The Earth is big and complex, I can't see the singularity on the horizon yet, but my vision is aging.
The Earth is big and complex, I can't see the singularity on the horizon yet, but my vision is aging.
I don't know that creating super-accurate species trees is really the most important problem to solve in biology, though. Certainly DNA sequencing for health has been a really mixed bag.
Ah, the old why bother since it's a "mixed bag" argument. If it wasn't a mixed bag I'd be really worried, as someone has some pretty good snake oil.
I vaguely recall something about sequencing and its role in creating a vaciine that turned out to be pretty useful, something recent maybe?
What i'm troubled by is the projects that sequence a million people, using $1B to do so, and then just dump a bunch of genomes with some hand-wavy claims about how it's going to cure cancer. The costs here are rathre significant, but the health outcomes are not.
On the other hand, most of the commercial jets we do fly are basically 1950s designs with bigger engines and some computers in the cockpit, and HN thinks it was crazily irresponsible for Boeing to have decided to use sensor-triggered autonomous systems to do something as simple as temporarily adjust the trim system...