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Comment by suivix | Hacker News Reader

Genetically engineering something for this specific goal is not a 'hack'. It's very hard and thorough work.

It's alteration of an established system with self-beneficial results in mind. It's a hack.

Is a very complex alteration involving modified DNA and extensive research and testing. Everything is established until you change it. Most medicine is just a chemical compound you ingest, which would mean they are all 'hacks' with your perspective. The word trivializes the whole process.

The process isn't a hack, but the end result is :) Not a "quick and cheap dirty hack" but a "I've manipulated a system to do something different or better in a novel way" sense of a hack.

My wife had epidurals during the delivery of our children. That, even though it was a medical procedure, was totally a hack :) Inserting novacaine into the spinal column to deaden nerve receptors == hacking the body :)

That doesn't mean it wasn't serious business or a big deal. It just means that we figured out a neat way to manipulate an existing system for beneficial results.

I think it's glorification that's the problem. I would consider medicine a hack, hacks aren't divine achievements.

Really, all technological improvements in the last few centuries are "hacks" then, in a sense.

Each time we write a piece of software, we are taking an existing system (a computer), and altering it to perform a somewhat different task. Hack.

Each time I optimize a DSP system to take 10% less resources, its a hack.

Just stick 100 or 200 of these together, and we have moore's law.

That definition is so broad, it could be applied to almost any action that has benefit. Foe example, would mean that warming bread to make it crusty and crunchy is a hack?

I understand your position, as you see a 'hack' as a quick and dirty trick to make things work; but in this instance, hacking is taking on its more pure form of manipulating something according to the rules of the system it exists in, in a way that was not originally understood or intended :)

It's very much a hack.

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