[mlmonkey]

I tuned out when I came across this:

> Science and technology, I feel, has always had a certain apathy towards the plight [of] the people at the bottom rungs.

Does that apply to medical advances too? e.g. antibiotics, vaccines, etc. too? We are living longer today thanks to advances in science and technology. Not just the people at the top; but also the peopl at the bottom rungs. Most scientific research does not take into account who the beneficiaries of that research would be.

[jamilton]

>Most scientific research does not take into account who the beneficiaries of that research would be.

I would consider that apathy.

[gmueckl]

Especially basic scientific research is so far removed from actually useful applications that there is no direct cause and effect relationship between single items of research and any eventual effect on society.

[jack_pp]

do people at the bottom have access to medical advances or are they in lifelong debt in the unfortunate case when they need those medical advances?

[brookst]

How accessible were covid vaccines?

[jack_pp]

It costs between 4k and 10k if you break your leg and call an ambulance in the US. Forget medical advances, it costs you a car to get a cast

[mlmonkey]

Not if you're homeless in, say, San Francisco.

[brookst]

Also not if you’re the president.

But generally we’re talking about the life experience of the 330m people who are not outliers in our society.

[selcuka]

Were the vaccines accessible because of the sympathy towards the people at the bottom, or so that they can go back to work as soon as possible? Medicine is subsidised when there is a global pandemic, but not when individual lives are at stake.

[brookst]

I don’t really find it fruitful to speculate about motives in complex systems. The claim was that average people don’t benefit from medical advances, which seems clearly untrue.

Now, if we’re shifting to why advances are often generally available, sure, there are lots of plausible theories that may or may be true, in whole or part, and which we’ll never prove one way or the other. Believe what makes you happy, or angry, or whatever mood you prefer.

[selcuka]

> Now, if we’re shifting to why advances are often generally available

But it's not me who is shifting, right? The claim was:

> Science and technology, I feel, has always had a certain apathy towards the plight [of] the people at the bottom rungs.

not

> The claim was that average people don’t benefit from medical advances

My point is to reject the claim that the high availability of vaccines is a counter-example. It's a political decision, not a science/technology related one.

[brookst]

You’re still getting at motives rather than facts, which means it’s unfalsibisble.

If you’re going to say that fact X is not a counter/example because [subjective, speculative reasons] then I’m confident you’ll never find a fact that contradicts your beliefs. There will always be some “oh, well the bridge collapsed, but it wasn’t bad engineering it was political reasons, so it doesn’t count as a collapse.”