you think "catalyzing paradigms" is a good way to say something, I'd recommend taking an English literature class.

Err... catalyzing a paradigm change makes perfect sense to me. I think Thomas Kuhn might have used that in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". A lit class isn't going to make any comment on a phrase like that, or management speak in general. Management speak is just a jargon.

>Err... catalyzing a paradigm change makes perfect sense to me. I think Thomas Kuhn might have used that in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

And I think he wouldn't have touched that phrase with a barge pole.

>Management speak is just a jargon.

No. Jargon comes out of necessity and field-specific needs.

Management speak comes out of the desire to unecessarily dress-up bullshit.

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

#305

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.

>It's Google. They have the right people, the right ideas, the resources, and they started first.

I believe we covered the "fawning from fanboys" part already.

>Source: I'm a prof in a related field with graduated PhD students at Google.

That's not a "source". That's at best a "full discosure" and at worst a "conflict of interest" in this discussion...

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really fail to see what Yudkowsky's ideas about such things have to do with this particular point.

To my knowledge, it's part of the broad criticism that Yudkowsky doesn't seem to have any concept of avoiding overpopulation or general overconsumption of resources. It's like when people go around saying God gave us the Earth to exploit, except with an entire 14-billion light-year-wide Hubble Volume.

"To your knowledge?" What, do you not know what point you're actually making?

More seriously, I don't think that's an accurate comparison. What fundamentally is the problem with the people saying "God gave us the Earth to exploit"? Well, it's what you said, overconsumption. But what is actually wrong with "overconsumption"? (That is to say, at what point does consumption become overconsumption?) Is there something inherently wrong with pumping lots of oil out of the earth? No, of course not. What's wrong with consuming too much now is that it leaves less for us later. Or that it has other ill effects, such as polluting the atmosphere and making our environment unlivable. There's nothing wrong with unbounded amount of consumption per se if we can find a way to deal with the ill effects (and make sure to leave enough for future people). The value against overconsumption is instrumental, not terminal. If you are in a situation where such consumption would cause a problem, well, don't do that then; but if you're not, go ahead.

Similarly with overpopulation -- there's nothing inherently wrong with a universe full of people; the worry rather is that you'll have so many people with so little space and resources for each that they'd have a terrible quality of life. Once again: Well, don't do that, then! Anticipate problems and avert them (or fail to anticipate them and then solve them, possibly by reducing population or consumption). Eliezer Yudkowsky is not suggesting anything close to the idea that we should make as many people as possible even if all of them would be miserable, or that we consume every resource as fast as possible even if we render the world uninhabitable for our descendants.

In short, the problem is not a large population, nor lots of consumption, but the side-effects of these things, and the shortsightedness that leads people to disregard them. Gotta maintain the distinction between terminal values and instrumental ones.

...OK, there is one obvious thing I'm glossing over. Namely, the idea that it's good to leave some space for the non-humans, as well; their disregard for other forms of life is I think something else we would agree is wrong with the "God gave us the earth to exploit" people, and there the comparison with Yudkowsky is perhaps a little more accurate. But, regarding animals, I don't think Yudkowsky's position is really different from that of most people. Yes, we'd like to have a world with, say, polar bears in it, and not just ones in zoos, or ones who are miserable all the time; but we probably wouldn't want to have a world that was partly ordered according to polar bear values. (Whatever that means.)

Now, other intelligent forms of life is a another can of worms, but I don't think the "God gave us the Earth to exploit" people worry much about those, so I'm going to stop here because I don't really know how to compare there.

(Also I'm not really sure that your earlier "tiling" post is really an accurate representation of Yudkowsky's ideas, but I didn't really want to argue about it, partly because I'm not prepared to right now and partly because it seemed essentially irrelevant.)

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

#308
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aubrey's reaction piece is listed on the front page of Time's website, and can be seen here: http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/finally-the-war-on-aging-ha...

That whole article is incredibly creepy -- 'War on Aging' -- do we really need more 'War on X' rhetoric? Regarding the fact that we know that we eventually die, he states > So soul-destroying has this knowledge been, for almost everyone, that we have constructed our entire society and world view around ways to put it out of our minds'. Absolutely ridiculous. Besides the fact that I think a 'soul' is a poorly-defined…

> Besides the fact that I think a 'soul' is a poorly-defined construct and thus hard to crush

Ah, I see, you're engaged in a 'War on Metaphor'.

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

#309

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…

No other company has reached so far in self driving cars as Google has. Learn to live with it.

OK, you hit a nerve, so I'll keep beating a dead horse: says who? Who made a side by side study of all the efforts in self driving cars?

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-mercede...

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth considering that extended lifespans could have very well result in you not living at all - the Earth can only sustain a limited number of people, and extended lifespans would result in a necessary decrease in new lives brought into this world.

I disagree with that thought, actually. I believe current models of consumption ignore human innovation, something we're quite good at doing when survival is on the line.

Even considering human innovation, the laws of thermodynamics will eventually limit growth, not to mention the sheer lack of space.
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