xaa

26 ms·

241.
by xaa 12y ago
Don't you think that many of the world's problems: global warming, pollution, war, and so on, might be pursued a little more energetically if people knew they were going to be around for 500 years rather than 80?
242.
by xaa 12y ago
I would rather say SENS is on the edge of the mainstream. de Grey attended and SENS partially sponsored the last major aging conference this year (AGE in San Antonio). If SENS were truly a fringe organization, the conference organizers woul
243.
by xaa 12y ago
Er, they died because they had no choice. They probably wouldn't have chosen to do so if they had a choice. Larry, and others working on this problem, want to give people a choice in the matter.
244.
by xaa 12y ago
Well, he also was the OP of this (interesting) link, so without this "shill", you wouldn't have anywhere to put this ad hominem comment. I don't really agree with all of what he's saying either, but at least address
245.
by xaa 12y ago
I work in aging, and I think both avenues -- understanding the genetic bases of longevity, and working on repairing damage or other interventions -- need to be pursued in parallel. Yes, genetics is hot, but also necessary to find the molecu
246.
by xaa 12y ago
I think the root problem is that SemVer works great, and was designed for, larger projects with many developers and a relatively stable API. For smaller projects and libraries, it works very poorly, because these are usually "itch-scra
247.
by xaa 12y ago
Actually, I guess what I meant is that there can be a massive delay between the time that the patent is filed and when it is granted (or rejected), during which time you are protected, and it doesn't count against the patent life. My b
248.
by xaa 12y ago
It already is, because the way many drugs are developed is that the NIH funds the basic research behind it, and early-stage in-vitro trials and maybe some mouse trials. Usually it is only when the drug is ready for clinical trials that phar
249.
by xaa 12y ago
Well, the international enforceability of US patents is already sketchy at best, and if the phamaceutical doesn't even have a patent at all, there's absolutely nothing stopping a company from producing and selling it in a country
250.
by xaa 12y ago
Companies would (justifiably) still want provisional patent protection for the very long period between the idea's conception and FDA approval, to reduce the risk on their huge investment. Thus, wouldn't this idea exacerbate the a
251.
by xaa 12y ago
Also a fellow OKCite, and I agree wholeheartedly that it is a great place to live (although Tulsa is better). However, I had no idea there was any kind of developer community here. Any other events going on? Or at least a centralized place
252.
by xaa 12y ago
He has definitely moderated his tone in the past few years, and has implicitly acknowledged that the specific program he outlined in his book may have been an oversimplification. But still, you have to be a bit more subtle with grant review
253.
by xaa 12y ago
Funny you mention that. I just came back from this year's AGE conference in San Antonio, which is very much a mainstream research conference, and not only was it partially sponsored by SENS, but de Grey himself was there. So yes, they
254.
by xaa 12y ago
I think it's a little deeper than that. During the '70s and '80s heyday of AI, the focus was on mechanisms that would mimic high-level aspects of human cognition: A* search, Prolog, and so on. The overall approach at the time
255.
by xaa 12y ago
You are right that you won't see many researchers publicly talking about human-level AI, or framing their research in terms of the search for general AI. But that doesn't mean the field is "dead". For example, I work in
256.
by xaa 12y ago
It is indeed a really nice language. My biggest irritation with it was that it can't parse C headers, so even though you save programming time vs C++ due to its higher level of abstraction and flexibility, you lose a lot of that time r
257.
by xaa 12y ago
Every aspect of wet-lab biology is very expensive. Beyond the equipment and reagents, if you want to do in vivo aging research, you need a pathogen-free environment to house rats/mice for months or years and food to feed them. Hackersp
258.
by xaa 12y ago
We have an open position. Contact this gentleman: http://omrf.org/research-faculty/scientists/wren-jonathan-d/ The brief research blurb doesn't specifically mention aging, but we in fact have heavy colla
259.
by xaa 12y ago
My concern about Calico and the other commercial efforts at aging research is, will the tools and data they develop be made public so that others can build on them? Also, supposing they succeed, I find the idea of commercial ownership of a
260.
by xaa 12y ago
I do research at the interface between aging and bioinformatics. It's a great place to be because many aging researchers, while smart and capable at their own techniques, are basically in the informatics stone age. So there is a lot of
261.
by xaa 13y ago
There are two possible scenarios: 1. An idea is self-evidently wrong to the vast majority of educated people; e.g., the earth is flat, slavery is good. In this case, the idea can be safely ignored because it has no political power. 2. A bad
262.
by xaa 13y ago
The appropriate response to someone who is advocating an idea that has been proven wrong, from flat-earthers, to Holocaust deniers, to slavery advocates, is not to ostracize or fire them (unless their job directly relates to the subject tha
263.
by xaa 13y ago
Fundamentally, law/politics are addressing an empirical question: how do we maximize the well-being of the population. I understand that this is a much more fuzzy and difficult question than those addressed by the hard sciences, but
264.
by xaa 13y ago
Let me put it a different way, since the term "free speech" admittedly has many different connotations. My day job is as a scientist. In science, individual researchers put forth many different ideas, some right, some wrong. Over
265.
by xaa 13y ago
I have a problem with the very idea that a mostly apolitical organization like Mozilla should have a sweeping political/social/cultural alignment. If Eich were opposed to net neutrality, or against open internet standards, etc, t
266.
by xaa 13y ago
As I said, I disagree with my father-in-law's views, just like I disagree with Eich's views. I have tried to talk my father-in-law out of them. But I certainly don't think employment should be conditional on having the right
267.
by xaa 13y ago
My father-in-law is a high-level official in the "Alliance Defending Freedom", which is essentially the conservative counterpart to the ACLU, providing legal advice to conservative causes. For years, he's been telling me abou
268.
by xaa 13y ago
Obviously I don't condone any mistreatment of or discrimination against transgendered people and think they should have full legal protections. On a personal level, they should be treated ethically and equitably, just like any other pe
269.
by xaa 13y ago
I'm sorry, but I'm not quite the asshole you think I am. If someone asked me to call them by a certain pronoun or salutation (names are different as they are completely arbitrary), I would do it, out of respect for them. But l
270.
by xaa 13y ago
@LukeShu I'm well aware of the current usage of "gender" in educated circles. That's why I chose it as an example. "Gender" previously was essentially a synonym for "sex" (except in the field of lingu

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