[ExI] ...so now we know...

Sat Oct 30 05:13:01 UTC 2021

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2021 9:36 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] ...so now we know...

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 8:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

Adrian, you have friends in that world ja?

>…You'll need to help yourself here.  Medical privacy laws greatly restrict the ability of anyone else to get answers for you.  That said, the one who volunteered that you were part of a study may know.  …

Ja, I realized the person at the blood lab who told me about this is the one to ask (or reminded me (even though she wasn’t even born yet when I gave the first sample.))  Regarding medical privacy: the study wouldn’t have any identities in there, not even the identities of the data points.  I just need to find out who the heck is doing the study, and if I find that, I won’t even ask about the nurses they sent around.  But I will share that study info here.

The whole notion gives me a hell of an idea.  

Anne Wojcicki gave a talk or was giving talks in the late 90s, early 00s about this kind of thing and envisioned something like it.  I was taking graduate classes in bio-informatics at the time, which was about harnessing increasing computer resources, speed and memory etc, to do stuff we couldn’t do before with data.  Anne spoke to a group over at the presidio in SF.  Cool stuff.  This was before 23&Me started and before consumer-level DNA kits.

Anne’s notion was that eventually we would be able to read and map the entire DNA for any person cheaply.  She applied a version of Moore’s law to DNA sequencing, which was then nearing completion (the first human DNA mapping was declared complete in 2003.)  She told us that eventually ordinary proles could have that done.  Turns out she was right.  You can do that now for 60 bucks.  Cool!

OK then, Anne started 23&Me, but her grand plan didn’t really work that well because it relied on users telling 23 everything that was wrong with them.  Medics among us already know that this would produce the least reliable dataset: proles don’t really know what the heck is wrong with them.  They read pseudo-scientific junk on the internet and imagine they have all manner of exotic fun rare medical conditions.  Patients generally know little to nothing of the common boring old medical conditions they damn well probably do have, such as diabetes and generally underworked flabby muscles, all from eating too much sugar and spending way too much time sitting on our idle butts pecking at these little plastic typewriters.  For example… me.  Too much doing as I am doing right now.

If we had piles and piles of medical data generated by actual blood tests and correlate that to genetic patterns, we would have a study worth reading perhaps.  With enough of that kind of high-quality data, perhaps we can figure out what genetic sequences.  For starters, using that study I relearned of today, we might be able to find which genetic sequences correlate most strongly to gullible fools who are so naïve they believe a story which sounds dubious as all hell but which turns out to be true.  There might be a genetic marker for that somewhere.

OK, well I will search around tomorrow.  If I find that study I will report back.

Regarding the idea: AncestryDNA is an example of where a lot of people have checked off the box to let them study my DNA, to keep a sample etc.  Once an info-nudist, always an info-nudist.  It is too late to try to stuff the cat back into the bag.  In AncestryDNA, a lot of people link their DNA to a specific person in a public tree.  I did.  Since the whole DNA genealogy game is interconnected, it is easy enough to find birth and death dates for people who have given AncestryDNA permission to keep their DNA.  With just that info alone, jillions of DNA samples and their associated lifespans, we might be able to learn something important.

spike

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