Eugenics has obvious issues when applied to mature individuals or groups, but I'll need convincing that the same moral position is warranted if we're talking about cells.
I always felt like Gattaca was unrealistically pessimistic. I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person.
It seems more likely that we would just eliminate some genetic diseases and cancers, and vain/rich parents would select for taller children. Most other differences seem to be too weakly correlated with genes we've identified to result in such a stark change to society. It's less like taking a bunch of dials tuned to 5 and turning then all up to 11, and more like increasing some dials from 5 to 6, and arbitrarily spinning some others because they weren't labeled to begin with.
> I always felt like Gattaca was unrealistically pessimistic. I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person.
To simplify the scenario to a single dimension, imagine how much different the NBA would look like if there were 10,000 Lebron James's and Shaq's being born every year. I'd expect it will take a few generations for sufficient predictive confidence to develop though.
That does get at my point though. While there obviously isn't a single "Shaq gene" or "Lebron gene", I also don't think we could reliably identify even a very large suite of genes that could be tweaked to result in increased "Shaq-ness" or "Lebron-ness". And beyond that, we certainly aren't anywhere close to identifying a "likes basketball" gene.
While I agree with the difficulty to impossibility of finding those specific genes, a whole genotype 'nearest neighbor' or other classification criteria is very interesting:
Considering that both the 'Shaq' phenotype and genotype are known, it wouldn't be too difficult[0] to rank 10,000 embryos per couple in terms of closeness to the 'Shaq' genotype. Then cross reference and weight the 'Shaq-likeness' ranking with the 'Jordan-likeness' ranking and the 'Gretsky-likeness' ranking. To me anyway, that seems like a recipe[1] for, statistically, dramatically improving one's offspring's odds at being a professional basketball player.
[0]Mathematically, anyway
[1]As a counter point, I'd expect to see this sort of thing take off in horse racing if it was productive. Big money and looser ethics.
> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person.
This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works.
Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.
We aren't comparing the global average to the global "best person". We're comparing the typical outcome of a pair of parents with the best possible child those parents could have. Any effects on the outcomes of that child's life based on their genetics will be completely outstripped by how they're raised.
We also aren't discussing selective breeding, the same distribution of people would be pairing and having children.
After several hundred years I could plausibly see a stratification happening among those with the earliest and most advanced access to a technology like this. But given all of the above limitations, I think it would still be fairly limited.
> We're comparing the typical outcome of a pair of parents with the best possible child those parents could have.
I'm still not sure I agree with this. There's huge variability between the reproductive fitness of siblings, even excluding genetic illnesses and deformities. Might be intelligence, body type, attractiveness, etc.
The real problem I see is that qualifying the "best" traits might be impossible, because what's best is highly subjective to the environment and the environment that we all live in is constantly shifting and seems to be doing so at an accelerating rate.
The film Gattaca actually gives an interesting take on how this drive for "best" might play out. Those born into the privilege of having the "best traits" a) don't feel as strong of a need to struggle and overcome adversity, b) dismiss people who are "lesser" than they are, and end up surprised and unable to compete when they fall behind, and c) people who are "lesser" are filled with motivation and drive to prove themselves. I could even see some parents intentionally giving their child a minor disability to give them an edge over their "perfect" peers who all flit their lives away thinking everything will be handed to them on silver platter. Similar to how some parents are starting to realize how damaging massive trust funds and inheritances can be to people that receive them.
We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.
True, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's right and good to alleviate suffering where we can.
But we still stand to suffer as a civilization if the average quality of individuals doesn't improve, or even declines. Especially as the challenges we are capable of facing become more complex and challenging. Idiocracy comes to mind.
Then again, maybe our future is one where we develop sentient AIs that can independently keep civilization running, while humans can be left to degrade into a kind of pet that doesn't do any work and exists only for the benefit and good will of the AI.
natural selection is a cultural myth (like everything talking about an undefined "nature"), may be you'r thinking about evolution theory which is driven by reproduction success, but we already bypass it, living far beyond our fertility time :)
Can you explain what you mean by "natural selection is a cultural myth"?
It is possible that we can "naturally" evolve to live far beyond our individual fertility, and humans did live long before civilization. Complex species like humans require a ton of knowledge and skill training. Old and experienced people can be incredibly valuable to a tribe if they can teach and care for the young, even if they can no longer reproduce themselves. It's not enough to just squirt out offspring. You need to invest in them so they can become successful enough to squirt out their own.
There are other examples like this. Like why various types of animals having warning calls for predators. These things don't make sense for an individual to develop, because the warning call actually draws the predator's attention to the individual making it. The best thing for the individual to do is stay quiet and hide. But the call increases the fitness of the individual's kin, so the trait survives.
Homosexuality might be another instance of this, the "gay uncle" theory. Similar to the reason we live long after fertility, a tribe with a minority of young non reproducing members can be helpful for taking care of and training the children.
there is no doubt on that, we're evolving, we're even able to trace some minor genetic evolutions over the 7k last years. but the cultural myth of "natural selection" or "naturally" evolving is in the question : what is "natural" and by extension, what is'nt ? kin evolution or social behaviors always end up as reproduction success, and the failure to do so, "naturally" or "artificially" end up in extinction, that's all. there is nothing specifically "natural" or "artificial" here. when talking about genetics the involved time scales badly fit cultural consideration like thoses. it is not less "natural" to gain reproductive success by genetic intervention than without, unless you are able to explain what is this "nature". or in other words : there is nothing to bypass unless you'r able to say/describe/explain what :)
Agreed, though I intentionally conflate the two concepts as one. That is just my own personal view of evolution and natural selection. I for one would like to do an experiment where we pass a law allowing the removal of all warning signs, warning labels and guard rails both literal and visual.
There is a genetic mutation that allows a person to function normally on just 4 hours of sleep. A person who needs 8 hours of sleep in this world would probably always be behind the rest.
I could have been more clear, the distinction is semantic. I was referring to culling/sterilization to prevent reproduction in the sexually mature. Unborn persons are not adults, even if they will be.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
You know what I hear when a product is touted as being "in the top 10"? That it's definitely somewhere between #6 and #10. Because if it was 3rd, it'd be "top 3", and if it was 5th, it would be "in the top 5".
If a pull quote or headline shows a good statistic for one cohort, it's a fair bet that other cohorts didn't show such a positive result, or else the touting would have been something like "overall" rather than "15–24".
Within the context of logic, you cannot imply anything about other cohorts from this one statement alone. However, if general population use remained steady or rose, it would definitely imply that fall is attributable to said cohort.
Does the article have anything to say about general population?
> "While drug use during individual lifetimes among the general population appeared to increase in the decade following reform,"
No, but it is within context of narrative crafting practices. If it fell across all age groups, they would have said so, instead of restricting their claim to narrow group of youths. To misunderstand it is either sign of extreme naivety, or willful ignorance.
> By your same logic, if it rose, they would have said so. They didn't.
No, because they aren’t uninterested, unbiased observers just reporting the facts. The entire linked article is pushing very specific policy, and it is only expected that they will only raise arguments in favor of the policy they are proposing.
> Perhaps it was unchanged meaningfully / statistically significant enough to comment?
No. I looked at the data, and reported it accurately. Drug use went up overall, and if you disregard drop in heroin use (though only among young people, it also went up among those 35+), use increased significantly. Drop in heroin use among youth has offset the growth in use of other drugs.
> No. I looked at the data, and reported it accurately.
You were asked for sources. Instead, you pointed to the article someone else linked, and asserted that it’s biased reporting so the data that they didn’t show backs up what you say.
You still haven’t provided any sources for your ongoing assertions.
They don't provide solid sources because they don't exist. Their claims are untrue in the spirit in which they were posted: That the results of the policy were uniformly harmful.
Will you apologize to me for implying that I’m lying here about the ground data facts on drug use in Portugal, if I do provide the sources? Or are you just performatively asking me for sources, refusing to extend even a modicum of charity, just to disappear after I spend half an hour digging back up the government documents I remember seeing a few years ago, when I looked into this?
I have done this research already, which is why I can in good faith say that you are wrong and reality doesn't support what you say. I'll charitably offer that it is possible that I was wrong, and if you prove that I will absolutely apologise.
>"Alternative medicine" like ivermectine or hydroxychloroquine have no scientific, properly studied basis for being used.
When a medical doctor prescribes a drug for a purpose that is currently being studied scientifically, that is not "alternative medicine". Ivermectin is still being studied. Hydroxychloroquine was emergency authorized by the FDA.
I've read a debunking of that as well, which was basically that the study uses poisonously high levels of HCQ (much higher than normal or required), and that it uses no zinc. Zinc is the actual virus killer, HCQ just lets in into the cell (it's a zinc ionophore).
This is a distressingly common technique for making studies say what you want them to say. I've dug into several dietary studies over the years claiming how this or that diet is good or bad for you, and a lot of them basically involve feeding the worst-possible $DIET_X to one set of mice and the best possible $DIET_Y to the other, and lo, $DIET_Y wins. So, for instance, you can feed a "low carb" diet that fills in the fats with a ton of transfats or with good fats, and you can feed a "high carb" diet that has a lot of whole grains or has a whole lot of bleached, refined flour, and produce whichever results you want. This is a non-trivial part of the reason why "peer reviewed" studies keep continuously putting out what seems like contradictory results.
Unfortunately, it means just "trusting a peer reviewed study" is even harder than it should be. You have to dig into the study to see if it even makes any sense which can be very difficult. And you have to follow the money, not "even" if the study says what you think it ought to say, but especially when it says what you want it to say.
I actually think it might be a good example because it highlights the distinction between "medicine" and "alternative medicine": approval for use. Many drugs have been approved for a use in the past, only to be superseded by better drugs or found to be dangerous or ineffective.
Take for example acetaminophen (aka paracetamol/tylenol): it is borderline ineffective, has been superseded by ibuprofen for almost all use cases, and the required dosage for its tiny effect is also very close to dangerous levels. Yet it is still the go-to drug of parents, GPs and hospitals for a range of ailments from the common cold to post-operative pain. "Good old paracetamol" is in every medicine cabinet in the Western world. I've told my folks a hundred times that it simply doesn't work, but they use it for pretty much any condition. Mum even gave it to her old dog. It's trusted like oxo cubes, Campbell's soup or a nice cup of tea. And that's why it's the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world. While it hasn't had it's approval removed yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it did some day, and I doubt it would be approved today if it were being introduced.
Even so: is it still very much "medicine", not "alternative medicine".
>> Take for example acetaminophen (aka paracetamol/tylenol): it is borderline ineffective, has been superseded by ibuprofen for almost all use cases, and the required dosage for its tiny effect is also very close to dangerous levels.
This is only really accurate in a small window of analysis. It's been shown that paracetamol + ibuprofen has synergistic effects for most pain-related issues and paracetamol is superior to ibuprofen for migraine headaches; furthermore, the obvious correct headache drug of choice is aspirin/paracetamol/caffeine, aka Excedrin, which is vastly superior to ibuprofen.
I won't argue that paracetamol has acute liver toxicity issues (the largest drug of overdose problems, though a lot of this is intentional rather than accidental), but ibuprofen is abused in a chronic fashion with buildup over time leading to renal failure and worse (pro/amateur athletes are particularly at risk of chronic abuse issues).
I won't argue that paracetamol is way more dangerous than people think, and there should be far more warning labels (which J&J fights against), but I would be genuinely shocked if it got its approval revoked; similarly, I'd expect it to be approved if it was around today as well - especially if we knew about the synergistic effects it has with aspirin and caffeine.
> When a medical doctor prescribes a drug for a purpose that is currently being studied scientifically, that is not "alternative medicine".
It really is, as there is absolutely no evidence it has any effect whatsoever and at best it only serves as a placebo. In short, it's snake oil. Worse: politically-motivated snake oil.
> Are the people participating in the scientific studies of the drug participating in alternative medicine?
Please let me know when a reputable study that undergoes peer review in an established and respected journal reports that the drug does work as their fans and militants claim.
Until then, keep in mind that "alternative" in "alternative medicine" stands for "hand-waving". As the old adage goes, alternative medicine that works does have a special name. It's called medicine.
> Please let me know when a reputable study that undergoes peer review in an established and respected journal reports that the drug does work as their fans and militants claim.
There is one ongoing right now: Oxford University's PRINCIPLE trial. Until results of that trial are reported, about the only accurate thing anyone can say is that current evidence is ambiguous.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are treatments that fall outside of mainstream healthcare.
> Are the people participating in the scientific studies of the drug participating in alternative medicine?
Well the placebo group taking sugar pills for their cancer are not exactly going 'by the book' or lamestream healthcare and the active group taking whatever ... well lets just agree to disagree shall we?
Read the article. We're not talking about formal verification.
>It's Sunday morning and I just discovered that I've lost 3To of data and that all data pipelines have stop working because on Friday I ran for no reason
Back in 2014, my first tech job, I wrote a clean-up script to delete HDFS artifacts listed in some text file. One day I modified the list and left a blank line at the end. :)
In my experience some people keep making the same careless mistakes, the first time, you let it pass, treat it as a learning experience. The second time, you start seeing that it's always the same person doing the same mistake.
Copy pasting is not an excuse, before you run anything destructive, you double check what you're running.
Anyone who is responsible will double check before running this kind of command, and if I can't get that person off the team, I'd severely restrict his access (in general, I think most people in a team should not have access to production data).
And we do have disaster recovery plans so there's very little that could be done that would be catastrophic. But still, a lot of the disaster recovery plans call for downtime because it's not worth the cost benefit to engineer the system to be completely resilient to idiocy.
Modern terminals marks pasted data as pasted, and similarly modern shells detect these marks and do not run the pasted data immediately, but shows it, highlighted, so that you can review it before confirming it.
Their price is fine if you look at the Apple analog. Not even knows they want a Tesla like not everyone knew they wanted an iPhone. It's not that they even want one, you basically have to have a smartphone nowdays. EVs will be similar in many many respects. And once someone tries one, that is it. There is no going back.
Of coarse there are other brands of smartphones, but not thing comes close to iPhone in terms of the brand, just like Tesla. There will always be metrics other brands can beat Tesla in, but the overall brand and product is unrivaled and will probably be so for the next 10 years. After that though, it's anyone's guess.
1. Nissan Leaf $28,375 - 150 Mile range for this price. (It is not advisable to drive this car long distances because the battery overheats and will reduce charging)
2. Mazda MX-30 $34,645 - ~100 mile range (ideal conditions)
3. Hyundai Ioniq $34,650 - 170 miles
Model 3 starts at 262 Miles and has the superchargers + most of the stuff Tesla is known for included (sentry mode, good UI software, games, etc). I don't know about you but it seems like a second gen car whereas the others are all on first gen.
All of the cars I listed are real street legal cars (no NEVs), available for purchase today (no concepts), that are plugin electrics (no hybrids) with a range in excess of 100 miles, with a price less than $40,000. These are viable inexpensive cars. That was the criteria. Arguing that these don't count because they're not comparable to one that costs 50% more, isn't fair.
The state with longest average commute distance is New Hampshire at 46 miles.[0] Even if that’s one way, that’s only 100 miles a day. Assuming you can only charge overnight, you’ll never use that extra range. You'll never even go below 50% if you can charge at work.
The software you’re citing for Tesla is gimmicks and cruel jokes. Why does someone need a game that only works when your car is parked and the screen faces the driver? When would someone use this? And even if you find the situation where you want to play a game in parked car, why would chose this rather than any of the games on your phone?
Tesla navigation last time I checked was Google Maps, but not Google turn-by-turn. That's odd. When I test drove a Model S, the salesman pitched some unknown streaming service as “like Pandora”. I’m sorry, but what? The car doesn’t even come with Android or Apple CarPlay.
I’ve used CarPlay, it’s heads and shoulders above any OEM infotainment system I’ve ever used. It’s so good, it’s a requirement for my next car. Assuming AndroidPlay (or whatever it's called) is just as good, why would anyone want anything else?
>All of the cars I listed are real street legal cars (no NEVs), available for purchase today (no concepts), that are plugin electrics (no hybrids) with a range in excess of 100 miles, with a price less than $40,000. These are viable inexpensive cars. That was the criteria. Arguing that these don't count because they're not comparable to one that costs 50% more, isn't fair.
My argument is that the cars are priced the same as Tesla. You are paying less but getting a compromised car in many respects(range, charge time, reduced interior quality/size). You are basically buying Gen 1 tech at standard price.
>The software you’re citing for Tesla is gimmicks and cruel jokes.
I think we are not going to agree on this but these days they have an excellent UI experience. You haven't actually spent an extended amount of time in a modern Tesla have you? These other cars you cite have gimped infotainment compared to Tesla so they have to be augmented with Carplay. Some people would prefer to use their iPhone as it can be upgraded, fair enough. Tesla decided to go in another direction.
But Tesla also throws in nice to haves such as Sentry mode, games etc. These are non-existant on the other platforms even as an option. Why would you value something like Sentry mode at 0$? It is a value add for some even if you don't want to use it.
>The state with longest average commute distance is New Hampshire at 46 miles.[0] Even if that’s one way, that’s only 100 miles a day. Assuming you can only charge overnight, you’ll never use that extra range. You'll never even go below 50% if you can charge at work.
This is Gen 1 EV mindset. You are paying ~35K for a car that can't go long distances/cannot fast charge? The Mazda cannot even match the 2012 Nissan Leaf. I was researching the Mazda as a potential vehicle since I really like their cars but this is not something I could fathom paying for and not feel ripped off. It is not fast, not really luxurious, has short range. It has no redeeming qualities other than it is Mazda's first EV.
At that point you are not getting 35K worth of value out of these cars. A basic gas car is more competitive at this price range. The collection of people who would pay 35K for a 100-150 mile EV but not buy a gas car or pay more for a viable EV has got to be quite small. In fact I'd wager that the car shortage + Carpool lane access in some states + aggressive incentives is whats driving any sales of these cars. In the case of the Mazda they are only selling in CA from what I understand.
The 2022 Chevrolet Bolt has a range of 259 miles and starts at $31,995. It has the "Super Cruise" that Consumer Reports rates as the #1 Assisted Driver tech.
Seems promising although I don't know if consumers will like the compromised storage space and the design. GM had an opportunity to really outshine after the v1 Bolt but it seems like they took an incremental approach to the v2 Bolt. It is a potentially competitive vehicle assuming they didn't cut corners like they did with the first Bolt such as using the worst seats in the GM parts bin. I guess many will ignore these issues but I wonder how many potential sales are lost due to the LG battery fires in the Gen v1 Bolt.
Check out the specs of a Model 3. Unlike most other cars, where the lowest spec means that most of the comfort equipment you want to have is missing, there are almost no differences between the tiers. The most significant difference is the size of the battery and that it only has RWD, otherwise it is mostly identical to the higher specs. Buying the lowest spec of the Model 3 is quite common as a result.
