4 ms·

This is the most important work.

by qup 3y ago

Teever 3y ago
It really is. Imagine if we can get to a world where the difference between not having health insurance and having insurance means either you wait for your body to naturally regrow a limb or your insurance covers a more quickly lab grown one. Imagine a world where organ transplant wait lists aren't a thing. Imagine a world where Ukrainian landmine victims are walking on new limbs. We can have this, but instead our best minds are fucking around with optimizing web ads, or they're figuring out how to tweak assembly lines that shit out McDonald's Happy meal toys.
- puchatek 3y ago
  I think i'd prefer a world where there are no landmines in Ukraine. I would even sacrifice the ability to regrow a limb of it helped us get there.
  - Teever 3y ago
    But you know that isn't an option? Limb regeneration is useful for more than just landmines. Does the kind of comment you made really contribute to the conversation?
  - nradov 3y ago
    How specifically would you propose to reduce the rate of traumatic amputations in Ukraine? There are a wide variety of kinetic weapons being used beyond just landmines.
  - re_ed 3y ago
    [flagged]
- taminka 3y ago
  > Imagine if we can get to a world where the difference between not having health insurance and having insurance means either you wait for your body to naturally regrow a limb or your insurance covers a more quickly lab grown one. america moment
  - Teever 3y ago
    Yes I'm trying to frame it in terms the audience of HN can understand. I'm not sure what's wrong with that.
    - csdvrx 3y ago
      >> america moment > Yes I'm trying to frame it in terms the audience of HN can understand. > I'm not sure what's wrong with that. What's wrong is that it's orthogonal to the problem, so it risks creating a pointless discussion about health insurance instead of focusing on the technology. The key problem is the ability to regrow limbs is not yet within our technological reach. Having (or not) health insurance won't get you another pair of legs if you walk on a mine. Maybe you'll get very fancy prosthetics, but it will not be flesh and bone. In a world where this is known technology, even if the costs may initially put it out of reach of people without insurance, should it just be a gene edit AND we have the ability to gene edit like we now have the ability to 3d print, the cat will be out of the bag, and it will be like people buying 3d printers to 3d print guns in countries where gun ownership is forbidden, or people ordering drugs on the dark web: it may be illegal, but people with addictions (or here, without legs) may not really care about the legality. Or they will just do a road trip to Mexico, like how it is for dental work. Health insurance is rarely the #1 issue: I think even Europeans do similar trips when they want something immediately instead of accepting long waitlines or some procedures not being officially available in their country. The only difference is they don't go to Mexico but to Turkey, the Balkans or Eastern Europe. What we need is more technology, and fewer legal limitations, like how it was pointed out last week about how the FDA risk aversion costs human lives in a way that's impossible (or extremely hard) to measure. We're very lucky the Trump administration (and a few others around the world) decided to bypass the regular vaccine safety process during operation warp speed: regardless of what you think about Covid vaccines, we now have mRNA vaccine technology, which is already being tested for many other things.
      - Teever 3y ago
        If I'm reading your comment correctly it appears youre just restating what I'm saying? Is that an accurate interpretation of your comment? What am I missing?
- mxkopy 3y ago
  > We can have this Can we? I think a necessary step towards this direction is a complete genetic model of the human body, which we haven’t even the ability to compute until very recently (if at all). I feel like we need to solve the bioinformatics thing before we’re able to gcc new body parts. Which I think is incredibly solvable, though ofc it’ll take decades.
- amelius 3y ago
  Yes, but remember that humans need like 16+ years to grow limbs into their final shape and size. PS: those adtech folks are destroying the planet by boosting consumption
  - Teever 3y ago
    Most humans as they currently are may need 16 years to grow an adult size limb, but it doesn't need to be that way. An interesting question would be how long does it take a baby to gain the mass of a limb? Another interesting question would be how fast can an adult gain weight? Another interesting question would be if it takes a person 18 years to reach 6' and 160lbs and then they stop growing, how long would it take them to grow another foot or two if they didn't stop growing?
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  Something tells me that death is built-in feature of many nested systems in order to prevent stagnation / local minima or maxima. In the case of social humans, death prevents bad people from remaining alive forever, cementing in power structures and not providing the needed substrate for continual growth of a society. I don't mean to ascribe intention to nature, but rather state that social systems which get far enough for its members to discuss it freely on the internet likely converge on this feature. One could argue that eternal life unlocks the next phase of a civilization, but I am unconvinced that humanity is even properly equipped for the level of technology we have today, much less tomorrow.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. > I am unconvinced that humanity is even properly equipped for the level of technology we have today, much less tomorrow. If you had 1,000 years to figure everything out, you would be more than properly equipped. Instead we all have to operate with this arbitrary 80ish years to just barely figure anything out and then most of us die before we can do anything with the knowledge. It is a horrible and unfair system. Imagine if Einstein were still around today and was able to keep building on top of the knowledge he had before. Surely in that time he would have gotten things done that the vast majority of people could not begin to imagine.
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      > I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. This sounds nice and idealistic on paper, but like a hellscape in reality. A ratio of 1% good people does not a society make.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      > I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. Why would you want that? Sounds like a terrible society to live in. Imagine if Einstein still existed, sure, but also imagine if a hundred serial killers or Hitlers still existed.
seydor 3y ago
... if you re an axolotl
- dekhn 3y ago
  Axolotl, by Julio Cortazar: https://ambystoma.uky.edu/teachers_materials/axolitbook/AxolotlByJulioCortazar.html https://ambystoma.uky.edu/teachers_materials/axolitbook/Axol... (read the whole thing carefully)
  - ycombinete 3y ago
    This built up to such a beautiful end. Thank you

This is the most important work.

by qup 3y ago

This is the most important work.

It really is. Imagine if we can get to a world where the difference between not having health insurance and having insurance means either you wait for your body to naturally regrow a limb or your insurance covers a more quickly lab grown one. Imagine a world where organ transplant wait lists aren't a thing. Imagine a world where Ukrainian landmine victims are walking on new limbs. We can have this, but instead our best minds are fucking around with optimizing web ads, or they're figuring out how to tweak assembly lines that shit out McDonald's Happy meal toys.

puchatek 3y ago
I think i'd prefer a world where there are no landmines in Ukraine. I would even sacrifice the ability to regrow a limb of it helped us get there.
- Teever 3y ago
  But you know that isn't an option? Limb regeneration is useful for more than just landmines. Does the kind of comment you made really contribute to the conversation?
- nradov 3y ago
  How specifically would you propose to reduce the rate of traumatic amputations in Ukraine? There are a wide variety of kinetic weapons being used beyond just landmines.
- re_ed 3y ago
  [flagged]
taminka 3y ago
> Imagine if we can get to a world where the difference between not having health insurance and having insurance means either you wait for your body to naturally regrow a limb or your insurance covers a more quickly lab grown one. america moment
- Teever 3y ago
  Yes I'm trying to frame it in terms the audience of HN can understand. I'm not sure what's wrong with that.
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    >> america moment > Yes I'm trying to frame it in terms the audience of HN can understand. > I'm not sure what's wrong with that. What's wrong is that it's orthogonal to the problem, so it risks creating a pointless discussion about health insurance instead of focusing on the technology. The key problem is the ability to regrow limbs is not yet within our technological reach. Having (or not) health insurance won't get you another pair of legs if you walk on a mine. Maybe you'll get very fancy prosthetics, but it will not be flesh and bone. In a world where this is known technology, even if the costs may initially put it out of reach of people without insurance, should it just be a gene edit AND we have the ability to gene edit like we now have the ability to 3d print, the cat will be out of the bag, and it will be like people buying 3d printers to 3d print guns in countries where gun ownership is forbidden, or people ordering drugs on the dark web: it may be illegal, but people with addictions (or here, without legs) may not really care about the legality. Or they will just do a road trip to Mexico, like how it is for dental work. Health insurance is rarely the #1 issue: I think even Europeans do similar trips when they want something immediately instead of accepting long waitlines or some procedures not being officially available in their country. The only difference is they don't go to Mexico but to Turkey, the Balkans or Eastern Europe. What we need is more technology, and fewer legal limitations, like how it was pointed out last week about how the FDA risk aversion costs human lives in a way that's impossible (or extremely hard) to measure. We're very lucky the Trump administration (and a few others around the world) decided to bypass the regular vaccine safety process during operation warp speed: regardless of what you think about Covid vaccines, we now have mRNA vaccine technology, which is already being tested for many other things.
    - Teever 3y ago
      If I'm reading your comment correctly it appears youre just restating what I'm saying? Is that an accurate interpretation of your comment? What am I missing?
mxkopy 3y ago
> We can have this Can we? I think a necessary step towards this direction is a complete genetic model of the human body, which we haven’t even the ability to compute until very recently (if at all). I feel like we need to solve the bioinformatics thing before we’re able to gcc new body parts. Which I think is incredibly solvable, though ofc it’ll take decades.
amelius 3y ago
Yes, but remember that humans need like 16+ years to grow limbs into their final shape and size. PS: those adtech folks are destroying the planet by boosting consumption
- Teever 3y ago
  Most humans as they currently are may need 16 years to grow an adult size limb, but it doesn't need to be that way. An interesting question would be how long does it take a baby to gain the mass of a limb? Another interesting question would be how fast can an adult gain weight? Another interesting question would be if it takes a person 18 years to reach 6' and 160lbs and then they stop growing, how long would it take them to grow another foot or two if they didn't stop growing?
soulofmischief 3y ago
Something tells me that death is built-in feature of many nested systems in order to prevent stagnation / local minima or maxima. In the case of social humans, death prevents bad people from remaining alive forever, cementing in power structures and not providing the needed substrate for continual growth of a society. I don't mean to ascribe intention to nature, but rather state that social systems which get far enough for its members to discuss it freely on the internet likely converge on this feature. One could argue that eternal life unlocks the next phase of a civilization, but I am unconvinced that humanity is even properly equipped for the level of technology we have today, much less tomorrow.
- skeaker 3y ago
  I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. > I am unconvinced that humanity is even properly equipped for the level of technology we have today, much less tomorrow. If you had 1,000 years to figure everything out, you would be more than properly equipped. Instead we all have to operate with this arbitrary 80ish years to just barely figure anything out and then most of us die before we can do anything with the knowledge. It is a horrible and unfair system. Imagine if Einstein were still around today and was able to keep building on top of the knowledge he had before. Surely in that time he would have gotten things done that the vast majority of people could not begin to imagine.
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    > I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. This sounds nice and idealistic on paper, but like a hellscape in reality. A ratio of 1% good people does not a society make.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    > I would rather a hundred bad people live than let one more good person die if we can help it. Why would you want that? Sounds like a terrible society to live in. Imagine if Einstein still existed, sure, but also imagine if a hundred serial killers or Hitlers still existed.

seydor 3y ago

... if you re an axolotl

dekhn 3y ago
Axolotl, by Julio Cortazar: https://ambystoma.uky.edu/teachers_materials/axolitbook/AxolotlByJulioCortazar.html https://ambystoma.uky.edu/teachers_materials/axolitbook/Axol... (read the whole thing carefully)
- ycombinete 3y ago
  This built up to such a beautiful end. Thank you