3 ms·

In this context, your "simply" is probably the greatest understatement I've read on HN in 2023 so far. There's nothing simple about coordinating people like thi

In this context, your "simply" is probably the greatest understatement I've read on HN in 2023 so far. There's nothing simple about coordinating people like this, starting from facilitating communication across individual people to bootstrap the process and ending at grabbing enough attention of people on top to gain the necessary world-scale attention towards the problem.

meghan_rain 4y ago
hahah it's the infamous HN Dropbox comment but on steroids
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
  My startup idea is "Uber for Cancer!"
melling 4y ago
“It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding…” You misread what I said. I never said it was a simple problem, I said it was simply a matter of deciding to solve the problem. The Apollo program, for comparison, took 400,000 people a decade to get to the moon, and 2.5% of GDP. https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program If we agree the problem will be solved, then it’s just a matter of deciding to do it sooner than much later. And along the way, fewer people die. So, if we try to do it in 10 years, but it takes 20, we still win.
- phoe-krk 4y ago
  No, you misread what I said. "Simply a matter of deciding to solve the problem" is not "simple" by any means. There's no political incentive to solve cancer since isn't a problem that brings political advantage when solved, like there's no political "race to the moon" with a rival country that happened with Apollo. Race to the moon decided because USA and USSR went into a game of who gets there first; cancer has no such ongoing game and it's a much less spectacular aspect with results that are invisible when compared to videos taken on the surface of the moon. Speaking of results, solving cancer would also mean that people get to live even longer than they do now, which, in an already locally overpopulated and locally aging society, would generate many more issues that death by cancer "conveniently" "solves" at the moment.
  - echelon 4y ago
    You're lasering in on the word "simple". Human civilization is full of optimization gradients. We choose to spend our time and money on certain pathways. OP was musing that amid all the things we spend money and effort on, cancer seems to get too little. If only we could choose to "simply" devote more of our collective energies to it. It's a mere musing, nothing more. We're kind of powerless to these forces of how people choose to spend their lives. Solving cancer itself is by no means "simple". But neither were a lot of the things we've accomplished. We'll get there in time, but it's easy for the brain to imagine a faster path if we had more institutional funding and minds on the task. That's what's simple. You're correct that we won't get people on board with this. We don't consider the recruitment of support or the opportunity cost losses or the myriad of other changes necessary. But this is all just an intellectual exercise in wishful thinking anyway.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Seeing as you're getting tripped up on the word "simple", the sentiment can be rephrased without using that word: Where there is a will, there is a way. If people can be convinced to do something, they will. History proves this as an absolute fact.

meghan_rain 4y ago

hahah it's the infamous HN Dropbox comment but on steroids

CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
My startup idea is "Uber for Cancer!"

melling 4y ago

“It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding…” You misread what I said. I never said it was a simple problem, I said it was simply a matter of deciding to solve the problem. The Apollo program, for comparison, took 400,000 people a decade to get to the moon, and 2.5% of GDP. https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program If we agree the problem will be solved, then it’s just a matter of deciding to do it sooner than much later. And along the way, fewer people die. So, if we try to do it in 10 years, but it takes 20, we still win.

phoe-krk 4y ago
No, you misread what I said. "Simply a matter of deciding to solve the problem" is not "simple" by any means. There's no political incentive to solve cancer since isn't a problem that brings political advantage when solved, like there's no political "race to the moon" with a rival country that happened with Apollo. Race to the moon decided because USA and USSR went into a game of who gets there first; cancer has no such ongoing game and it's a much less spectacular aspect with results that are invisible when compared to videos taken on the surface of the moon. Speaking of results, solving cancer would also mean that people get to live even longer than they do now, which, in an already locally overpopulated and locally aging society, would generate many more issues that death by cancer "conveniently" "solves" at the moment.
- echelon 4y ago
  You're lasering in on the word "simple". Human civilization is full of optimization gradients. We choose to spend our time and money on certain pathways. OP was musing that amid all the things we spend money and effort on, cancer seems to get too little. If only we could choose to "simply" devote more of our collective energies to it. It's a mere musing, nothing more. We're kind of powerless to these forces of how people choose to spend their lives. Solving cancer itself is by no means "simple". But neither were a lot of the things we've accomplished. We'll get there in time, but it's easy for the brain to imagine a faster path if we had more institutional funding and minds on the task. That's what's simple. You're correct that we won't get people on board with this. We don't consider the recruitment of support or the opportunity cost losses or the myriad of other changes necessary. But this is all just an intellectual exercise in wishful thinking anyway.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Seeing as you're getting tripped up on the word "simple", the sentiment can be rephrased without using that word: Where there is a will, there is a way. If people can be convinced to do something, they will. History proves this as an absolute fact.