6 ms·

Thiel and Schmidt have two very different worldviews, they had a debate on capital 'P' progress a few years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 htt

Thiel and Schmidt have two very different worldviews, they had a debate on capital 'P' progress a few years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 Many people find Thiel's argument hard to believe, especially if they are aspirational middle class types. This is because normal people have a chronocentric bias. Of all our biases, this one is probably the strongest of all. If you find Thiel's position hard to believe, it is worth examining what our grandparents thought about the future. "The Home of the Future in 1999" (from the 1960s) https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4 https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4 I am at the point where I consider the optimistic narrative (ex-computation) utterly without supporting evidence. It is all PR and marketing. Here is one example. Consider the discovery of DNA. Important scientifically. And all the resultant research into genetics since. But tell me what relevance any of it has had to the average person? Have we new drugs? More effective treatments? Cheaper medicine? This is a minor heresy among the 'educated' but to me the answer is clearly no. Think about that for a minute or two. Either I am mad, or in half a century there has been no measurable effects. If the second is true then why do we believe CRISPR is going to revolutionize everything outside? The discovery of DNA itself, the Human Genome Project. The cheaper shotgun sequencing. These should have had enormous material effects on society. It does nothing! Food prices should be much lower. They are static or increasing. Timber should be of higher quality. It is actually much lower than before. Any non-niche new building materials out of biotech. I am unable to identify any. New breeds of animals for livestock, pets, where are they? The farmers I know use a process mostly identical to their ancestors from several thousand years ago, only a little more streamlined thanks to more specific egg/sperm selection. Yes you can give me niche applications and cool stuff in a lab somewhere, but I'm asking about people's offices, homes, on the streets. The fact is that we've been talking about vat-grown meat and lab-grown replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet. Do we have to wait for another 50?

zimpenfish 10y ago
> lab-grown replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet Not entirely true - http://www.livescience.com/44756-lab-grown-vagina-implants.html http://www.livescience.com/44756-lab-grown-vagina-implants.h... And also - http://www.livescience.com/48196-lab-grown-penises.html http://www.livescience.com/48196-lab-grown-penises.html which isn't an actual success story yet but does include the paragraph > The human penis is the latest, but hardly the first organ Atala and his colleagues have tried to produce. The team created and transplanted the first human bladder in 1999, the first urethra in 2004 and the first vagina in 2005, the Guardian reported.
- internaut 10y ago
  I'm pleased to hear of Dr. Atala's efforts. My mind flits immediately to the question of why aren't organ donor lists obsolete. Pensises and vaginas are complex organs so what about livers and kidneys? To have a complete set of duplicate organs on standby in case of medical emergency. Why pay so much for health insurance when you could swap out organs. Do you believe that in ten years, or twenty, that such things will be available to the public? I don't want to be cynical but innovative practices have come and gone without sticking before now. There was even head transplants with dogs or monkeys a few decades ago but nothing came of it.
  - zimpenfish 10y ago
    From what I could glean from those articles (and some others I found), the main blocker to things like livers and kidneys are a) the initial complexity, b) the fairly life critical nature of them, which leads to c) the FDA approval process being somewhat strict. 10 years? No, probably not - it would take at least that long before human trials, I suspect. 20 years? Maybe, depending on the human trials. But I'd expect it to be niche and expensive - not something the NHS/Obamacare/WhateverPublicHealth would be paying for (except perhaps in extreme cases?)
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Transplants are niche and expensive already. If your artificial kidney is medically reliable and solves rejection problems, every insurance will pay for them instead of transplants. Looking around a bit, kidneys cost more than $50,000 up front, with the possibility of $30,000 a year in antirejection drugs. Even just the $50,000 seems like something that a scientifically repeatable production process should be able to compete with (there is substantial demand so quite some opportunity for cost savings by scaling up).
    - internaut 10y ago
      That is what I thought. The hypothetical promise of biotech is terrific. The actual expectations we have are sadly diminished. I only realized this myself when I was talking to my G.P, who is well known as one of the best doctors in the country, I asked him whether he wanted my DNA profile, or whether collecting some genetic information would be helpful. He said no. He said that (apart from special cases) that in comparison to having medical records on my parents/grandparents plus a full medical history on myself, the genetic profiles are worthless. The hospitals already have a torrent of information they're struggling to organize. At first I was taken aback at what he said. The more I thought about it the more sense it made to me because obviously your parents and grandparents are likely to inhabit a similar environment to yourself. That must constrain the range of gene expression. We need to know what actually effects us, not a suggestion box, that might hinder more than help! I still hold out hope for a more scientific way forward but Freeman Dyson's future seems very distant. Honestly the Japanese intelligent toilets with stool/urine analysis might have a bigger impact on preventive medicine than the Human Genome Project.
maxerickson 10y ago
There are therapies coming from genetics though. For instance: https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/ https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/ And lots of cancer treatments. Genetically engineered microorganisms produce many drugs (and chemical feedstocks for others). We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin products that are fast acting and sustaining. It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls to use for breeding. http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churns-out-100-cloned-cows-a-year http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churn...
- internaut 10y ago
  Honestly this is not impressive. I don't say that to be abrasive, it just isn't. I'd expect to get something for spending billions of dollars and having legions of intelligent people working away, if only by freak accident. To put it another way, we had serious medical breakthroughs before cheap genetic examination and alteration was possible. Our benchmark should not be nothing, it should be the past periods of change in the field surely. How does the 'modern' genetic engineering stack up against antibiotics, peptide synthesis? How many lives saved, how much higher a quality of life do we have as a result? Eroom's Law is still in force despite xray crystallography and dna sequencing being orders of magnitudes cheaper. Suppose drug discovery isn't the the bottleneck and we blame the FDA, then where are the breakthroughs in Russia and China? > We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin products that are fast acting and sustaining. That is notable, yes. Partly because it is a good high footprint drug as you say, but also because of the reason for its demand... It is interesting because if you watch the Ford Foundation video from the 1960s I linked to, there is a household personalized preventative healthcare system. I believe we could build such a device in theory, but I don't see that we're breaking much ground. The last thing I saw that impressed me was the Toto intelligence II toilet but it didn't take off. I'd like to buy one, esp. if it was linked to my fridge and food cupboard to perform input/output analysis. I don't think there's a company even pretending to offer such a system today but it was readily imagined half a century ago. > It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls to use for breeding. Breeders were doing pretty okay before artificial cloning. I have some relatives in farming, I think they send off sperm cells to be hazed by freezing or some other hazing process that eliminates the weaker candidates. I also know some old school breeders from a cattle mart who are basically wizards. They carefully examine their subjects to determine characteristics, like Darwin's pigeon fanciers in Origin. They are extremely gifted at selecting, like the Met's super recognizers. "He said that of the millions of cows produced every year, the number that are cloned is “overall pretty insignificant.” “But the bottom line is you do not want large numbers of these animals for a number of reasons, number one being that cloned animals are generally unhealthy.”" That in a nutshell is my general outsider know-nothing view of biotech. It has no serious visible impact and I begin to suspect we don't actually know what we're doing. DNA is less the library of Alexandria and more like Borge's Library of Babel. Where are the cows with adverts emblazoned on their fur for passing cars to see? Weird exotic GM pets? We should see stupid things like that if we had any power. Freeman Dyson's vision of GM, laudable though it is, seems very far away. I was looking for bioluminescent outdoor lighting/cool science project a while back. Found nothing useful. That's a low bar! That kind of thing should be standard by now and I believe we should all in shock that it isn't cheap and readily available.

zimpenfish 10y ago

> lab-grown replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet Not entirely true - http://www.livescience.com/44756-lab-grown-vagina-implants.html http://www.livescience.com/44756-lab-grown-vagina-implants.h... And also - http://www.livescience.com/48196-lab-grown-penises.html http://www.livescience.com/48196-lab-grown-penises.html which isn't an actual success story yet but does include the paragraph > The human penis is the latest, but hardly the first organ Atala and his colleagues have tried to produce. The team created and transplanted the first human bladder in 1999, the first urethra in 2004 and the first vagina in 2005, the Guardian reported.

internaut 10y ago
I'm pleased to hear of Dr. Atala's efforts. My mind flits immediately to the question of why aren't organ donor lists obsolete. Pensises and vaginas are complex organs so what about livers and kidneys? To have a complete set of duplicate organs on standby in case of medical emergency. Why pay so much for health insurance when you could swap out organs. Do you believe that in ten years, or twenty, that such things will be available to the public? I don't want to be cynical but innovative practices have come and gone without sticking before now. There was even head transplants with dogs or monkeys a few decades ago but nothing came of it.
- zimpenfish 10y ago
  From what I could glean from those articles (and some others I found), the main blocker to things like livers and kidneys are a) the initial complexity, b) the fairly life critical nature of them, which leads to c) the FDA approval process being somewhat strict. 10 years? No, probably not - it would take at least that long before human trials, I suspect. 20 years? Maybe, depending on the human trials. But I'd expect it to be niche and expensive - not something the NHS/Obamacare/WhateverPublicHealth would be paying for (except perhaps in extreme cases?)
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Transplants are niche and expensive already. If your artificial kidney is medically reliable and solves rejection problems, every insurance will pay for them instead of transplants. Looking around a bit, kidneys cost more than $50,000 up front, with the possibility of $30,000 a year in antirejection drugs. Even just the $50,000 seems like something that a scientifically repeatable production process should be able to compete with (there is substantial demand so quite some opportunity for cost savings by scaling up).
  - internaut 10y ago
    That is what I thought. The hypothetical promise of biotech is terrific. The actual expectations we have are sadly diminished. I only realized this myself when I was talking to my G.P, who is well known as one of the best doctors in the country, I asked him whether he wanted my DNA profile, or whether collecting some genetic information would be helpful. He said no. He said that (apart from special cases) that in comparison to having medical records on my parents/grandparents plus a full medical history on myself, the genetic profiles are worthless. The hospitals already have a torrent of information they're struggling to organize. At first I was taken aback at what he said. The more I thought about it the more sense it made to me because obviously your parents and grandparents are likely to inhabit a similar environment to yourself. That must constrain the range of gene expression. We need to know what actually effects us, not a suggestion box, that might hinder more than help! I still hold out hope for a more scientific way forward but Freeman Dyson's future seems very distant. Honestly the Japanese intelligent toilets with stool/urine analysis might have a bigger impact on preventive medicine than the Human Genome Project.

maxerickson 10y ago

There are therapies coming from genetics though. For instance: https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/ https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/ And lots of cancer treatments. Genetically engineered microorganisms produce many drugs (and chemical feedstocks for others). We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin products that are fast acting and sustaining. It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls to use for breeding. http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churns-out-100-cloned-cows-a-year http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churn...

internaut 10y ago
Honestly this is not impressive. I don't say that to be abrasive, it just isn't. I'd expect to get something for spending billions of dollars and having legions of intelligent people working away, if only by freak accident. To put it another way, we had serious medical breakthroughs before cheap genetic examination and alteration was possible. Our benchmark should not be nothing, it should be the past periods of change in the field surely. How does the 'modern' genetic engineering stack up against antibiotics, peptide synthesis? How many lives saved, how much higher a quality of life do we have as a result? Eroom's Law is still in force despite xray crystallography and dna sequencing being orders of magnitudes cheaper. Suppose drug discovery isn't the the bottleneck and we blame the FDA, then where are the breakthroughs in Russia and China? > We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin products that are fast acting and sustaining. That is notable, yes. Partly because it is a good high footprint drug as you say, but also because of the reason for its demand... It is interesting because if you watch the Ford Foundation video from the 1960s I linked to, there is a household personalized preventative healthcare system. I believe we could build such a device in theory, but I don't see that we're breaking much ground. The last thing I saw that impressed me was the Toto intelligence II toilet but it didn't take off. I'd like to buy one, esp. if it was linked to my fridge and food cupboard to perform input/output analysis. I don't think there's a company even pretending to offer such a system today but it was readily imagined half a century ago. > It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls to use for breeding. Breeders were doing pretty okay before artificial cloning. I have some relatives in farming, I think they send off sperm cells to be hazed by freezing or some other hazing process that eliminates the weaker candidates. I also know some old school breeders from a cattle mart who are basically wizards. They carefully examine their subjects to determine characteristics, like Darwin's pigeon fanciers in Origin. They are extremely gifted at selecting, like the Met's super recognizers. "He said that of the millions of cows produced every year, the number that are cloned is “overall pretty insignificant.” “But the bottom line is you do not want large numbers of these animals for a number of reasons, number one being that cloned animals are generally unhealthy.”" That in a nutshell is my general outsider know-nothing view of biotech. It has no serious visible impact and I begin to suspect we don't actually know what we're doing. DNA is less the library of Alexandria and more like Borge's Library of Babel. Where are the cows with adverts emblazoned on their fur for passing cars to see? Weird exotic GM pets? We should see stupid things like that if we had any power. Freeman Dyson's vision of GM, laudable though it is, seems very far away. I was looking for bioluminescent outdoor lighting/cool science project a while back. Found nothing useful. That's a low bar! That kind of thing should be standard by now and I believe we should all in shock that it isn't cheap and readily available.