Comments for Soft Machines

Comment on Decelerating change in the pharmaceutical industry by Zelah

Zelah — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:48:41 +0000

Hi Richard,

Thank you for an outstanding analysis as you always provide regarding the UK’s deficiencies in R&D spending.

Regarding Biotech, I am afraid that the only ideas on the horizon are BioHacking, and radical new financial ideas like Bitcoin, Crowd Sourcing and Peer-to-Peer Lending/Investing!

The traditional investment routes are under serious challenge as the UK Banks are under water, the financial sector cannot recycle North Sea Oil wealth anymore, and the complete collapse as a long term profitable venture of orienting the UK economy via specializing in Financial Services…

Having thought about this, I believe that some sort of Distributed Cybernomy will have to arise, bypassing the stagnate UK Financial Sector.

The biggest problem is getting people with the knowledge together due to decentralised trust issues. I believe that the trust issues can be solve by the creation of entire new Institutions based on Peer-to-Peer Networks.

My biggest worry is actually the biotech. I am also like you utterly baffled at why Rational Drug Design failed. I can only from afar give this take.

Rational Drug Design came at time in the 1990’s and was built on the premise of
DNA: 1 Gene, 1 Protein.

Unfortunately, this was shown to be utterly false! Also Epigenetics (Where is the Nobel Prize? 2012?) came along…

I believe rather than Rational Drug Design (Over dependant on DNA Dogma), Disciplined Engineering is required. In terms of computer simulations, our theories only cover the situation where the underlie programs are Convex. Therefore a parallel approach is needed to the Protein Folding Paradigm. This should consist of reengineering proteins via viable computer simulations! Then use this as a template to go after reality.

Such a program though should be done over decentralized networks interacting with Biohackers as our Health is (no brainer) collective wealth! Fortunately, Complexity Theory nonwithstanding, tools like Convex relaxations of Quadratic Programming, Sequential Convex Programming and the like are finally arriving with serious theoretical backup. All that is required is distribution over the web.

Here to the Dream…

Zelah

Comment on Decelerating change in the pharmaceutical industry by bob

bob — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:31:18 +0000

I’m biased because it overlaps with my field, but I think we may be making fundamental errors in our approach. Starting with specific targets and then going after molecules that bind to them with high affinity in vitro doesn’t reliably identify compounds that translate to human use.

Many drugs were discovered based on phenotypes in animals or humans. Instead of working on HTS in vitro, maybe we should make phenotypic screening more systematic:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722257/

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Aaron Claeys

Aaron Claeys — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:07:58 +0000

The Western world has been deindustrializing for quite a while (at least since the ’80s) and moving towards (and has become) a set of mostly service industry economies. As a result, innovations that aren’t useful for service industries could be ignored/shunned because people can’t compete by using national industry. Those that try usually fail when competing against competitors who outsource to China. In other words: I think we’re looking at the consequences of globalization here.

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by The Keystone Garter

The Keystone Garter — Mon, 27 May 2013 03:01:56 +0000

Part/most of why there is a valley of death is mass production/markets. Nanotechnology is prototyped so quickly that scale-up to mass market is retarded by future innovations or the prospect of future innovations. It is possible to pick winners if you can define what the future needs/wants to be prosperous. On the anarchy (market forces) end of things I’m a little worried data-mining software coupled with some automated faculties will lead to a war with the machines. On the tyranny risk end of things it would be nice to codify curriculums (ie. some Humanities) and life experiences and brain states that make people good and creative. Other than those two caveats it would be nice to promote a lot of R+D.

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Chad

Chad — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:39:47 +0000

I think these philosophies can also be traced, to some degree, to society. We live in an age where people want results faster. Many Asian countries tend to seek guidance from doing things “wisely” and through perseverance. I can’t say this with any certainty, but it’s possible that in the long term, those countries that invest in R&D will reap the rewards in the long haul…certainly something your graphs show, historically, to be true.

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:27:12 +0000

Thanks Sarah. I think the priorities have to be determined by a combination of where we have strengths to build on already, and where the needs are most pressing (energy and healthcare in particular).

Abelard, I think the problem is partly institutions, partly the intrinsic difficulty of the problems. To take the specific example of therapies for Alzheimer’s we can see that there are, in fact, three linked problems. We know far too little about the basic causes of the problem, too few scientists work on it, and because of this when pharma companies do try to bring therapies to market they don’t work. The more failed drugs there are, the less the incentives will be for people to put in the very large sums of money needed to find new ones, no matter how big the demand incentives are.

I wish I could easily refute Randall’s pessimism.

Comment on Nanotechnology, K. Eric Drexler and me by Richard Jones

Richard Jones — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:47:36 +0000

Thanks for putting the links up, enoonsti. I agree, I wish the discussion period had been longer too.

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Randall

Randall — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:13:26 +0000

Professor Jones: “The areas in which society needs innovation now are clear…”

I’m not so sure it is. Nature is unimpressed with a private banking system that has deliberately decided that financial asset manipulation should consume the lions share of resources.

A con game remains a con game even if you switch to government intervention controlled by oligarchs. The futility in this scheme becomes obvious for whatever productivity improvement is rendered irrelevant in a state of perpetual insolvency. The eventual and desired outcome is always privatization of public infrastructure.

The constant drum beat of Innovation by the financial elites is a neat distraction from the steady march towards poverty

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Abelard Lindsey

Abelard Lindsey — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:52:34 +0000

I would think the aging populations of Europe and the rest of the developed economies would provide the increased demand for effective anti-aging bio-medicine. Yet, the institutions that do this kind of research seem not to be responding to such demand incentives at all. This suggests institutional issues.

Comment on Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs by Sarah Jackson

Sarah Jackson — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:56:42 +0000

Really enjoyed reading the blogs, packed with evidence & very readable. I guess the question that springs to mind is
given the political economy and other priorities of health, international development etc how do we make the case for the “dramatic intervention” (in your other blog)?
And graph 4 shows the gaps are big. So where and how do we target resource?