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Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

bbc.com

71–80 of 344 posts

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#71

The commitment is very big, my comment is very small. Whatever exists needs to be challenged continuously to keep existing. Any naive attempt to suppress all adversity forever will backfire.

Ok, so you would rather Zuck not spend his money trying to cure diseases?

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#72
New diseases will come to be. Possibly, the cures will cause the new diseases, possibly something else, but all disease won't be conquered. Does this ambitious projection include only disease or does it also include disorder? I think it would be cool to cure disorder before disease.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#73
Probably not feasible without some genetic re-engineering to design out vulnerabilities to common diseases. That's how aging will probably be solved. There's a big debug time problem, though. It takes about two generations to be sure you got it right. We'll probably have very long lived mice decades before it works for humans. (Many cancers in mice can be cured now. This doesn't translate to humans.)

Then there will be species conflicts. Merck people won't be able to mate with Novartis people because they'll be too different genetically.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#74
Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal.

I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#75
I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we have a cure for trisomy 21? For antisocial personality disorder? For obesity and addiction? These things are far more complicated than just creating the right drug.

But as much as I'm rolling my eyes at their blanket statement, the spirit of "yes we can!" does way more for science and progress than naysay of critics.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#78
post #67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost certainly won't happen, but you could have said the same thing about starting a social network that includes over a billion daily users.

That's like comparing the discovery of a new fundamental force, with the discovery that mythical dragons have been living in secret among us as our lawyers. It's true that both are unlikely, but one is ridiculous and the other merely very very challenging.

I don't think it's all that ridiculous, it's over 80 years in the future. 80 years ago we were dying of all sorts of [now] easily preventable and curable diseases. Penicillin was not used until 1942!

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#79
post #74

Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today.

Right. Just like the jetpacks and lunar colonies we have easy access to now, as promised in the 1960s.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#80
post #71

The commitment is very big, my comment is very small. Whatever exists needs to be challenged continuously to keep existing. Any naive attempt to suppress all adversity forever will backfire.

Ok, so you would rather Zuck not spend his money trying to cure diseases?

No, but the sanguinary headline made me imagine a future where all biological stressors have actually been eradicated. Our species would be at its weakest.

I guess I was briefly taking the donator's unicorn propaganda literally. Sorry.

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