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> At the rate things have been progressing, fundamental medical miracles aren't years or decades away - they're perhaps centuries away... but I hope to be prove
by joeyspn 11y ago
> At the rate things have been progressing, fundamental medical miracles aren't years or decades away - they're perhaps centuries away... but I hope to be proven wrong.
This is a natural reaction, specially when you see how fast things have advanced in tech. But in medicine, in order to really get the big breakthroughs we dreamed about years ago, some tools were required, and technology has only recently given us these tools: genome sequencing, stem cell manipulation, CRISPR/Cas9, open standards for eHealth, etc etc
So, I'd say there's hope, as many predict that the slope could be exponential...
- crusso 11y agoPeople talk about exponential technology progress as though we fully understood the problems we're trying to solve, so advances toward those problems' solutions will increase at an ever increasing and noticeable rate. Unfortunately, as we advance toward the solution horizon for many of these hard problems (AI, cancer, aging, etc.) we continue to find that the horizon is at best remaining at a fixed distance. In some cases, like with cancer, the more we learn, the further away it seems a real cure will ever be. It's like trying to find your way through a maze that is actually a constantly evolving fractal. So while CRISPR/Cas9 is a magnificent discovery, it could be as though the discovery of the wheel 5,500 years ago meant that the Tesla would soon be available.