Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've added an action item to our sync up.
I don't have enough bandwidth right now.
Stick it on the laterbase.
Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
371–380 of 400 posts
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hmm, interesting. I've just checked the OED's definition, and it seems to mostly relate to thought - essentially, "paradigm" as "mental model".
However, the idea of an action paradigm is interesting - can you give an example of usage in that way?
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#373http://www.starcom.com.pk
Star Communication Services (STARCOM) is a market leading System Integrator and Distributor Company with the proven reputation as Network specialists.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#374Absolutely brilliant. Finally, Aubrey De Grey's unapologetically straightforward logic [1] regarding aging has gained traction with the crowd who has the means to tackle this grand challenge. I am sincerely proud of Page and Brin for their vision and commitment. This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm. Aging will now be seen for what…
"Aging will now be seen for what it is: the root of all chronic illness." .. That´s simply not true. There are people suffering chronic illnesses at very young ages - ones that are completely unrelated to aging. Aging is a natural process that all biological species undergo - humans are no different. There are plenty of people who have lived healthy and normal lives, aged, and then died naturally. Chronic illnesses are caused by genetic factors and / or personal habits.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some more context: 61% lack Internet access [1] 35% lack basic sanitation (e.g., toilets) [4] 26% don't have plumbing (e.g., water they can get from pipes in their house or yard) [2] 23% don't have electricity [2] 14% lack access to clean water [2] 14% lack access to health care [2] 13% suffer from chronic undernourishment [5] 11% can't read [3] 14% is about one billion people. Maybe you look at that and think, hey,…
Keep in mind when discussing internet access that effectively for the general public, the internet has only been with us for 20 years. And that was just the birth of its public mindshare - significant penetration would still take quite a few years yet in developed countries. It also doesn't really fit in with the rest of the stats you're presenting - people can and do live quite luxurious lives without using the inte…
Not to mention, with smartphones getting cheaper and cheaper, a lot of people in developing nations are getting access to the internet for the first time.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
While I'd love to live a thousand years (as long as it's in decent health), the big danger to society is obviously that it'll be the very rich that will live that long, and they'll hold on to their power that much longer. It creates an even bigger division between rich and poor. Imagine what the world would look like if the medieval elite were still alive today. It's good that the people in power die every once in a…
Awesome novel idea.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#377I 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…
The hard-left argument that this will empower an elite is a silly and pointless one - life extension technology will be developed by China in the unlikely event that Western Luddites manage to throw a spanner in the works in their affluent countries.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
3 years increase from a non-infant mortality is pretty huge only when compared to what we have done before - but it's not huge compared to the actual lifespan.
Going from 80 to 83 (for example) is nice, but it doesn't have a radical impact on how we should live our lives - going from 80 to 160 could do that. If we want major improvements, then we either need to make sure that the other things are cumulative (say, that we can get 20 disease-cures to add 3 years each); or we need to look in completely different directions.
It depends on what you see as a goal - in the long run, I believe that we can get to lifespans measured in centuries, because it's technically possible as seen from other lifeforms. If the marginal improvements due to curing diseases can't get us there, then we should investigate other options how to achieve that, instead of treating a 5% increase as "pretty huge" and being satisfied with that.
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#379Google sure has a short memory: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/health/about/
Re: Google announces Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Management speak is just a jargon. Its mostly not. Jargon is specialized use of terms used to facilitate clear communication of ideas within a specific community/domain. Management speak -- at least the form that is often mocked -- is just using flowery language to conceal the absence of substance, and is pretty much the opposite of jargon.
I disagree. I hear your complaint from many people, but I spend enough time talking to managers to understand what they mean, and I actually think there's content there.
I spend a lot of time talking to managers, and most what they are saying isn't what people describe as "management speak" (which is, despite the phrase usually used to describe it, more the language of marketing and PR -- which, to be fair, managers frequently necessarily engage in and all too often are also victims of.)
There is a jargon of management -- an array of terms with precise meanings in the field that are either not used outside of the field or are used outside with different meanings, and which facilitate clear communication in the domain.
But that's really not what people are talking about when they are talking complaining about "management speak", which seems to be all about marketing/PR buzzwords which are used to create certain feelings while minimizing communication of clear commitments and detailed information, which are used by management either when they are acting to promote the business in marketing/PR role, or when they've been successfully snowed over by some vendor's or other industry player's marketing.