“ We have unusually strong marketing connections; Vitalik approves of us; Aella is a marketing advisor on this project; SlateStarCodex is well aware of us. We are quite networked in the Effective Altruism space. We could plausibly get an Elon tweet. ”
From the short investor spiel document. Also they want to just bypass the FDA?
Ok, read their actual pitch. Lmao they think that a one time introduction of a GMO bacteria strain is going to ‘just work’ because they’ve also GMO’d it to outcompete other bacteria?
There’s a reason we aren’t running our cars on yeast-produced gasoline. No matter how awesome your tuned microbe is, it’s still subject to mutation and natural selection. If your beneficial changes aren’t actually helping it survive, they will not be conserved. And those ‘competitive’ changes you jacked it up with to make sure it dominates the environment? Well, that might end up horizontally transferred into something you don’t like.
About the right amount of ‘we humans are smarter than dumb biology’ metal-fetishism I’d expect from the folks concerned.
My brother in Dawkins, you literally are biology.
A variant of this organism was first created in 1985, and volunteers deliberately inoculated themselves with the modified strain. This has, to our knowledge, caused no ill effects since.
Who needs the FDA when you have vague hunches?
Some nice sneer:
I can understand Aella wanting to fund a project so she never has to brush her teeth again
Probably also heavily interested in Never Take a Shower Again research
https://nitter.net/nunyabeeswaxfed/status/1705695595413790814
Ex-MIRI huh?
AI turned out to be too hard, let’s try aligning microbes.
Mycoprotein isn’t alpha enough for them alas.
Furthermore, we don’t have to worry about regulatory slapdown if we sell it as a medical tourism product in, say, Próspera. We could brand this as a secret medical treatment for the super-elite, like Peter Thiel’s StemcenterX or Minicircle’s regenerative medicine hub, and charge $20,000 a dose.
Why is this option A?
lol, the Patient Funded Trial scam
I mean, the clear answer is because it’s not going to work. We all know that but I think it’s worth spelling out.
If they thought they could actually make it work they wouldn’t need to do any of this. They’d sell it to p&g and retire instantly.
$20,000 and a trip to Honduras seems pricey for some bacteria, but maybe they can package it with other … services …
A moment of silence for the people of Honduras, who have to live with these weirdos.
Christ, Próspera is another planned city? What is it with these maniacs and planning ideologies that went out of fashion in the thirties?
I can assure you that’s not the only part of the 30s they’re nostalgic for
What is it with these maniacs and
planningideologies that went out of fashion in thethirtiesforties?
Now I want Shark Tank but it’s all treacles luminaries. Wait that’s just the VC scene in silicon valley. Never mind
Ok I figured out how to salvage it. People come on and pitch sensible business ideas that get shot down. We’d also get quotes like:
Aella: “If I take on an advisory role, will I be required to shower?”
Pinker: draws line up and to the right on graph “This problem is already as good as solved. I don’t see why any action on my part is necessary.”
EY: “You do not think in sufficient detail, and for that reason, I’m out.”
Watch me bring them something unnecessarily overcomplicated that boosts their ego to win all of the money.
A micropayment platform designed to integrate with long form textual content. The subscribers will be able to vote with their wallets on the topic they wish the CONTENT_CREATOR to cover.
But there’s a game theoretic twist. The final price of each vote will be discounted based on the share of votes it received, so if you vote for the winning option, your votes will end up costing less. This encourages strategic voting based on what would be the most interesting topic to the largest share of subscribers, incentivizing subscribers to maximize for total utility instead of just their own interests.
Additionally, below a certain threshold of share the votes will be free of charge. This is to encourage heterodox views and foster engagement with unconventional interests that would otherwise be risky to vote for.
The cutoff for the free Complimentary Contrarian’s Votes will be determined by a prediction market running in parallel with the vote.
The winning votes will become investments into the post, binding the CONTENT_EXCRECATOR to CREATE_THE_CONTENT and based on some configurable metric (post score, ad revenue etc.) the investment will accrue dividends, which the subscriber can cash out to a charitable organization. However, this can only be done once per publication per subscriber, meaning the subscriber should wait for the investment to accumulate before cashing in. A global high score will show the subscribers who have cashed in the largest amount in donations and their voting power will be increased in proportion to their score.
I want 15% equity and a public live stream session of the AI box game with Yud where I roleplay as the shittalking French knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The winning votes will become investments into the post, binding the CONTENT_EXCRECATOR to CREATE_THE_CONTENT and based on some configurable metric (post score, ad revenue etc.) the investment will accrue dividends
I’m in, but only if this part is handled by fractionalizing an NFT linking to the original post on your custom blockchain
Lmao this is so good. I think it would actually work. Go forth and grift imo
okay what’s with the showering thing? second reference I see to that now
“I try not to disturb my natural skin microbiome too much”
(“my bodily oils have come to terms with me, now it’s your turn”)
those numbers tell so, so, so many stories. and none of them are admirable.
You usually only see such aversion to showering in the Super Smash Bros. community.
@dgerard I’m probably missing something but what is it about these folk and Adderall? They can’t all have self-diagnosed ADHD… (having an actual psychiatric diagnosis thereof means that I’m just a mean-spirited gatekeeper who thinks people shouldn’t just decide for themselves that they have a serious mental condition and start popping random pills)
this was discussed on here recently, scroll to the post for more
@froztbyte Oh, I missed that. So, boring people thinking they can make themselves less boring through pharmaceutical means. 15 years ago it was smart drugs (which weren’t, but that didn’t stop the Bay Area jumping onto that bandwagon with both feet).
Does she sell worn items of clothing to her thirsty fans by any chance? Because that sounds like a lede for that.
At least the people on Shark Tank sometimes bring in cool or entertaining prototypes. Your version would be just slide decks of fintech, vaporware and things that already exist but with a subscription model slapped on.
the person behind it appears to be a “Jeffrey D Hillman”, and this appears to be the first round: https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-DE004529-10
probably worth someone digging into that to see what else may surround the person
from the “Safety Review and FAQ” document:
Will this spread to everyone I kiss? It’s very unlikely in non-immunocompromised adults. However, if you’re concerned, you should avoid kissing anyone taking oral antibiotics, or children.
“sure let’s just casually become a walking science experiment and then thinking to first ask whether the other person is taking oral antibiotics. oh and children, because mouth-kissing children is perfectly normal to me, the author of this document”
this was from just like 2min of glancing at this mess so far and fucking what
also why is aella alone there the one with screenname? is her identity not actually public?
In before NY times article prints her real name complete with hissie fit followed by transition to Substack and total abandonment of mask of deniability.
Its to do with her dad I figure.
do tell? I’m not aware of this. I’ve mostly managed to avoid having detailed contact with these weirdos, and only in the last few years happened to encounter … their profiles and such. to my knowledge i’ve not yet managed to meet any of the mainliners of this shit in ZA
Iirc she comes from a weird religious background, so her not wanting to be connected back to that isn’t not that sneerworthy.
Her dad is a big dude in hardcore calvinist apologetics. I can’t remember the org name but like - hard hardcore fundies.
there’s a poetic irony in target fixating so hard on avoiding one set of weird nutbaggery to then end up as one of the central figures in another bit of nutbaggery…
A lot of these people come from the ex-fundie world. This has been noted with other cults too.
a hit on Aaron Silverbook, and the details are enough to make me guess this is them: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17629744.Aaron_Silverbook
Broke: contemporary dentistry
Still broke: putting GM bacteria in your mouth to prevent cavities
Woke: examining your teeth for cavities before and after licking interesting objects found in nature and getting bonus nootropics out of it
Effective Altruits are a good marketing demographic to target I suppose. Gullible and wealthy.
I’m not sure if this is serious or just another investment scam.
I’ve seen a similar idea presented by non-commercial/anarchist bio hackers, so this does sound plausible.
Think the issue here is more that it is run by Rationalists, and they ask 20k for it. (and all the other biotech things they want to do bypassing the FDA, like isn’t that also a NRx thing, he asked rhetorically).
These are the same people who scream about gain of function stuff. Like what.
Yeah interesting how there seems to be no big conflict between Scotts ‘I have some beige thoughts about the FDA, it is not bad, buttttttt’ with Yuds ‘BOMBclapALLclapDATACENTERSclap!’
They might have good connections in the EA space, but HN doesn’t seem to be bowled over:
The periodontal stuff is very important to think about . The fact it says nothing about that is alarming.
Buried in the google drive is a note that this does not remove the need for brushing teeth, but it just notes that not doing that will give you bad breath.
In fact I believe that this is the true cause of this not being a product - people will still need to brush their teeth for other reasons than preventing cavities. If brushing teeth correctly currently lessens the risk of both caries and periodontal disease, having a shot that removes the risk of caries could conceivably mean less conscientious tooth care, which increases the risk of gum problems.
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HN: Just rinse out your mouth with water after eating and no cavities. Dentists hate this one weird trick.
Microbes in my mouth that produce ethanol instead of acid? You are all wrong here, this is ideal. I’m sure it’s 100% safe to have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome but only in your mouth. Make sure to wash your mouth out with everclear whenever you brush, just to be safe.
It makes for a funny yuri manga premise.
@alternative_factor @saucerwizard there is also urinary auto-brewery syndrome (yes, a real thing)
and… yeah, best leave that one alone
@alternative_factor @saucerwizard
'Tisn’t safe for me. Incompatible with my prescription medication.
When somebody wants to put bacteria in my mouth, hearing Aella is involved definitely makes me more likely to hop on board.
this doesn’t sound terribly bad, and might be actually beneficial if it works, but i’ll wait for FDA approval
it’s definitely the kind of thing that probably needs a whole lot more eyes on it than the gung-ho rats would be willing to give it
Synthetic biology as a field is in its infancy. It’s coming along fast and the possibilities are absurdly endless, but it’s hard to overstate how complex of a problem this really is.
The idea that it’ll magically outcompete the rest of your extremely diverse, hyper complex, and largely beneficial mouth biome alone with just one treatment and no maintenance immediately shows it as a scam. We aren’t there yet.
There’s sneer in the pitchdeck about the FDA requiring 300 people healthy people with fully removable teeth isolated from others to trial this, as if it was the dumbest thing ever, instead of a reasonable precaution to introducing an unknown strain of bacteria into everyone’s mouths.
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