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> All mammals drink milk.

I don't


If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of an extreme minority.

You would not have survived more than a few weeks past birth in the absence of modern medical interventions — well, that part at least was true for most of us — but specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal".


> precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in "mammal"

It puts the "mamm" in; that second m is also part of the root.


As is the third m.

The word "mammary" contains two "m's." (c) ChatGPT

It contains one m and one double m. They're distinct concepts.

I get downvoted every time I feel like posting this (the thread is markedly appropriate), so I'll give some background this time. I'll get to the point after a little bit of setup.

To segue from your post, I was adopted as an only child at birth, so formula was the only option. No IgA exposure, which probably over-taxed my early immune system.

But in being adopted, I have very nontraditional feelings about cloning, artificial birth, etc. I knew about my adoption from an early age, so it deeply worked itself into my thinking. At about elementary school age, some of my asshole neighbors bullied and called me a bastard, but that didn't really impact me as much as the feeling of being a genetic island completely alien to everyone else. All of my peers were related to their birthing parents and sometimes clonal siblings, yet I was alone in the universe. My weird hobbies and behaviors and preferences were out of the norm for my family. Despite my closeness with them, I didn't feel the same as everyone else around me. I wasn't. I was a nerd, absorbed into science books and Bill Nye. The southern culture and football and Christian God I grew up around wasn't my home, and I couldn't understand it just as others couldn't understand me. Everyone talks about blood as being a big deal - it's even in the foundation of the religion I was raised in - but to me, it meant nothing. It really shaped how I feel about humanity and biology and families and reproduction and the universe. Ideas, not nucleotides, are the information that matters.

I've understated and undersold how fundamentally differently this makes me feel about people.

Because of my perspective, I have controversial viewpoints about human biology. I don't find them weird at all, but there's a good chance it'll offend you:

If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick factor, perhaps we could one day clone MHC-negative, O-negative, etc. monoclonal human bodies in artificial wombs. Use genetic engineering to de-encephalize the brain, and artificially innervate the spine and musculature. We'd have a perfect platform for every kind of organ and tissue transplant, large scale controlled in situ studies, human knockouts, and potentially crazy things like whole head transplants to effectively cure all cancers and aging diseases except brain cancers and neurodegeneration.

Because they're clones engineered to not expose antigens, their tissues could be transplanted into us just like plants being grafted. No immunosuppressants. This might become the default way to cure diseases in the future. We could even engineer bodies that increase our physiological capacity. Increased endurance, VO2 max, younger age, different sex, skin color, transgenic features. Alien hair colors. You name it.

I bring things like this up and get ostracized and criticized. But it feels completely normal to me. Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that we aren't making progress here.

In light of how others think, I don't think I'd have these thoughts so comfortably if I didn't feel like something of a clone already. A genetic reject, an extraterrestrial growing up, tends to think differently.

Flipping this around, your aversion to this is because you have a mother and father that birthed you that you share blood with. That you grew up in a god fearing society bathed in his sacrificial blood. If you were like me, perhaps you'd think like me.

I'm totally perplexed that other people find this disgusting or horrifying. It feels wholly natural.

And we should absolutely do it.


Have you ever seen the movie "The Island"? I'm curious what your reaction to it would be.

> If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick factor

I believe those kinds of "ick" factors are there for a reason - protecting us from a descent into deep dystopia or something.

Implementing new human things at scale often has unanticipated indirect negative consequences.


Have you found that other adoptees feel similarly about or at least are more sympathetic to your ideas?

> Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that we aren't making progress here.

unlike man-made machines, we do not fully understand our bodies yet, and as such should be careful when trying to make them better. Don't start randomly `rf -rf *` on a Unix system if you don't know what it does, don't start randomly using steroids if you aren't sure of the long term biological consequences.

Obviously, your proposed "monoclonal human bodies in artificial wombs" would help with that.

If you'll also allow me a quick remark on your upbringing, as someone from an intellectual Parisian family who grew up in God-fearing, football-loving Texas...

I'm sure that somewhere in the South, there is a little gay kid, or one born with an odd mutation, to his birth parents, who felt or feels the exact same way you did - as something of an alien. I believe that the vast majority of cultures will produce outsiders, and it's also very probable that somewhere in Paris, there is someone who doesn't feel at home in the midst of heavy intellectual conversation and would prefer a simpler world focused on traditional religion and football (possibly association football/soccer, rather than American football).

Humans can form 'tribes', in the loosest sense of the word possible, based on genetics, but we also form tribes based on similar beliefs, values and interests - for example, Hacker News :)


Terry?

> that “hallucination” is mainly what generative AI does

Me too


> If you’re forced to see ads, wouldn’t you want ads that are relevant

Thank Dog that is a false dichotomy. I am not forced to see ads, my ad blockers are effective. Back in the day I moved mountains to get MythTV working so I could dodge the ads on linear TV

I do not want those creepy greedy monkeys anywhere near my data

No. A thousand times no!


What an outrageous and incoherent letter

So much for academic freedom


Awesome response from Alan Garber

> who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)

Like a heart attack can be good for your health,perhaps this USA withdrawal will be good for Europe. (If Europe is what you mean)


Are you sure? If you only say it once...

"What I tell you three times is true"


My use of Stackoverflow is the main casualty of LLMs

I used to use DDG for syntax problems (so many programming languages....) and it usually sent me to SO.

Now I use DeepSeek. Much friendlier, I can ask it stupid questions without getting shut down by the wankers on SO. Very good

I still use DDG to interface with current events and/or history. For history DDG is primarily, not only, an interface to Wikipedia


> Has anyone found effective tools for...

Managing management?

Code comments and documentation make no money, only features make money.

Bitter experience...


Try working as a manager.

Software development is just one piece of the bigger picture that your manager is concerned with, same way as adding features is just one among your many responsibilities.

Managers understand risk. Communicate the risk of disregarding bugfixes, documentation, technical debt, even if it takes a lot of handholding. Expect no less from your manger: if they can communicate client expectations, budget constraints, and most importantly: long-term strategy, together you may be able to devise a better plan to address your own concerns.

In other words, empathy can go both ways.

And yeah, there are bad managers, just like there are bad coders. Sometimes it's an interpersonal problem. It's called life.


Read the bio of the author. It includes this:

> I spend my time as a creative marketing strategist and technologist, growing public companies and startups.

Sounds like they may know what they are talking about....


No.

The purpose of "free speech" is to allow the spread of ideas.

The purpose of advertising is to spread an idea.

They are different things.


What?

Yes, the purpose of "free speech" is to allow the spread of ideas. The purpose of any particular piece of speech (a book, a pamphlet, a poster, a sign, a rally, a concert, anything) is to spread an idea. The idea in that particular piece of speech.

Do you want to preserve free speech but ban speech that tries to spread an idea? Your comment would be banned because you're trying to spread that idea.

Commercial speech is a legal term for speech that promotes commerce [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commercial_speech


I mean, if you're going to make up your own First Amendment jurisprudence. But it would be worth reading the line of cases from Schneider through Sorrell (there's a lot of them) to get the reasoning of several generations of jurists on why it's not this simple.


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