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Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats

780 points · 805 comments · raahelb

  1. modeless · · focus · HN ↗
    It's clear Dario believes that the solution to AI's PR problem is to cure cancer. Or invent other revolutionary medical treatments. They're going to heavily promote every step along the way no matter how small or far away from commercialization they are, like this one.

    No doubt that curing cancer would help, but I think the timeline might be a little too long. Even RSI AGI will not be able to get new medical treatments to market instantly. Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.

    1. baq · · focus · HN ↗
      Dario would like to ‘cure’ aging. He’s got some personal experience with bad illnesses, but aging isn’t that. I also have reduced trust for people who want to live forever and don’t have kids.
      1. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
        > I also have reduced trust for people who want to live forever and don’t have kids.

        I want to live forever (or until I'm bored of it) and I don't have kids. I'm not sure what that has to do with trustworthiness.

        Edit: And, you're saying you want to die. Is that more trustworthy than not wanting to die? I suppose if you are religious, you might believe you're going somewhere good when you die, in which case, you don't actually believe death exists, so we're having different conversations. I believe death exists and is permanent, and I'd like to not do that.

        1. patcon · · focus · HN ↗
          > I want to live forever (or until I'm bored of it) and I don't have kids. I'm not sure what that has to do with trustworthiness.

          When I hear people say stuff like this, I hear that they want to remove the single most universal chesterton's fence in all of living systems. I hear them take pride in their/our hubris, and demonstrate willingness to put the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk because they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.

          Biological singletons (outside very specific niche situations) are not meant to persist, and most anything that has tried, it has simply been selected out of the lineage. This constraint (which we don't understand yet) is presumably the whole reason why biology discovered and moved into the more ephemeral higher-order substrate of thought and culture.

          Just my feelings though. Feel free to disagree.

          1. lirolero · · focus · HN ↗

            [dead]

          2. hlynurd · · focus · HN ↗
            > are not meant to

            Because it hasn't happened?

          3. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
            Chesterton's fence implies intention, a will, a decision to stand up the fence. I don't believe in gods, so my existence and its length were determined by a series of accidents. It isn't right or wrong or even optimal, it's just the traits that survived thus far.

            It isn't even a rule of biology. There are living things with much longer lifespans than humans, some even effectively immortal (absent predation or accident or climate change).

            Your language implies you believe in a creator of some sort, something making decisions about how things should be. You've called it "biology", but "biology" doesn't "discover" or have a "reason" for doing things.

            > I hear them take pride in their/our hubris, and demonstrate willingness to put the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk because they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.

            I hear you taking pride in accepting death on a quite short timespan as a necessity, and hubris that one individual living longer puts "the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk".

            We have already disconnected from evolution, to a large degree. Many people who would have died in childhood a couple hundred years ago now survive to adulthood and procreation.

            Should we stop vaccinating children because they were supposed to die to protect the delicate balance? Surely it is hubris to prevent their deaths when evolution and biology discovered polio and smallpox to kill and maim them? If there is a biological Chesterton's fence it is probably sitting somewhere around five years old and half of people wouldn't make it past it.

            1. howunfortunate · · focus · HN ↗
              > Chesterton's fence implies intention, a will, a decision to stand up the fence

              It most certainly does not.

              1. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
                [delayed]
                1. howunfortunate · · focus · HN ↗
                  As one obvious example, evolution is not agentic but still answers "why" questions.

                  "Why do we have a heart" "Why do we sweat", etc.

                  But Chesterton's fence is often used in an even MORE generalized way than just that, not "why is it there" but "what are we not seeing about how this connects to everything else"

                  As an example, eradicating mosquitos. We see many obvious reasons why it might be good, we can even see that they don't seem that important in the food chain, but it would be hubris to assume we understand every potential connection they have to world ecology.

                  1. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
                    [delayed]
                  2. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
                    [delayed]
          4. orangecat · · focus · HN ↗
            they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.

            "Thermodynamic evolution" says that sick kids should be left to die so that we can replace them with a better roll of the genetic dice. Yes, I do think we're more clever than that.

            1. patcon · · focus · HN ↗
              That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is us as a larger living system, coarse-grain scale. We each live at fine-grained scale. Negotiating truths and values between those is the fuckin work of being alive. Bluntly, some might reasonably ask: who wants you individually to be happy and surrounding by family if your society trends toward failure? That's not me saying "I don't care about you" (I do!) but it's me pointing out that there are fuzzy lines when negotiating values across scales.

              Death is part of our thriving and a part of us ("us" in the Gaian sense) at the largest coarse-grain scale, though it hurts like hell at the fine-grain one

              1. SwellJoe · · focus · HN ↗
                > who would reasonably prioritize your individual happiness and health if the cost on your society/culture means a trend toward collapse?

                What evidence do you have that people living longer would cause a trend toward collapse? What evidence do you have that people who live longer and without debilitating health problems wouldn't care more about the future of our planet and society and be able to achieve more toward improving it?

                You're accusing people who want to live longer of selfishly causing societal collapse acting as though you're taking a moral high road, preserving a precious thing, but you're arguing that 8 billion people alive today should die. That's a remarkable bit of ethical gymnastics and a monstrous position to take by my reckoning.

                I was kind of OK with it when I was thinking, "OK, religious people believe nobody ever really dies." Which I believe is a fairy story, but one that many people believe and are raised to believe. But, yours seems to be your own brand of religion, and it doesn't even pretend people actually never die and go to heaven but you want it to happen to everyone anyway, which is really something.

                1. solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
                  There is no coherent reasoning with this crowd. It's just rationalized copium about the fact that they will die.

                  They don't dare to dream of a world in which this isn't the case because you can't get hurt by a future you don't believe in.

                  1. patcon · · focus · HN ↗
                    Ugh, I suppose I perhaps seem as insufferably myopic to you, as you do to me.

                    Collapse is evident in that almost nothing survives being immortal except cancers and flatworms. You witness the evidence of this "collapse" all around you in that virtually nothing deigns to live forever and tell the tale (genetically speaking), and then you call me neglectful of some so-called evidence?

                    And as for your challenge, you don't know the conversations I've had with people I love. The politics of immortality are so challenging that I would not write my sincere beliefs so readily on the public internet.

                    EDIT: I do appreciate the chance to engage with ppl so different from the sort I regularly speak with, and so am grateful for the words, even if it seems we are both a little frustrated by them. Which is to say, thanks

                    1. solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
                      Humans are unique. We solve problems. Lots of things we do - cannot be seen in nature and would be thought to be impossible. I am sure you can think of many examples!

                      The political problem is a solvable one. We have been solving such problems for millennia. It is not a reason for eight billion people to die.

                      1. patcon · · focus · HN ↗
                        Agree to disagree, but I appreciate the sincerity, and I know that what you're saying seems very reasonable to many :)
                2. patcon · · focus · HN ↗
                  Collapse is evident in that almost nothing survives being immortal except cancers and flatworms. You witness the evidence of this "collapse" all around you in that nothing deigns to live forever and tell the tale, and then you call me neglectful of evidence?
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