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> We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique tools are always better than something factory made. Right. We all know the best chips in the w
by 8bitbeep 2y ago
> We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique tools are always better than something factory made.
Right. We all know the best chips in the world are made by local artisan silicon-etchers. None of that TSMC pasteurized crap. You simply can't beat a 1nm brush and a steady hand.
We all know this industrial revolution thing was a mistake.
- portaouflop 2y agoSure if you apply enough mental gymnastics you can invalidate any claim. Good faith reading of his argument would be that a custom, artisan crafted hammer is better than a factory made one. I can’t say if that is true or not but using chips as an example- probably the most complex man made thing- is bad faith argumentation
- NeutralCrane 2y agoGiven that the application here is molecular chemistry aimed at targeting human biology, one of the few problems equally complex as computer chips, I would say their analogy is far more appropriate than a hammer.
- fumeux_fume 2y agoThat specific sentence is making an analogy using handmade tools. A hammer is an ideal example of a tool. You would expect to find a hammer in a toolbox. A computer chip is not an ideal example of a tool. You would not expect to find a computer chip in a toolbox.
- fragmede 2y agoLaser level, boroscope, camera stud-finder, thermal camera, laser tape measure, multimeter, battery management system on a lithum-something battery pack for power tools; those are all gonna have IC chips in them and it wouldn't be unreasonable to find them in a professional's toolbox.
- portaouflop 2y agoCreating a medicine such as the ones mentioned in the talk is FAR more simple than creating microchips - as a starter you don’t need a billion dollar worth clean room and equipment as they clearly demonstrate. So yea human biology is as complex if not more complex I agree - creating medicine after a proven recipe is not.
- ryao 2y agoYou do not need “a billion dollar worth clean room and equipment” to make chips. You just need a garage and a bunch of old equipment. Even high school students can make microchips: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-high-school-student-whos-building-his-own-integrated-circuits https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-high-school-student-whos-build... As your “creating medicine after a proven recipe” remark, that is not how things work. The way it usually works is that you study organic chemistry in college and then you work out a recipe yourself based on the chemical formula. You do not follow a recipe from someone else because recipes are often trade secrets. At least, that is what I took away from studying organic chemistry in college. Well, that and a remark by the professor that those making illicit drugs take that course before getting started.
- scarecrowbob 2y agoThis is an interesting comment, because before you mentioned it I did not even consider DIY chip fab was a possibility. In the context of access to cheap mass production, it would of course be silly to use the DIY product of that professionally. In the context of "having zero access" to the technology, then the hand-produced products can be better than nothing, especially if the "no access" alternative is heinous or deadly in its own right. It's kind of a micro-scale version of the larger discussion, perhaps?
- timon999 2y agoIf someone claims that X is "always"(!) the case, then giving just one example where X is not the case counts as a refutation. The statement that the GP quoted is just obviously false and there is nothing "bad faith" about pointing that out.
- mistermann 2y agoOne some topics this is realized and praised on HN. On other topics, the cognition flips. This is the nature of evolved, culturally conditioned consciousness (one of the things most HN'ers like talking about from an abstract perspective, but really don't like talking about at the object level during discussions of certain controversial ideas, when heuristics have taken control of the mind). For fun: observe the nature of comments in this thread from a meta perspective of a curious alien observer.
- fragmede 2y agoMost of the people here aren't biochemists, hence q "biochemistry = scary untouchable magic" POV. But for those that have done the chemistry in a university setting before and gone on to being professionals in the field, know the plant-based history of the field, as well as the history of synthesizing "stuff" and ingesting it, by certain individuals in the field. it's important to get the chemistry right, but if you know the failure modes, it's far less of a black box and thus less scary.
- ryao 2y agoMy college chemistry professor said never to ingest anything made in a lab. Thus far, I have followed this rule and I have been fine, not that I have been around any chemistry labs since college. A chemist broke this rule on YouTube by turning styrofoam into cinnamon candy that he ate himself, but he went through an extreme amount of effort to make it safe: https://youtu.be/zMaTrgUKC1w https://youtu.be/zMaTrgUKC1w
- fragmede 2y ago
- mistermann 2y agoLive by the sword die by the sword.
- cess11 2y agoIt's a good day to die.
- namuol 2y agoI don't think this analogy resonates particularly well with the drug manufacturing process. I would think in general the bulk of the expense of a drug comes from its R&D, not manufacture. The cost of manufacture probably varies wildly (with the most expensive being bespoke treatments), but as the talk shows, there have been many examples where a (relatively) simple-to-manufacture drug is kept from those who need it due to prices that do not reflect the cost of manufacture. Will most drugs be easy to make at home? Probably not, but enough probably can be that I wouldn't dismiss the idea because of some rhetorical overreach.
- 8bitbeep 2y agoTrue, it’s just that the original quote is hard swallow. Try melting sand and polishing your own lenses and compare that to a US$ 5 glass.
- dredmorbius 2y agoOr ... a US$1,000 pair of Luxottica spectacles.
- bsder 2y ago> Will most drugs be easy to make at home? Probably not, but enough probably can be that I wouldn't dismiss the idea because of some rhetorical overreach. Ever watch a non-chef bake a cake? If you have, that experience should give you great concern about people playing with drug recipes. In addition, most drugs do not have a "nice" synthesis that doesn't leave a whole bunch of glop in the afterproducts. Distilling alcohol is about as easy as it gets and yet people wind up poisoned from homemade hooch all the time.
- ryao 2y agoPeople do not synthesize drugs on their own without any prior knowledge. They take university organic chemistry classes and then start synthesizing drugs. The cooking analogy would be studying at a culinary school prior to preparing pufferfish without a license.
- toast0 2y agoSounds like my artisinal Certificate Authority, all signatures are hand multiplied by human computers!
- scarecrowbob 2y agoTo be fair, for the last few years of my career as a developer and ops worker I had a boss who was convinced that Let's Encrypt certs were inferior for "reasons". It's pretty trivial to generate a long list of technologies which are deemed "better" only because they are built by a large commercial enterprise.
- ryao 2y agoDo you use lava lamps to generate your random numbers?
- toast0 2y agoToo hard for humans. 16-sided dice and dice towers.
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]