Came here to say this. Money is a tool to make the world a better place. He could be funding schools, scholarships, research projects, new start ups, and so much more. This is what I have been doing, and it has given my life so much more meaning than anything else I have done. I work to donate because that is how I have the biggest impact.
Including those that work directly on cultivated meat? There are literally companies out there selling cultivated meat right now. Regressive countries like Italy and conservative states in the US like Florida and Alabama have banned the sell of cultivated meat. Did they buy into the fantasy? Or are they scared cultivated meat will impact traditional animal farming?
I like thinking about space colonization. Whether it be a the first colony on Mars or a robust space station orbiting Jupiter, what do you think their food is like? Do you think they have farms growing cows and pigs and dogs? Or do they have a bioreactor that uses substantially less water and organic inputs to output whatever meat they want without fear of zoonotic diseases and PETA?
I'm willing to bet Star Trek rings true here in that there are no farms on spaceships growing animals, therefore, this is the future we should be working for. Why waste time tearing down the rain forest to make room for cattle and the soybeans the cows will eat when we could instead use our resources to bring about cultivated meat faster? Few people say cultivated meat is impossible. It is only a matter of research which means time and money. But given the benefits, we should be all in on this research.
I'm doubtful of any future space colonization, but given likely resource constraints, any sort of meat would be a serious luxury. As far as I know, plants are far and away the most efficient way we have of converting energy into a format compatible with human metabolism (though now that I type that out, I wonder how plausible creating synthetic carbohydrates from in-situ resources might be).
I completely agree with you. HN is very anti-vegan, so mentioning not eating meat always comes with a torrent of downvotes. I imagine any self-sustainable colony would not have meat in their diet because there is no need for it.
This is a classic example, frequently paired with a bunch of pseudoscience and smart sounding nonsense. Even if it weren’t personally offensive to me as an MS patient (diagnosed in 2001, when I in my late teens, and not for nothing—a soccer player and vegetarian in otherwise very good physical shape) this kind of speculative alternative health stuff muddies the water so that when looking for legitimate, bonafide information for autoimmune disorders and treatments, one has to sift through vast torrents of frequently difficult to distinguish bullshit. They go out of their way to appear legit, spend tons of money to push dis-/misinformation, and/or poison the well of mainstream science and research.
I’m not suggesting that’s what’s happening in all of these comments, but I’ve seen a lot already that absolutely is. It’s really disappointing to see, but I’ve learned HN comments are great…until the topic of discussion departs from the usual tech-specific ideas, then it’s Dunning, Kruger, et al.
I know they are trying to be practical with "reduce meat intake" and "drink less", but meat and alcohol is on par with smoking and they say "don't smoke". I hope we get to a point where we can say "don't eat meat or drink alcohol" just like we say "don't smoke". If the point is to stop cancer from happening, not doing any of those things is huge.
He says that the reporting of nutritional data about cancer can be very confusing, and references the work of the statistician David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge, who has shown that even if everyone ate an extra 50g of bacon every day, that would only increase the incidence of colon cancer from 6% to 7%. “I think it is about having a healthy, balanced diet,” says Sivakumar, “and occasionally having a sweet treat or a steak.”
Processed red meat is a class one carcinogen and red meat is a class two. Smoking is a class one. What this means is there is a direct, provable correlation to consuming these products to cancer. Sure, a cigarette may not cause the same level of harm as one steak, but they both cause cancer. So, if you goal is to reduce as far and wide as possible your chances of cancer, meat should be off the plate. The "balance" approach is only to be practical, so I find it odd we never say to have a balanced approach with smoking, but we will with red meat.
Fresh unprocessed red meat is not directly known to cause cancer but it's implicated by the association to smoked/processed red meat that is a strong carcinogen. IARC says that maybe it can increase the risk of certain cancers but there is no direct evidence like with processed red meat.
Indeed -- though reducing seems to have other benefits.
Though as far as is practicable [0], one should not drink alcohol. No amount is safe or good enough for you to offset the other risks.
[0] life is short and not all social offers of a drink should necessarily be turned down, unless you're willing to figuratively or literally show the trappings of "one who must not" (pregnant, alcoholic, religion, training for sports, on medication, etc.)
Opposing information from mayoclinic with a link to a webmd post (i refuse to even call it an article), with zero actual scientific information in it, reduces the value of your comment. Which, otherwise, I fully agree with. There is no "although" here. Alcohol is bad for your health. That doesn't mean you should or should not drink X amount, that is anyone's free choice. But we don't live in the Dark Ages where it was suposedly good for you (...only compared to the alternative being bacteria ridden waste water).
Totally agree with you. The reason I included the webmd example and labeled it “counter-programming” was merely to highlight that the average person is faced with conflicting information (I bet even MDs don’t uniformly say any amount of alcohol is bad for you).
The webmd article is especially pernicious because the “positives” probably resonate with many (most?) people and gives people an “out” to optimize for the moment rather than their health. Webmd should do better.
Cancer isn't the only disease you're trying to prevent. Your approach that single-mindedly reduces your risk of cancer may very well increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes - both diseases which are far more prevalent in the general population.
A diet rich in proteins provided by grilled chicken breast and salmon, and low in simple carbs such as sugar, pasta, and rice, will dramatically reduce your risks for the most prevalent diseases and not increase your risk of cancer.
You need to take a moderate and wholistic view of health.
I highly recommend Ultralearning [1]. It does not talk about hours required to learn something, but how to define your goal, plan out the study, and then immerse yourself into the task.
Look up Blue Zone groups. Researchers study groups of people that live the longest and how they live. Of course diet and exercise is a big component, but a reason to live is another. There are other interesting factors as well.
I started writing about animal ethics at the end of last year. This is mostly a clearing house for my thoughts, but I have found some people enjoy reading it.
Imagine it being 2023 and you are asking for more animals to torture. We should be demanding advancements in computational chemistry and biology, in vitro methods, and synthetic biology. Minor scientific advancements should not come at the expense of sentient creatures.
You're right, but downvoted because it is much, much harder to do what you're asking. But it's just bad science to ignore or not want to do something because it's harder. Modeling biological or physiological systems is something we do via animal sacrifice as well. My own research uses mice. I think current versions of LLMs could be used for synthesizing the framework of such models, at the very least. It would certainly make for an interesting open source framework, and would be pretty valuable if done right. There are some options already, but they are too specialized and not geared towards systems biology or physiology. Mainly the way I think about it is that a mouse can't reason with you about why you shouldn't do what you do to it. So you, as the more analytically mature being have to make up your own reasons. Is it worth it? That would be a digression for this post.
But more importantly, a lot of bad science is done while wasting away animal life. Regulatory bodies can at least do something to make it less cheap or harder to justify the use of animal models. Or at least ensure a higher standard of expectations for having used animal sacrifice.
Why is the comment downvoted? Animal suffering is a legitimate moral concern, and I don't think the comment is inappropriate. Instead of downvoting, a better approach would be to point out to the author that Harvard has apparently a policy towards animal studies [1] that is worth exploring further.
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