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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago> Karla Helena-Bueno discovered a common hibernation factor when she accidentally left an Arctic bacterium on ice for too long. I love how this story follows the magic pattern of so much of innovation and discovery - an accident. It's refreshingly human and not a mode of discovery that machine learning is going to completely take away from us.
- dojomouse 2y agoI think ML is likely to be material to us making many more such discoveries. So much of the current constraint is not in the knowledge to identify the interesting pattern, but the capacity to look for it at scale.
- grugagag 2y agoYeah but you missed the point op was making
- markburns 2y agoThat seems an uncharitable view of the reply. The search space is huge, we sometimes find needles in haystacks by accident, isn’t it exciting that we have tools now that can systematically check every piece of hay?
- richrichie 2y agoML search is more about ‘averages’ based on samples. Innovations like these are more about ‘shocks’ that surface fitting cannot capture. Note universal approximation theorem applies only to smooth surfaces.
- tomrod 2y agoNot always. Quantile regression exists. And you can develop "no match" categories.
- richrichie 2y agoQuantile regression is also about averages.
- tomrod 2y agoAverages are formulated as measures of centrality in the L2 norm ("straight line" distance), sum(values) / count(values). Quantile regression uses modifications the L1 norm ("city block" distance); if median (50%) then it is a measure of centrality. Not everything is an average. If you're interested, this is a good (but math heavy) treatment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile_regression#Computation_of_estimates_for_regression_parameters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile_regression#Computatio...
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoWell said.
- radarsat1 2y agoBut the better the mean surface is fitted (in a generizable way), the easier it is to spot outliers.
- dojomouse 2y agoPerhaps. I was thinking along the lines of MarkBurns response - ML will allow us to efficiently look in those places we might otherwise only have searched by accident. If ops point was rather that “accident”/“luck” are uniquely human… I don’t agree. Luck is when probability works out in your favour - and that can happen all the time with any sort of probabilistic search, which is rife in ML.
- WalterBright 2y agoI've been reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". But it's really about the process of discovery in nuclear physics. And most of the discoveries were made by accident.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoStephen B Johnson's "How we got to now" was enlightening on the topic of discovery for me (https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/how-we-got-now https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/how-we-got-now)
- galaxyLogic 2y agoBut if you don't study the math and physics hard, you will not be able to understand that you may have found something, valuable. It would be like Pearls Before Swine.
- COGlory 2y agoI'm all for it. People get lucky, then try to rationalize the past with a skill narrative. Then they soak up all the grants.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago> People get lucky, then try to rationalize the past with a skill narrative. Then they soak up all the grants. They have to put themselves in the situation to get lucky first. This person got a graduate education, and was competent enough to be selected to be doing research in what is likely a multimillion dollar lab owned by an institution, then she had the knowledge and ability to notice and be able to identify what had "accidentally" happened with a micro-organism that we barely understand. Luck was the smallest part of this discovery. I would say that the grant money is well spent funding someone so "lucky".
- COGlory 2y agoEveryone in science works hard. Only a few get lucky. People get scooped every day. Source: spent years looking hard for hibernation promotion factor in P. aeruginosa ribosomes via cryo-EM. Got a PhD and worked a whole lot of 16 hour days. Never got lucky.
- brg 2y agoIf this story were at all true, then you know very well that not everyone in science works hard. In my graduate cohort, those who did the sets first year, set themselves into research, and worked hard graduated. Those who did not left with a masters, although many found success in other fields. It was quite clearly delineated.
- COGlory 2y agoI'm talking about at the PI level. And yes of course a few people don't work hard, but the overwhelming majority do not differentiate themselves by how hard they work, is the point I'm trying to make. Your average PI has the skill set to take advantage of getting lucky. Not sure what you're insinuating about the story not being true, would you like to see maps?
- Karellen 2y ago> The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..." -- commonly attributed to Isaac Asimov
- neutronicus 2y agoAs a one-time scientist, I think Asimov may have been tricked by extreme selection bias on "That's funny..." utterances. It almost always precedes a crushing realization that you have fucked something up and probably wasted a lot of time. You're probably days down exploring that explanation before the eventual "holy shit" (that I never really had the benefit of experiencing).
- lebean 2y agoThe most exciting phrase that heralds a new discovery is not "eureka!" but "holy shit!"
- cardiffspaceman 2y agoThe legend of “eureka” is that a fellow who had a specific problem in mind noticed something specific to his problem. Discoveries like sticky notes are not the same thing.
- czl 2y agoYes. The "eureka" legend refers to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He was tasked with determining if a gold crown commissioned by the king was pure gold, or if the goldsmith had substituted some silver. While taking a bath, Archimedes noticed that the water level rose as he got in, and he suddenly realized that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the submerged object. This gave him the insight that by measuring the volume of water displaced by the crown, and comparing it to the volume displaced by an equal weight of pure gold, he could determine the purity of the crown. Excited by his discovery, Archimedes supposedly leapt out of the bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka!" which means "I have found it!" in Greek.
- micromacrofoot 2y agonot necessarily, machine learning can make more accidents faster
- ASalazarMX 2y agoMaybe AI won't forget bacteria in the ice, but like us, it is really good at finding patterns, but at a massive scale. Instead of an accident it could find the hibernation mechanism from another angle. And if AGI becomes a thing, it might go "Hey, this is funny" in weird ways after it has ingested enough data. I love the novel Colossus because almost 60 years ago it portayed realistically how a nascent AGI could behave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)
- nico 2y agoVery similar pattern to the recent stories about grokking (someone leaving a model training for too long by accident, then discovering something unexpected when realizing the accident)
- m463 2y agoI've been using the humble refrigerator/freezer for accidental bacterial science experiments all my life. (I vividly remember as a kid leaving a slice of bread in the refrigerator as a for-credit experiment until it grew interesting green mold to study)
- dools 2y agoDehydrate!
- martin82 2y agoCame here to look for this comment :)))
- wdh505 2y agoI'm having visions of old people freezing their bodies and inducing "dormancy" so they can wake up when the world is a better place. I would invest in that company.
- darth_avocado 2y agoIt won't be very useful if you're already old, more practical approach would be to freeze yourself in your youth until they find a way to stop ageing.
- Nicholas_C 2y agoYou could unfreeze yourself when they figure out how to reverse aging.
- jrflowers 2y agoHow does one unfreeze oneself
- exe34 2y agoVery slowly, to avoid the crystals forming suddenly.
- darth_avocado 2y agoI think microwave is the answer. Though you may end up with a cold heart.
- darth_avocado 2y agoReversing maybe harder than slowing and you would have to wait longer.
- gryfft 2y agoI mean, it's been going on for over fifty years[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundatio...
- begueradj 2y agoThis reminds me of the fact that humans used to be able to hibernate (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117993/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117993/) and (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35033907/early-humans-hibernation/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a35033907/early-hum...)
- lukan 2y agoFrom glancing over, it does not really seem a confirmed fact, but a hypothesis. "They chose to spend the worst part of the year trying to sleep through it inside of relatively safe caves, and to do that, they sacrificed nutrition and vitamin D from the sun." Also it does not really matter for your vitamin D levels, if you are outside in winter in the north or in a cave. The sun is too low for the body to produce Vitamin D anyway (only the Inuit for example do not need sun, to produce Vitamin D btw. ) And that they lacked nutrition in winter can also just mean, that there simply was not much food in the winters, which is kind of expected, before humans developed storage and preservation technologies?
- seszett 2y ago> only the Inuit for example do not need sun, to produce Vitamin D btw As far as I can tell, they need vitamin D just like any other life form and can only synthesise it from the sun, just like all other lifeforms on Earth. They might have adapted to reduced amounts of available vitamin D though[0], because they don't have much of it available to them in the first place and because there's really no other source than producing your own from the sun, or eating things that have produced it from the sun. So they have a vitamin D deficiency, but it's less severe than for most people. [0]https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/etudinuit/2016-v40-n2-etudinuit04225/1055442ar/ https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/etudinuit/2016-v40-n2-etu...
- hyperthesis 2y agoDon't they (traditionally) also have a much higher meat intake than average, which supplies vitamin D?
- wayoverthecloud 2y agoWhen you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems even when there's a simple solution. I think that our bodies are highly intelligent and humans intrude a lot in it's natural functioning by inventing too much techniques and methods. Like I want to stay awake, drink coffee. Drink coffee, get insomnia. Insomnia leads to unhappiness. Take insomnia meds, get withdrawals. Generating more problems along the way while forgetting what the solutions were even for in the first place. If we just listened to our bodies signs, it pretty much tells us why you you are lethargic and need coffee in the first place. Sometimes we should just trust nature to do it's work. This article was a refreshing read.
- therein 2y agoI don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26
- exe34 2y agothe heavenly step-dad doesn't care when they die of starvation either.
- fire_lake 2y agoA systematic study of birds would find that many do indeed starve to death.
- lm28469 2y agoIs the goal of humanity to replicate infinitely and love as long as possible regardless of anything else ? Because that's what cancers do and it never end well for the host
- sgt_bilko 2y agoMakes me wonder if organisms on Mars (if they ever existed) used such a mechanism
- surfingdino 2y ago> Instead of complaining about what we’re missing when we’re asleep, maybe we can experience it as a process that connects us to all life on Earth, including microbes sleeping deep in the Arctic permafrost. I'm quite happy to know that "microbes sleeping deep in the Arctic permafrost" are asleep. I'd rather not have to think what might happen when they wake up.
- galaxyLogic 2y agoIt's an interesting idea, why do humans and other species sleep? Maybe it is simply because they can. If there's no good reason to be awake, then sleep. Save your energy for a better time to be awake. That doesn't answer why we have dreams however.
- Sharlin 2y agoPeople literally die if they go long enough without sleep, and of course everybody knows the cognitive impairment that even a moderate amount of sleep debt causes. That said, saving energy is certainly one part of it – and what else could a diurnal species do in the darkness anyway? (And similarly for animals adapted to night or twilight activity).
- Moldoteck 2y agoimo microbes/viruses carefully evolved after countless encounters of antibiotics and other stuff that we have now may have the same or greater danger level
- geon 2y agoThey might start releasing enormous amounts of CO2 and methane.
- ssijak 2y agoCant wait to see what types of bacteria and viruses are dormant in permafrost that is thawing /s
- xyst 2y agoTo me, seems like this is what we describe today as a “comatose” state. Is the individual “brain dead” or did the person sustain so much damage that it required an “emergency brake”. The body and mind is healing itself but today’s scientists and doctors cannot fully quantify it. Only using “primitive” tools (EEGs, CT, MRI) which only allow us to see through a tiny keyhole of what is a vast number of possibilities.
- krisoft 2y ago> To me, seems like this is what we describe today as a “comatose” state. Is the individual “brain dead” or did the person sustain so much damage that it required an “emergency brake”. I’m not sure what you are talking about, but “comatose” and “brain dead” are two very different states. If you are brain dead you are not comatose.
- trenchgun 2y agoThat is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die
- rolandog 2y agoWow. This is nature's mechanism for lazy evaluation.
- thimkerbell 2y ago"Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast." Maybe we need this for dogs, so their lifespan isn't substantially squandered when their owners are at work.
- Ductapemaster 2y agoYou should check out a company called Loyal — they’re making lifespan increasing drugs for dogs of all sizes!
- niemandhier 2y agoThis feels quite distopian.
- hnbad 2y agoTurning your pets on and off to accomodate your lifestyle? Yeah, that doesn't sound great. I'm sure there'd be a huge market for it though.
- tracker1 2y agoIs the value of a dog's life subjectively tied to the enjoyment of the owner? May as well shut down when the owner is asleep too... or, get a robot dog instead.
- tzs 2y agoI think you and most of the other commentators are not reading the suggestion the way it was intended. Dogs are usually very social. If they are left alone they will often be very unhappy. I think what was being suggested was that if a dog that was going to be left alone for half the day each work day could be "turned off" during that time so it would not experience those hours of loneliness it would make the dog's life happier.
- tracker1 2y agoI'm not a fan of having a single dog... I think you should usually have at least two a few years apart.. Right now we have 4, spaced apart about 3-4 years.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoNobody seems to be mentioning the therapeutic possibilities. I'd love to be able to make a bacterial infection dormant. Or a tumor.
- tracker1 2y agoTumors might be difficult, since afaik, cancer cells aren't working correctly by definition.
- frenchyatwork 2y agoAlso, the classic issue with tumors, is that they're your own body, and it's hard to selectively target them. Any treatment that hibernates tumor cells is likely hibernate normal cells, and be incompatible with life; unless you get really lucky.
- mvc 2y agoSshhh. Noone tell the proles that it's perfectly natural to have a bit of slack where many individuals in complex systems are doing nothing and, far from being a leech on society, it is actually essential to keeping the overall system alive.
- Phiwise_ 2y agoAre the proles in your metaphor also capable of indefinitely suspending half of all their starvation-level resource consumption? Are they doing it as stochastic insurance against a population-level extinction event, which they are capable of recovering from? This is a mind-numbingly poor extension of this article's actual contents.
- mvc 2y agoProbably not. Which is why the rest of the population should fund their (very modest) consumption until they're ready to be productive again rather than force them into some risky low paid job like delivering pizzas on a push bike so they can generate profits for investors who use those profits to heat their swimming pools and cool down their massive houses. Or lately plough into AI planet heating credits. The population-level extinction event is coming if we don't change course.
- Phiwise_ 2y agoI don't follow. You agree these people are nothing like the bacteria in the story... and that's why they should be treated like them? And also you need to relay your dislike heated swimming pools I guess?
- jrvieira 2y agoi feel seen