Comment by u8k on Making Vaccine · 2021-02-04T05:32:58.379Z · LW · GW

My jaw dropped at "~500 doses". At $2 per dose... that's significantly cheaper than it's costing the companies to produce the official vaccine. What am I missing here? I know you're making a different thing than Moderna, but if the thing your making exists and is this cheap then why is Pharma leaving the money on the floor and not mass producing this?

I think you're underselling the potential benefit here! Doing a batch of this and distributing it to 500 people may be unfeasible. I assume the FDA or something comes for you if you're trying to commercially distribute home-brewed vaccines.

But say, to 20 friends? Why not. Which brings the price down to $50 per/person, which seems like it'd be totally worth it to have immunity even a month earlier than the official vaccine is available to me. And it potentially gives immunity to your whole social scene.

I'll wait for your results, and then will strongly consider doing a batch of this myself.

Comment by u8k on Mistake Versus Conflict Theory of Against Billionaire Philanthropy · 2019-08-01T15:04:52.698Z · LW · GW

I give Scott credit as being smart enough to know and have considered all of this. I think much of SCC could be categorized as him giving his opponents the benefit of the doubt of being well intentioned and arguing with them in good faith and not dismissing them as trolls. Maybe this is naive of him and a waste of time. But I think the approach has produced a ton of great posts over years and I think it's just fundamentally who Scott is and it's long been clear that earnest arguments in good faith with people who might in fact not be in good faith is what SCC is all about and is the hill Scott is willing to die on.

I think it's commendable.

Comment by u8k on Machine Learning Analogy for Meditation (illustrated) · 2018-06-30T01:29:30.193Z · LW · GW

nevermind, looks like gjm already did the thing

Comment by u8k on Machine Learning Analogy for Meditation (illustrated) · 2018-06-29T22:32:16.565Z · LW · GW

I agree with more or less everything people have said about the advantages of the text being actual text.

But also it's fun and nice to have it handwritten and I think the benefits are non trivial.

So. Both? Just have both versions so everyone can enjoy the version that's best for them?

I'll go ahead and transcribe this one. (i'm currently learning two different alternative methods of typing and I'm at a stage where transcription is better practice than normal writing, and doing this will give be a nice opportunity to reflect on the post). I'll have it done this weekend. Let me know where I should post the text.