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by clusterfoo
4041 days ago
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Tangential pet peeve: but this kind of thinking, while noble in principle ("let's not waste resources / brain power on what doesn't matter"), tends to lead to stagnation, not innovation. Paradigm-shifting discoveries tend to come from unexpected, unexplored territory. By taking away funding from "useless" pursuits (like pure maths, arts, theoretical researchers) and focussing solely on the bottom line (i.e: what matters, what is profitable), we make advances in a given field less likely, not more. Reminds me of the Louie bit where David Lynch instructs Louie to "Be funny: 3... 2... 1... Go". -- That's not how things work. Achieving that level of mastery of his craft is 90% non-funny related activities (life experiences, personality, self-reflection etc.), and 10% actually focusing on "being funny" in itself. What if the key to longevity comes from a cancer researcher, what the techniques needed come from an applied mathematician researching complex systems? What if the technology required to even model the problem in order to ask the right question is developed by computer scientists modelling data in a completely different field of research? There's just no way to know. |
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I don't think, in this case, it's a "let's not waste resources" argument being made. The GP post wasn't saying "Hey, cancer! AIDS! Lazy non-cancer/non-AIDS scientists!" but rather, "Fixing aging will give us the time and resources we need to do everything else."
In other words, investing in a cure for aging will pay huge dividends in other areas of research. It's like earning $0/yr going to college for four years so you can get $100+k/yr for the next 60, instead of $50k/yr.