@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Whoops. I don’t know how the hell that happen. I guess the quote plugin got confused. lol

Luke Maciak wrote:

Dr. Azrael Tod wrote:

There is some truth to the “government has better tech” side. Mostly in that the very bleeding edge is always super-expensive, and it tends to be only the largest organizations — such as a government — that can make use of it. But it’s more “governments are alpha testers” than “governments keep all of the best stuff for themselves.”

Well said. Yes, they do have better tech – like space shuttles for example. Well, we had those I guess. But it works as an example.

What people forget though is that a lot of these things are built by private contractors. The government funds the research and development but a lion share of it is done by civilians, and not in super-secret underground science bases in Area 51.

i feel misquoted! ;-)

@ Mart:

LOL! Priceless.

Dr. Azrael Tod wrote:

There is some truth to the “government has better tech” side. Mostly in that the very bleeding edge is always super-expensive, and it tends to be only the largest organizations — such as a government — that can make use of it. But it’s more “governments are alpha testers” than “governments keep all of the best stuff for themselves.”

Well said. Yes, they do have better tech – like space shuttles for example. Well, we had those I guess. But it works as an example.

What people forget though is that a lot of these things are built by private contractors. The government funds the research and development but a lion share of it is done by civilians, and not in super-secret underground science bases in Area 51.

StDoodle wrote:

But cancer isn’t just a simple little thing that happens in one exact way, so all we need is something that counteracts that one problem. Each type of cancer is ridiculously complicated, never mind “cancer” as a whole. I think I have more “faith” in some elderly old dude in the sky caring about my every thought than I have in the idea that someone has come up with a way to cure every single type of cancer, in a way that’s self-evident from pure theory, without needing to do countless clinical trials, refinements, etc.

Well, figuring out how to effectively combat cancer is one of the steps required for immortality. The cell aging (accomplished via shortening of the telomer regions each time a cell divides) is actually a built in cancer defense. Since cells have finite lifespan, the usually die before they accumulate enough DNA transcription errors to go cancerous. Cancer cells are basically cells in which that mechanism fails, and they have no built in kill switch. So if you make cells immortal, you essentially make them potentially cancerous at the same time. So we need mechanisms to control and correct DNA damage that make cells go rogue.

So I think it is something we should be able to figure out within the next few decades but we just don’t have the means to do this yet.

We just need to get over our hung ups about dangerous science, playing gods and etc.. :)

StDoodle wrote:

But I kinda disagree on the “science isn’t dangerous” idea. Sure, a lot of the process as a whole is fairly mundane. But the very nature of cutting-edge, breakthrough science is that we don’t have a good grasp of how things work, what will happen to X when you do Y, etc. Looking at the history of science, many of the most memorable moments are not “yes, that worked exactly as I predicted,” but more along the lines of “huh, wouldn’t have thought THAT was what was going on.”

But that’s the beauty of it. I guess the main danger of scientific breakthroughs is that our first instinct is to weaponize them. But I think we sort of got a handle on that. I mean, we managed to avoid a nuclear war so far. While we absolutely love to murder each other over stupid shit, I think the cold war proves we can keep our fingers off the triggers on doomsday devices most of the time.

I was talking about people’s fear of advancement inspired by Hollywood blockbuster logic. Like releasing genetically engineered tomato on the market causes a global zombie apocalypse. Or you write a pretty clever self improving AI program, and BOOM, three months later it goes all SKYNET on your ass.

people in white lab-coats, mixing chemicals and screaming heureka if it doesn’t explode!

There is some truth to the “government has better tech” side. Mostly in that the very bleeding edge is always super-expensive, and it tends to be only the largest organizations — such as a government — that can make use of it. But it’s more “governments are alpha testers” than “governments keep all of the best stuff for themselves.”

One added point for the “MiB’s will steal your stuff” argument is that it’s very, very rare that someone will have an idea — whether for a drug, a new piece of technology, or whatever — that is highly conclusive in the design stage as to what it will accomplish. You kind of touch on this, but the thing to remember is that we rarely see “I’ve invented a cure for X,” and more often see “I’ve invented something that might, if this hunch is correct, cure X.” The “cancer cure is hidden” argument always bugs me. Sure, I can buy that some promising treatments may well have been ignored because they didn’t seem profitable. But cancer isn’t just a simple little thing that happens in one exact way, so all we need is something that counteracts that one problem. Each type of cancer is ridiculously complicated, never mind “cancer” as a whole. I think I have more “faith” in some elderly old dude in the sky caring about my every thought than I have in the idea that someone has come up with a way to cure every single type of cancer, in a way that’s self-evident from pure theory, without needing to do countless clinical trials, refinements, etc.

But I kinda disagree on the “science isn’t dangerous” idea. Sure, a lot of the process as a whole is fairly mundane. But the very nature of cutting-edge, breakthrough science is that we don’t have a good grasp of how things work, what will happen to X when you do Y, etc. Looking at the history of science, many of the most memorable moments are not “yes, that worked exactly as I predicted,” but more along the lines of “huh, wouldn’t have thought THAT was what was going on.”

Back in 2003-ish, about the time that the Pentium 4 CPU debuted (but all hardware nerds know that the AMD64 chips were loads better!), I remembered this guy I met talking about how the US government “already invented but will never release to people” CPUs that are like “Pentium 8” already.

I was too stunned to say anything. I just gave a polite nod.