Re: [ba-unrev-talk] On Tournaments
"Incidentally, for those of you that are fans of tournaments, you
might like to sit back in your armchairs, pull a few beers,
and watch the tournament of the century, "Fight for the Moon" (TM). (01)
"As lunar property rights are up for grabs, anything goes, and
expect one helluva a fight as war makes
its biggest ever comeback to date.
Watch stunned as it spreads into your very own backyard,
giving you up-close, real-time, all-action, combat so
compelling that you won't be able to stop yourself
joining in." (02)
Ever wondered what the NMD is for? (03)
Pray for collaboration. Pray hard, pray fast. (04)
--
Peter (05)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Jones" <ppj@concept67.fsnet.co.uk>
To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 7:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] On Tournaments (06)
> Jack Park wrote:
> > Is there an upside to this madness?
> >
> > I think there is. My view is that the other arms race got us to the
> moon
> > and, for me, that's a good thing. (Yes, Martha, I do have a narrow
> world
> > view). My view of this biotech arms race is that we are getting ever
> so
> > much smarter with respect to biology and disease. For me, that's
also
> a
> > good thing.
>
> I recall an article in The Economist magazine a while back where a
> doctor had
> done a mathematical study of how long it was going to take the human
> race
> to map the proteins if the research groups involved didn't
collaborate,
> as opposed to if they did.
> My memory is rusty but I recall that collaboration reduced the time
> needed by some large factor.
>
> The arms race got 'U.S.' to the moon. It didn't, e.g., get the
Africans
> there at the same time.
>
> --
> Peter
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
> To: <ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 3:56 PM
> Subject: [ba-unrev-talk] On Tournaments
>
>
> > In the book _Global Brain_ by Howard Bloom, a book essentially
> dedicated to
> > a discussion of how microbes have been such successful learning
> organisms,
> > one important property of learning organisms is shown to be the
> conduct of
> > tournaments.
> >
> > Throughout my childhood, an ever-present tournament was known as the
> "arms
> > race."
> >
> > And now, this article
> >
>
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B39CC-B7DF-1D07-8E49809EC5
> 88EE
> > DF&catID=2 at Scientific American, shows the latest in the arms race
/
> > tournament du jour: beating patents on genes.
> >
> > By and large, pharmaceutical firms are patenting the genes they
> sequence.
> > Some of those patented sequences may have been funded by public
money.
> The
> > patents, however, appear to have the weakness that they deal with
the
> > sequence as it is teased out of the organism, not as it exists
within
> the
> > organism. So, what happens if you simply cause the organism to do
its
> thing
> > by itself, as opposed to harvesting the gene and using it alone?
> Voila!
> >
> > But, as an in any good arms race, there is the need to protect
against
> the
> > circumvention. How? Voila, again. Patent the protein made by the
> > gene. Here again, you have patented something as it exists in a
petri
> > dish. How, then to deal with that issue? You guessed it: let the
> organism
> > build and use the protein in situ. What a concept! As it turns out,
> the
> > phrase assigned to the therapy I chose for Leukemia was "immune
> response
> > enhancement" (which, by the way, used an Interferon molecule made by
> > causing e.coli bugs to express Interferon in large quantities,
which,
> by
> > the way, was done with a patented molecule, which, again, by the
way,
> was
> > circumvented by a competing pharma by simply swapping one atom in
the
> > sequence, and, which, by the way, is reported to have resulted in a
> less
> > efficacious Interferon molecule -- go figure).
> >
> > Is there an upside to this madness?
> >
> > I think there is. My view is that the other arms race got us to the
> moon
> > and, for me, that's a good thing. (Yes, Martha, I do have a narrow
> world
> > view). My view of this biotech arms race is that we are getting ever
> so
> > much smarter with respect to biology and disease. For me, that's
also
> a
> > good thing.
> >
> > Along the way, I have proposed the tournament hypothesis to the
unrev
> > group. The brand I have proposed takes the form of tournaments
> associated
> > with a variety of important (tough, urgent, complex) issues related
to
> OHS:
> > Collective IQ improvement metrics
> > Learning technology
> > OHS/DKR technology
> >
> > I think such tournaments should be elevated in importance in the
unrev
> > discussions.
> >
> > Jack
> >
> >
>
> (07)