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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. 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]
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