9 ms·

Michael Hawley of MIT's Media Lab has died

133 points by bransonf 6y ago

joshdance 6y ago
Hadn't ever heard of him before today, but now I want to know more about his work.
helloworld 6y ago
I hadn't known that Hawley helped write Steve Jobs's inspiring 2005 Stanford commencement address: https://twitter.com/mjhawley/status/1173273979894796297?s=19 https://twitter.com/mjhawley/status/1173273979894796297?s=19
- kiba 6y ago
  You mean the 'death is great' speech?
  - asveikau 6y ago
    Yeah, as I recall he said something like that death is good because it keeps ideas fresh, by leaving room for future generations to do their thing instead of humanity comprising the same old individuals all the time. I don't think it's too unusual or bad for someone to have a brush with cancer and start getting philosophical about it in this way.
    - kiba 6y ago
      That's a status quo bias. Things had been happening like this for as long humanity had ever known. People either ignored it, or folks like Steve Job decided to rationalize it. It doesn't mean it's a good thing.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - catalogia 6y ago
        I assume you think it's wrong. Can you explain why immortality would be good for society? Most of the transhumanists I've met don't bother justifying this belief beyond the selfish "I don't want to die." Personally I think it would lead to the ossification of culture and an astronomically enormous class divide (particularly between those who can afford immortality and those who cannot.) I'm not eager to live in a society where the ultra-billionaires like Steve Jobs can buy their way out of death, which thus-far, has been the great equalizer that even the most wealthy cannot bribe forever.
        kiba 6y ago
        Most of the transhumanists I've met don't bother justifying this belief beyond the selfish "I don't want to die." It isn't a selfish desire. Do you want your SO to die? Your parents? Think about anyone you ever care about. Personally I think it would lead to the ossification of culture and an astronomically enormous class divide (particularly between those who can afford immortality and those who cannot.) Based on what? This society isn't the only way to organize society or the only way we ever live, assuming it is the kind of society where we get deep and rapid ossification. Sure, immortality have its own problems, but can you say that the new problems are so undesirable that we should not even attempt to solve it? I'm not eager to live in a society where the ultra-billionaires like Steve Jobs can buy their way out of death, which thus-far, has been the great equalizer that even the most wealthy cannot bribe forever. If that is the case, then it is a colossal failure for such a technology, since it only alleviated human suffering for a very handful of people. Currently, our healthcare system is suffering from a massive demand on its capabilities due incredibly ill people being needed to be cared for. Biomedical technology here, should be the great equalizer. Instead of being bankrupted by ultimately ineffective medical care, you now have more wealth to spend on things that's important to you, like living with your loved ones.
      - asveikau 6y ago
        How often have you had a brush-up against something on the scale of life and death? It can be a crazy experience. People come up with all sorts of rationalizations or decisions about "what it meant to them", good adaptations and bad ones. Let them do it, perhaps with a little less judgement. Be humble instead. Nobody completely has it all figured out.
estomagordo 6y ago
Always heartbreaking to see a parent eulogize or comment on their child's passing, no matter how old the child was.
- mrslave 6y ago
  He has a child so the natural order of things is not entirely upended.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  I would have agreed with every part of your statement, until a few years ago. I attended the memorial service for the daughter of a retired Christian missionary. The mother's eulogy of her daughter was filled with hope and the expectation of life after death. Much to my surprise, it was far from heartbreaking.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BlasDeLezo 6y ago
Michael was interviewed by Susan Lammers in her "Programmers at work" (Microsoft Press, 1986). They had a very funny, insightful conversation about music, films and tech. Very sad news indeed. My condolences to the family.
jgrahamc 6y ago
Fuck colon cancer.
codecamper 6y ago
That's a tragedy. Colon cancer is most often avoidable. All one needs to do is go for a colonoscopy by age 45. Heck, why not just start when you are 25? (I had a great friend die at age 32 from colon cancer). So you get a colonoscopy every 5 years. Every year you get the colon cancer marker poop test. It looks for bits of RNA I believe. Or maybe it's PCR. Maybe those are the same. I dunno. Colon cancer typically grows slowly and the precursors are easily seen in the colonoscopy & the colon cancer poop test does a good job too.
- codecamper 6y ago
  There is also this: https://ezra.com/ https://ezra.com/ Not sure how great it works, but it's a good start. Also this: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blood-test-can-detect-50-different-types-of-cancer https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blood-test-can-det...
  - cknoxrun 6y ago
    There's even a urine test for colon polyps (https://www.prlog.org/12825062-first-only-urine-test-for-colon-polyps-expands-across-the-us.html https://www.prlog.org/12825062-first-only-urine-test-for-col...)
- hannob 6y ago
  > Heck, why not just start when you are 25? The answer to that is almost certainly that balancing the pros and cons of preventive screenings is a surprisingly complicated science. Screenings can cause harms by causing unnecessary treatment of patients with false positive diagnoses. If you increase screening of patient groups with a very low incidence of something then you overwhelmingly will get more false positives. It requires careful evaluation of the scientific evidence to design screening programs that do what they should do: Improve patient outcomes and not cause more harm than good.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    "More harm than good" cannot be assessed objectively. How could you possibly weigh "one extra death" against "ten unnecessary treatments"? It has to be an individual decision. Give me the false positive rate and the harm of an unnecessary treatment and I'll weigh that against the risk of my premature death.
foolinaround 6y ago
Wow, such accomplishments in wildly different fields!!
notadonut 6y ago
This article is by the same reporter who is accused to "threatening to doxx SlateStarCodex." I don't happen to believe that accusation. It is worthwhile to point out that this is a guy who is trying to convey information that people want to know. He is doing it every week. Some days, everyone is glad that he reported something, because now they know. Other days, everybody thinks he's the devil, because a blogger accused him of something. But it's the same job. He's trying to convey to NYT readers information that he thinks is valuable. That is the role of journalism. I'm surprised how many people on HN think that that function should not be performed in society, because they have been offended or disappointed by parts of "legacy media." Cancel culture is a two-way street.
arvinaminpour 6y ago
Loved this TedX talk that Michael gave a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWR31GRu3_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWR31GRu3_A "I really think the act of making and doing things is the salvation of our crumbling society. It has to be as someone commented over lunch -- creation is the opposite of destruction." RIP

133 points by bransonf 6y ago

Hadn't ever heard of him before today, but now I want to know more about his work.

I hadn't known that Hawley helped write Steve Jobs's inspiring 2005 Stanford commencement address: https://twitter.com/mjhawley/status/1173273979894796297?s=19 https://twitter.com/mjhawley/status/1173273979894796297?s=19

kiba 6y ago
You mean the 'death is great' speech?
- asveikau 6y ago
  Yeah, as I recall he said something like that death is good because it keeps ideas fresh, by leaving room for future generations to do their thing instead of humanity comprising the same old individuals all the time. I don't think it's too unusual or bad for someone to have a brush with cancer and start getting philosophical about it in this way.
  - kiba 6y ago
    That's a status quo bias. Things had been happening like this for as long humanity had ever known. People either ignored it, or folks like Steve Job decided to rationalize it. It doesn't mean it's a good thing.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - catalogia 6y ago
      I assume you think it's wrong. Can you explain why immortality would be good for society? Most of the transhumanists I've met don't bother justifying this belief beyond the selfish "I don't want to die." Personally I think it would lead to the ossification of culture and an astronomically enormous class divide (particularly between those who can afford immortality and those who cannot.) I'm not eager to live in a society where the ultra-billionaires like Steve Jobs can buy their way out of death, which thus-far, has been the great equalizer that even the most wealthy cannot bribe forever.
      - kiba 6y ago
        Most of the transhumanists I've met don't bother justifying this belief beyond the selfish "I don't want to die." It isn't a selfish desire. Do you want your SO to die? Your parents? Think about anyone you ever care about. Personally I think it would lead to the ossification of culture and an astronomically enormous class divide (particularly between those who can afford immortality and those who cannot.) Based on what? This society isn't the only way to organize society or the only way we ever live, assuming it is the kind of society where we get deep and rapid ossification. Sure, immortality have its own problems, but can you say that the new problems are so undesirable that we should not even attempt to solve it? I'm not eager to live in a society where the ultra-billionaires like Steve Jobs can buy their way out of death, which thus-far, has been the great equalizer that even the most wealthy cannot bribe forever. If that is the case, then it is a colossal failure for such a technology, since it only alleviated human suffering for a very handful of people. Currently, our healthcare system is suffering from a massive demand on its capabilities due incredibly ill people being needed to be cared for. Biomedical technology here, should be the great equalizer. Instead of being bankrupted by ultimately ineffective medical care, you now have more wealth to spend on things that's important to you, like living with your loved ones.
    - asveikau 6y ago
      How often have you had a brush-up against something on the scale of life and death? It can be a crazy experience. People come up with all sorts of rationalizations or decisions about "what it meant to them", good adaptations and bad ones. Let them do it, perhaps with a little less judgement. Be humble instead. Nobody completely has it all figured out.

estomagordo 6y ago

Always heartbreaking to see a parent eulogize or comment on their child's passing, no matter how old the child was.

mrslave 6y ago
He has a child so the natural order of things is not entirely upended.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
I would have agreed with every part of your statement, until a few years ago. I attended the memorial service for the daughter of a retired Christian missionary. The mother's eulogy of her daughter was filled with hope and the expectation of life after death. Much to my surprise, it was far from heartbreaking.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

BlasDeLezo 6y ago

Michael was interviewed by Susan Lammers in her "Programmers at work" (Microsoft Press, 1986). They had a very funny, insightful conversation about music, films and tech. Very sad news indeed. My condolences to the family.

jgrahamc 6y ago

Fuck colon cancer.

codecamper 6y ago

That's a tragedy. Colon cancer is most often avoidable. All one needs to do is go for a colonoscopy by age 45. Heck, why not just start when you are 25? (I had a great friend die at age 32 from colon cancer). So you get a colonoscopy every 5 years. Every year you get the colon cancer marker poop test. It looks for bits of RNA I believe. Or maybe it's PCR. Maybe those are the same. I dunno. Colon cancer typically grows slowly and the precursors are easily seen in the colonoscopy & the colon cancer poop test does a good job too.

codecamper 6y ago
There is also this: https://ezra.com/ https://ezra.com/ Not sure how great it works, but it's a good start. Also this: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blood-test-can-detect-50-different-types-of-cancer https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/blood-test-can-det...
- cknoxrun 6y ago
  There's even a urine test for colon polyps (https://www.prlog.org/12825062-first-only-urine-test-for-colon-polyps-expands-across-the-us.html https://www.prlog.org/12825062-first-only-urine-test-for-col...)
hannob 6y ago
> Heck, why not just start when you are 25? The answer to that is almost certainly that balancing the pros and cons of preventive screenings is a surprisingly complicated science. Screenings can cause harms by causing unnecessary treatment of patients with false positive diagnoses. If you increase screening of patient groups with a very low incidence of something then you overwhelmingly will get more false positives. It requires careful evaluation of the scientific evidence to design screening programs that do what they should do: Improve patient outcomes and not cause more harm than good.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  "More harm than good" cannot be assessed objectively. How could you possibly weigh "one extra death" against "ten unnecessary treatments"? It has to be an individual decision. Give me the false positive rate and the harm of an unnecessary treatment and I'll weigh that against the risk of my premature death.

foolinaround 6y ago

Wow, such accomplishments in wildly different fields!!

notadonut 6y ago

This article is by the same reporter who is accused to "threatening to doxx SlateStarCodex." I don't happen to believe that accusation. It is worthwhile to point out that this is a guy who is trying to convey information that people want to know. He is doing it every week. Some days, everyone is glad that he reported something, because now they know. Other days, everybody thinks he's the devil, because a blogger accused him of something. But it's the same job. He's trying to convey to NYT readers information that he thinks is valuable. That is the role of journalism. I'm surprised how many people on HN think that that function should not be performed in society, because they have been offended or disappointed by parts of "legacy media." Cancel culture is a two-way street.

arvinaminpour 6y ago

Loved this TedX talk that Michael gave a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWR31GRu3_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWR31GRu3_A "I really think the act of making and doing things is the salvation of our crumbling society. It has to be as someone commented over lunch -- creation is the opposite of destruction." RIP