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

Post by alina24 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 4:21 AM UTC

turing wrote: post #15

throwaway172 wrote: post #11

To what extent is this guided by the self-interest of aging tech darling CEOs (Larry Page must be in his 40s by now)? As a young person I tend to think "some of these health issues ought to be solved problems by the time I'm older." But I don't have the kind of capital to spend on it that companies like Google, or persons like Larry Page, do. Regardless of motivation, I'm happy to see investment in this domain.

Both Page and Brin turned 40 this year. There's also Brin's heightened risk of Parkinson's. His mother has it, and according to Wikipedia "both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%". He's donated to Parkinson's research in the past, and this investment is certainly along the same lines.

Post by Malician » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 4:34 AM UTC

_ns5x wrote: post #193

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great problem is the current mindset. Many, many people think of life extension as undesirable . It's mind-boggling at first sight, but then you understand it for what it is: the Stockholm Syndrome, with Death as the hostage-taker, and all the life-extension-deniers as the hostages. We need to get out of that hole first. Google is doing the right thing.

Thinking that death is a problem or 'a bad thing that happens' is incredibly short-sighted. Improving the well-being of humanity in general is a great goal; life extension can be a different topic entirely.

Post by joseph_cooney » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #29

I'd rather see a high quality of life for everyone on earth for 80 years than 150+ year life spans for the first world. Which will just further increase the footprint of the rich and divert resources from the poor. Not to mention, it's a more attainable goal. It doesn't help much to keep the body going for 50 more years if you can't also keep the brain going. I believe these are very different problems. If you can so…

Post by mortehu » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 6:08 AM UTC

mrschwabe wrote: post #41

VikingCoder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their total disregard for privacy" To the contrary, they have utter regard for your privacy. They advocate for governments to have more respect for your privacy, as well. Alfred knows everything about Bruce Wayne. Google is Alfred, except he doesn't even take a salary - he wants to show you advertising that you would think is high quality, and he promises to never sell your personal information to the advertisers. P…

Oh yeah, then why didn't they shut-down Gmail like the folks at Lavabit did? Instead of doing the right thing, Google let themselves become compromised in secret - only for us to find out after someone was willing to put their life on the line to leak this information.

Post by cac04 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 8:21 AM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #332

brudgers wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kuhn popularized the phrase "paradigm shift." In his view, it occurred over generations as adherents to older scientific models died of old age - e.g. the Copernican model replaced the Ptolomeic model because Ptolomeic astronomers went extinct.

yes, but it's much faster now (look at how quickly the RNA World Hypothesis took over after Noller, Woese, and Cech demonstrated their results. One might say we're catalyzing paradigm shifts through network effects. Then engineers would complain I was using management talk, but I can assure you, that's a succinct and accurate way to explain it.