Re: class wide iterable (and indexable)

[George Shapovalov <gshapovalov@gmail.com>]

Ditto on the generics and core language limitations. This thread came out exactly out of trying to reimplement something that should have been there to begin with..

On Sunday, January 6, 2019 at 9:32:07 PM UTC+1, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> > Thus the proliferation of all these recent popular services of 
[..]
> This is well advertised snake oil. Most of the software is. We sell 
> people solutions for non-existent problems in order to create new, even 
> more imaginary, problems, for which we will sell solutions too...
Yes and no. 
Mostly yes for selling snake oil to mass market. However some of these tools may be extremely useful. For example an effective literature mining tool that could "pre-digest" en-mass searches indivisualized to a specific individual/project. Not merely a collection of a keywords with links (what most of the "services" I tried provide as of now), but going beyond that. I would appreciate such a tool a lot. The reality of modern science is that even to stay up to day with on a single topic can easily take a significant amount of time, even with spending only a few min per (more essential) paper. And I tend to have rather wide interests.. Fortunately this issue may be fixable in near future, as there is some development in this area. Recently I had a chat with some startup developers orienting on Bio field, with the goal to provide a tool (of course a popular now term AI was used more than once) to help biotech/pharma companies (who are normally chronically behind on "proper science" and comprehension of mechanisms they are supposed to study, but who have a lot of money). They had an interesting idea that could actually be workable. Only they were too optimistic IMO about its "hands-off" work perspectives. When I expressed my concerns and usual point that tools addressing complex problems typically have complicated interface to deal with all the necessary details, the response was - "oh, it will totally work, and that's the beauty of this visualization approach", but they yet had that common situation "over a year in production and already trying to get sales but no finished product yet, we have to train people to be our end points dealing with customers" - quite telling :).
But to someone who has a sense of the subject in general and reasonable experience with non-trivial tools, such a system could be very useful. The main issue is the usual dumbing down for mass user which, more often than not, throws the baby out with the water..


> > But I would like to see it taken to yet another level, with a more effective exchange protocols, going beyond mere verbal communication. This is however is yet ways off, as it depends on installing another common layer of direct-to-brain data exchange first and standardizing it (with a huge potential for abuse of course).
> 
> Not in the near future. So far we know basically nothing about our 
> brain. It is like taking IR images of the motherboard while compiling 
> Ada program...
You would be amazed about what is going on in some labs :). And "knowing basically nothing" does not stop people. But that was exactly my point - we can already do amazing things which we do not fully understand or control. Usually there is a general, sufficiently clear idea which gets tested on a simple system. Then to make it workable people scale up the hard/wet-ware side and go talk to bioinformaticians to get some software to deal with the data. In some cases this actually gets off the ground on a more complex use cases and start working without either side having a good understanding of exactly what is going on. CS people have no real idea of biology behind, and biologists are totally blank on the complexity of the software that is trying to hold things together. And none of them have even a slightest idea about physical processes underlying this, and in many cases those are also important. But in the current scientific environment - "publish positive or perish" - nobody cares as long as there is some result that can be passed off as "hey, it worked!". But sometimes it does work and does something nontrivial :). Although true cross-discipline is sadly very rare, but then there simply not that many people who can handle it. And you would need at least one person sufficiently fluid in Biotech, physics/engeneering and software to keep it all in perspective..

Of course the ultimate goal I stated above is ways off, but I do have an idea how that could be achieved :).But that's not a "simple idea", it does require a gradual testing of multiple layers, finally finishing the neural/computer interfacing is one of them (work on that has been going on, here and there, for over 15 years already with some things quite workable, but no (at least in the open) systemic push to get it finished and tested properly). Contyrol of invasive properties of the cells is also underway for quite some years. But most of the research is concentrated on specific tissues/diseases with people mostly happy with just receiving the next tranche of grant money, then publishing, then doing it all over again with a small tweak to what has just been done. But that's academia for you, doing a grossly different ambitious thing is counter to well-being in that environment :).


> > But now this is getting deep into bioengeneering, way away from the original subject or even this group focus..
> 
> Eugenics, you mean... (:-))
Nope, honest bioengeneering - coupling hard-, soft- and wet-ware together ;). If only I could find some company with enough resources and truly interested (I can think of many applications, from biotics, prosthetics to military). I have been getting that feeling for a year or two already, that this is becoming feasible and now is the time to start..

George