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Craig Venter has died

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Re: Craig Venter has died

#61

Post by unsupp0rted »

mcmcmc wrote: post #56
unsupp0rted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 years is as arbitrary a number as 79 is. A Craig Venter that lives (a healthy life) to 158 is quite likely to accomplish at least 1 more great thing than one who lives to 79.

More likely that he would live most of those years with compounding mental and physical health issues, quality of life degrading to the point where most would wish for death instead.

What an un-hacker ethos: the idea is to continuously fix problems so that, if anything, quality of life improves from year to year.

Re: Craig Venter has died

#62

Post by rwmj »

epistasis wrote: post #29
apitman wrote: post #3

Craig Venter was famously involved in the Human Genome Project. He announced the first draft of the human genome alongside President Clinton and Francis Collins.

"Involved" in the sense that he took the public data, added in a small amount of his own privately generated data and was trying to get the first assembly. The scientists in the Human Genome Project thought he was going to try to patent the whole thing so others would have to pay him. Back then, it was not clear what was and was not patentable. So the involvement was in spurring the Human Genome Project to race to an…

He was known informally as the Venterpillar.

Re: Craig Venter has died

#63

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #47
Aeroi wrote: post #22

I raced with him on his boat. During a gybe once, he was swept overboard and the mainsheet wrapped around his torso. He was dragged through the water, but somehow held onto the rail until I was able to pull him back aboard by the loop on his foullies. He was an interesting guy. He had been a medic during the Vietnam War, and his old boat, Sorcerer II, became a platform for his Global Ocean Sampling Expedition from 20…

Only 79… far from a complete human experience. It’s incredibly sad how little time we get here, especially the best of us.

Looking at his life. This is as complete human experience as we can hope to get.

Re: Craig Venter has died

#65

Post by CWuestefeld »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #47
Aeroi wrote: post #22

I raced with him on his boat. During a gybe once, he was swept overboard and the mainsheet wrapped around his torso. He was dragged through the water, but somehow held onto the rail until I was able to pull him back aboard by the loop on his foullies. He was an interesting guy. He had been a medic during the Vietnam War, and his old boat, Sorcerer II, became a platform for his Global Ocean Sampling Expedition from 20…

Only 79… far from a complete human experience. It’s incredibly sad how little time we get here, especially the best of us.

I'd MUCH rather consider the completeness of my experience based on what I was able to experience, rather than how long I'd lived for.

Sorry for the tangent, but this is a pet peeve of mine. From my perspective, it seems like our modern quest for safety in all things has the effect of wrapping the whole world, and ourselves, in bubble wrap. The goal seems to be to extend that number as far as possible, without regard to how the life that we experience during that period is diminished by all the safeguards.

It bothers me that we've made it a mantra, telling each other "have a safe trip", or "be safe", and so on. I can't remember anyone saying "have the richest experience you can manage".

Re: Craig Venter has died

#66

Post by jbstack »

unfitted2545 wrote: post #51
unsupp0rted wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine what a guy like that could do with 79 more years... or 10x of that. It's not that outlandish: sharks, turtles, etc get far more years than we do. It's shocking all billionaires aren't devoting all their resources to solving this cosmic crime against humanity.

A complete human experience is to have relatively little time, no point in doing anything if you have 500 years to do it IMO. Edit: Maybe there wouldn't be nilihism, but I don't think you could get more fulfilled with the extra time. I feel like an insect that lives 24 hours and a shark that lives several hundred have an equal feeling of accomplishment.

You seem to be implying that at after a certain number of years (e.g. 79) you wake up one day and say "I'm fulfilled and have nothing left I'd like to achieve".

As someone who occasionally works with terminal patients, I've never seen that in practice. In reality most people desperately wish that they could carry on living, and have plenty of unfinished business that they'd like to see through. The only exception I've seen is when someone is in so much pain that they just want to end the suffering.

If we turn your argument on its head, a person who dies at 20 is just as fulfilled as a person who dies at 79. So why should anyone bother trying to live a long and healthy life?

Re: Craig Venter has died

#67

Post by CrazyStat »

randogp wrote: post #38

At the time they announced the full genome sequence I was an intern in molecular biology. We had a thermocycler in the lab and I had to book my slot on a paper agenda. I remember this portrait of him in front of multiple racks each plenty of thermocyclers. He taught me something about scale and he proved that sometimes it's worth looking at what you have and ask what if I could 200x this. In software this might seem…

I'm a statistician. My wife does basic (biological) science. Almost every time she asks my advice on an experiment I want to tell her to 10x the sample size. But the academic community has certain ideas about how big sample sizes should be, and trying to use radically larger samples runs into all sorts of barriers ranging from ethics concerns (for animal experiments) to funding.

At the end of the day there's only so much you can learn from a sample size of 12. I'm not sure it's more ethical to have a bunch of wasted experiments with 12 mice each where you don't learn anything than to use 100 mice and actually have statistical power to identify something other than the hugest effect sizes.

Re: Craig Venter has died

#68

Post by jbstack »

mcmcmc wrote: post #56
unsupp0rted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 years is as arbitrary a number as 79 is. A Craig Venter that lives (a healthy life) to 158 is quite likely to accomplish at least 1 more great thing than one who lives to 79.

More likely that he would live most of those years with compounding mental and physical health issues, quality of life degrading to the point where most would wish for death instead.

This is a common misconception. Namely, that increasing lifespan just means extending the part where your health degrades continuously. That's actually a very unrealistic outcome for life extension technology. In general, the things that cause your health to degrade as you age are interlinked with the things that cause you to die. If you find a way to increase lifespan, chances are you've also found a way to increase healthspan. In fact, all of the best methods we currently have to live longer do exactly that (e.g. exercise, eat healthily, avoid smoking, etc.).

Re: Craig Venter has died

#69

Post by JKCalhoun »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #50
cowsandmilk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 79… far from a complete human experience It seems you’re judging his life solely on the age when he died rather than all the things he did.

Imagine what a guy like that could do with 79 more years... or 10x of that. It's not that outlandish: sharks, turtles, etc get far more years than we do. It's shocking all billionaires aren't devoting all their resources to solving this cosmic crime against humanity.

I know it's cliche, but if he knew he (any of us) knew we might live to 790, would we live life so fully?

I kind of think that's what is behind some people versus others—those that have an intrinsic, constant sense of the brevity of life are the ones that try to experience life to the fullest.

Re: Craig Venter has died

#70

Post by t0mpr1c3 »

A world-class (and possibly universe-class) egotist who published the first diploid human genome sequence. It was his own DNA. He did not stop at broadcasting his achievement to a human audience: "Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth."
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