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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

#91

Post by vdaniuk »

unimpressive wrote: post #86
zerorbit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming resources are limited, but they are infinite. Making the assumption the Universe is infinite.

>You are assuming resources are limited, but they are infinite. Making the assumption the Universe is infinite. Silliest thing I've read all day. There are huge costs associated with extracting resources here on earth, let alone from the stars. And even if "the universe" is infinite, no new matter is being generated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

Huge costs for a scarcity based economy. I guess that will be changing soon enough.

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

#92

Post by benihana »

FD3SA wrote: post #9

Absolutely 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…

>This is one of those rare times that powerful people make bold choices that catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm.

Let's just go ahead and pump the brakes here before we start clapping each other on the back and talking about shifted paradigms. I'll gladly join in the happy-clappy fest once some actual results come through. But saying we've catalyzed a shift in the world's thought paradigm (that is a really pretentious way of saying "this might make people think differently", by the way) at the announcement of a new product might be just a wee bit premature.

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

#93

Post by apr »

ianstallings wrote: post #80
apr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that I'd be better if the technology is not available to anyone lest some people live longer than others? I am pretty sure that in the beginning the new technologies will be accessible only to the people who can spare some cash, but I am also pretty sure that the cost will go down, as it has for any other technology.

No I'm suggesting that society as a whole should be part of the conversation about not only seeking immortality but also how much one can benefit from such wonderful breakthroughs. I would love to see people I love live forever. But there are ethical issues around the industry that we all need to discuss.

What does making the society part of the conversation mean exactly? If a private company develops a technology for immortality and then chooses to charge $1million/year for it thus excluding 99.999% people what does the society has to say about that? Should it force the company to lower the price? Should it bar the technology?

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

#94

Post by paul »

crassus wrote: post #46

This is a great first step. But realistically they can only move so fast with FDA regulation increasing your iteration cycle time on therapies to 10 years. Our biomedical regulatory regime is extremely risk averse. If we had a regime where anyone could voluntarily place any therapy into their own body, we'd move a lot faster. Yes, a few more people would die in testing. But a lot more lives would be saved by the ther…

Medical tourism partially solves this. If someone develops an amazing treatment I need, I wouldn't mind traveling to another country to get it.

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

#95

Post by malandrew »

ginko wrote: post #45
jerf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But what about generation warfare? Imagine having to live in a world where all the positions of power are permanently occupied by people from the generation of your great-grandparents.

Generational warfare would definitely be something to consider. Imagine if immortality had been discovered 400 years ago. Are the ethics and morality of the leaders from 400 years ago something you, a person born in the late 20th century, would want to live under?

Generations eventually dying off keeps the human race moving forward in many ways.

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

#96

Post by bowlofpetunias »

Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so.

This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.

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

#97

Post by benihana »

staccatomeasure wrote: post #77
jerf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, that there might be a war between the 150 year olds and the 250 year olds? Sign me up! I don't even care for which side! The base state of the world that we live in is that everybody dies . Your hypotheticals about how horrible it might be to live in a world where people might not die have to be pretty horrible to compete with what is already true . (Mind you, this is not an unleapable bar, in my opinion, b…

Dying isn't horrible at all. It's a part of the lifecycle.

My aunt - who died slowly and painfully, wasting away from the cervical cancer that was eating away at her body - might disagree with you were she still here.

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

#98

Post by staccatomeasure »

rhizome wrote: post #83
staccatomeasure wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dying isn't horrible at all. It's a part of the lifecycle.

There's a pretty substantial body of opinion that dying of untreated cancer is, in fact, kind of horrible.

I was referring to the act of turning the lights off...the big empty. No doubt some things that precede and result in death are nasty, but those aren't death.

For example, if death was embraced and voluntary euthanasia was allowed, people could just opt-out as the nastiness started (I'm not suggesting we do that, though).

Anyway, the point is that we shouldn't fear the ending. It's the things that precede it that we should rightfully fear and combat. In other words, focus less on extending life (after a point) and more on decreasing the ratio of painful-years/lifespan.

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

#100

Post by lnsignificant »

VikingCoder wrote: post #50
mrschwabe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I will never be able to convince you that Google was not complicit in the acts the government took that Edward Snowden has exposed, and you will never convince me they were complicit. There is literally no evidence anyone could provide you, that would make you change your opinion. And I can't claim that I'm much different, if I'm honest, unless Google execs admit to it. Or unless journalists discover examples of pros…

This!
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