caffemacchiavelli

Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

Dis­cus­sion: How sci­en­tifi­cally sound are MBAs?

• caffemacchiavelli 22 Jan 2022 22:02 UTC

  15 points

  in reply to: dawangy’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Yes, I originally planned to include a small section about Stöcker, but it seemed only tangentially related to the project itself and fuel for extensive political discussions.

  tldr for the unintiated: Stöcker is the founder of Euroimmun, a company that makes lab chemicals and also happens to make Covid antibody tests. Through his contacts, he managed to get his hands on the spike protein DNA early and made his own recombinant vaccine candidate. He also gave this to several dozen volunteers and lab employees, which he argues falls under a loophole that allows doctors to use unlicensed medicine if no proper treatment exists. The PEI, a German medical regulatory body, however argues that this constitutes an unlicensed medical trial. He is AFAIK still facing a lawsuit, but is nonetheless occasionally vaccinating volunteers until the local police make him stop.

  He was always somewhat nutty when it came to politics, though, and has gotten significantly worse during the pandemic, even reblogging “fan mail” about Bill Gates Covid Vaccine conspiracies, so I’m not sure how much faith I have in his data. It’s another argument in favor of at least testing subunit vaccines, though, since his writing about the economics of protein production (i.e. supplying Germany many times over within months) is perfectly credible.

  Another OT but curious side note: His audience appears to be predominantly anti-vax when it comes to the licensed vaccines yet extremely willing to take his vaccine candidate. This surprised me—sure, I had always assumed that a large aspect of conspiracy communities is opposing anything supported by the government, but not that the specifics really don’t matter at all. Stöcker’s vaccine has all the (faux) pitfalls the anti-vax community raves against—aluminum, untested, GMO, made with embryonic cells—yet none of this matters in the slightest as long as he’s fighting The Man. Might make for an interesting post in its own right.

  And yes, I took the vaccine IM with no noticeable side effects.

• caffemacchiavelli 23 Jan 2022 1:59 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: artifex0’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Not really, was concerned about biological X-risks before and continue to be.

  I don’t currently see any plausible defense against them—even if we somehow got a sufficient number of nations to stop/​moderate gain-of-function research and think twice about what information to publish, genetic engineering will continue to become easier and cheaper over time. As a result, I can see us temporarily offsetting the decline in minimum IQ*money*tech_level needed to destroy humanity but not stop it, and that’s already in a geopolitically optimistic scenario.

  Luckily there are some intimidatingly smart people working on the problem and I hope they can leverage the pandemic to get at least some of the funding the subject deserves.

• caffemacchiavelli 30 Apr 2014 23:41 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: sixes_and_sevens’s comment on: Dis­cus­sion: How sci­en­tifi­cally sound are MBAs?

  Ansoff’s matrix, the product portfolio and Kotter’s 8 step model for change are fairly popular choices.

• caffemacchiavelli 10 Feb 2021 20:26 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: fluffyclouds’s comment on: Mak­ing Vaccine

  Thanks for posting this, this looks excellent.
  It’s my impression that you can indeed just buy the antigen needed—the lowest price for 1mg I found was around 900€. Allowing for 10% waste, this would cover 20 individuals at 45µg each. I looked at the antigen test results first and was worried that the vaccine wouldn’t perform as well in live tests, but the neutralization results Stöcker posted are quite promising and a Nature study suggests that using 319–545 of the RBD is effective in providing immunity to live virus in primates. I don’t expect the remaining amino acids will affect the results in a major way, so this looks quite promising indeed.

  I’ve asked a few people with more domain knowledge to comment on this and depending on their judgment (and access to sterile lab space) I might fund vaccines for myself and friends, given that Germany’s vaccine rollout seems to be taking its time.

• caffemacchiavelli 11 Jul 2013 0:00 UTC

  6 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

  Hello, everyone. I stumbled upon LW after listening to Eliezer make some surprisingly lucid and dissonance-free comments on Skepticon’s death panel that inspired me to look up more of his work.

  I’ve been browsing this site for a few days now, and I don’t think I’ve ever had so many “Hey, this has always irritated me, too!” moments in such short intervals, from the rant about “applause lights” to the discussions about efficient charity work. I like how this site provides some actual depth to the topics it discusses, rather than hand the reader a bullet list of trivialities and have them figure out the application.

  I am working as a direct marketing consultant, in the process of getting my MBA (a decision I’ve started to regret; my faith in the scientific validity of academic management begins to resemble a Shepard Tone) and with future ambitions in entrepreneurship, investing, scaling and other things that fit in the “things I’ve never done yet smart people are supposed to be good at” box.

  I’m a member of Mensa, casual Poker (winning) and Mahjong (losing) player, enjoy lifting weights, cooking (in an utterly unscientific way that would make Heston Blumenthal weep) and martial arts. I also have an imaginary −5yo son/​daughter who keeps me motivated to put in more hours at work so we won’t have financial worries once they get born.

  There are a bunch of things I’d like to do with my life long-term, with varying amounts of megalomania, but I’m generally content with focusing on increasing my financial and (practical) intellectual power in the short- to mid-term and let the future decide just how far off my predictions and plans turn out to be. Estimates range from very to utterly.

  Here’s hoping LW will help me with that, and that I’ll be helpful to others.

• caffemacchiavelli 21 Jul 2021 18:42 UTC

  5 points

  on: In­ten­tion­ally Mak­ing Close Friends

  Excellent post! It’s interesting how this mirrors what I’ve been attempting to do over the last month—applying some of the ideas from Mark Manson’s Models (i.e. the one good dating book out there) to my general social life with surprising success. I’ve always been a bit of a reclusive guy (big surprise given that I’m on LW, I know) and the two main people I’ve tried to be more open and emotionally honest with this month have responded very positively. We cuddle, touch and have intimate conversations even though we met fairly recently, which would usually feel awkward to me, but this time it doesn’t. Additionally, it doesn’t feel like a strategy or a “move”, more like I’m just being more of myself and people like me more for it. I like it a lot.

  One takeaway for me is that being too frugal with spending my weirdness points has the downside that I don’t filter for the kinds of people who are right for me. It makes it easier to get along with everyone, but harder to both build lasting connections and to feel honest about who I am.

  Btw, if anyone is looking for more fun questions, School of Life has some card decks designed for introspection and getting to know each other. I’d recommend “Know Yourself” and the dating one. Some of the cards are a bit forced and Freudian, but I’ve found a few of them pretty insightful. I do introduce them as a game though, they feel too constructed to work well as random questions. Some of my favorites:

  • If you could be sure to achieve one thing, what would you pick? (Around LW people I specify “common accomplishment” to prevent munchkining)

  • Which four adjectives would you use to describe yourself and each other?

  • What did you enjoy as a child? How do you feel about it now?

  • What three works of art/​media mean a lot to you and why?

  • List five ways in which you are quite difficult to live with.

• caffemacchiavelli 26 Sep 2015 9:15 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: What is your ra­tio­nal­ist back­story?

  FWIW: The idea of upvoting the poll itself kinda eluded my internal option mapper until right now, even though I like them. Guess my decision making process went straight past “If post interesting then upvote” to “If poll interesting then participate”.

• caffemacchiavelli 11 Feb 2015 14:30 UTC

  5 points

  on: A ra­tio­nal ap­proach to the is­sue of per­ma­nent death-prevention

  Even if you, personally, happen to die, you’ve still got a copy of yourself in backup that some future generation will hopefully be able to reconstruct.

  Is there a consensus on the whole brain backup identity issue?

  I can’t say that trying to come up with intuition pumps about life extension has made me less confused about consciousness, but it does seem fairly obvious to me that if I’m backing up my brain, I’m just creating a second version who shares my values and capacities, not actually extending the life of version A. Being able to have both versions alive at the same time seems a clear indicator that they’re not the same, and that when source A dies, copy B just goes on with their life and doesn’t suddenly become A.

  Unfortunately, I’m not sure the same argument doesn’t apply to one brain at different points in time, too. If you atomize my brain now and put it back together later, am I still A or is A dead? What about koma, sleep, or any other interruption of consciousness?

  It’s all kind of a blur to me.

• caffemacchiavelli 25 Jan 2022 15:32 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: benjamincosman’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Thanks!

  Hm, I’m not opposed to it, but given that the project is dead and any future biohacking project I’ll take on will get a different name anyway, I’m not sure if changing the name retroactively accomplishes anything. I doubt this experiment will have enough of a lasting impact to cause trouble (beyond the people who were confused by this post, for which I apologize).

  edit: I’ve changed the title for now, that seems to accomplish most of what’s needed.

• caffemacchiavelli 23 Jan 2022 17:49 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: JenniferRM’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Hm, most of the people I’m thinking of are rather technical, e.g. Kevin Esvelt’s research on distributed secure research.

  Coordination and incentive problems are of another nature and I only manage to be prescriptively optimistic. I’ve been interested in algorithms for decentralized economic planning for a while, plan to specialize in that area and am working with a local left-acc group to organize a think tank that works on these questions. Thanks to mechanism design taking off as a discipline and crypto hype fueling a lot of work on trustless computing, there’s actually a surprising amount of relevant research.

• caffemacchiavelli 22 May 2014 8:36 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: I’m About as Good as Dead: the End of Xah Lee

  That’s a really good point, especially for those who decide to make their living outside of the common “get safe job” paradigm, which to be fair isn’t all that robust (at least in the US), either.

  I’ve noticed myself that the anxiety I feel about losing a key component of my business has decreased immensely over the last few years, even though the risk is either the same or slightly higher. Even as a kid I used to feel strange about that. I was scared of big spiders, so whenever I’d catch one in my bed, I’d be terrified for the next couple of days and then completely dismiss it on an emotional level afterwards.

  I’m not sure of how to effectively protect myself against that. It seems obvious to me that the current mapping of motivation/​anxiety to risk, i.e. abrupt jumps from baseline activity into overdrive once an arbitrary and often foreseeable threshold is met, is pretty bad. However, beyond developing better habits, willpower and networks and having that bleed into not procrastinating on insurance against boring risks, is there really anything useful to do about it?

• caffemacchiavelli 3 May 2014 15:20 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: niceguyanon’s comment on: Dis­cus­sion: How sci­en­tifi­cally sound are MBAs?

  Elon’s and Manoj’s statements caught my interest since hiring MBA-types is assumed to be a standard move for entrepreneurs who have completed the exploratory phase of reaching product-market-fit and are trying to scale up quickly.

  Even if you’re highly skilled in entrepreneurial and/​or executive tasks, you’ll need somebody who deals with monitoring, dissemination and handling low-key disturbances. To be honest, I always assumed that you should hire MBAs for this, but now I’m a little more wary.

• caffemacchiavelli 9 May 2016 20:57 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes May 2016

  Certain people—some of whom are in positions of enormous power—just do not give a damn about other human beings. A certain head of state in Syria comes to mind.

  I’d also say that your ability to care about other people, along with overall sanity, will diminish under constant stress. That’s why “Preserve own sanity” is #1 on my rules to be followed in case of sudden world domination list and something I need to stay aware of even in my current (and normally not that stressful or important) job.

• caffemacchiavelli 3 May 2014 15:12 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Dis­cus­sion: How sci­en­tifi­cally sound are MBAs?

  Do you think the Group 1 schools are superior to the rest as far as quality of material goes? I’ve been talking to a friend who goes to a well-known university in Europe and a fellow entrepreneur who visits an ivy-league US school, and while I don’t have the full picture (or syllabus), they didn’t seem much more impressed with the experience than I’ve been.

• caffemacchiavelli 25 Jan 2022 6:38 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: A Ray’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Not as far as I know, butThought Emporium on Youtube has a lot of tutorial videos on genetic engineering. (FWIW, Stöcker himself failed to express the protein in bacteria and iirc used CHO instead. I don’t see any intrinsic reason why E.Coli shouldn’t work, but I’d probably use HEK or CHO myself given the choice)

• caffemacchiavelli 24 Jan 2022 22:40 UTC

  2 points

  on: Time un­til grad­u­a­tion as a proxy for pick­ing be­tween (Ger­man) universities

  Interesting data! I made a similar calculation at the start of my studies, but in the opposite direction—I thought I had the cognitive capacity to study at a fairly rapid level, but ADHD and other projects often got in the way. So I picked a fairly tough university for my subjects (CS and mathematics in Bonn, though CS is “only” in the bottom half) and I’m happy with the result.

  I’m not sure how different my experience would have been at other places—I think Germany has a much more homogeneous standard of education than the US—but my math modules definitely challenged me.

• caffemacchiavelli 24 Jan 2022 11:15 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: A Ray’s comment on: Post­mortem on DIY Re­com­bi­nant Covid Vaccine

  Oo, I wasn’t even aware of that, thanks for the link!

  That is a DNA vaccine, so it’s more similar to the mRNA vaccines we have now in that it contains genetic data of the virus that is then built by the body itself. This one seems to contain the entire S and N proteins, not just a subunit of the S protein.

  DNA vaccines are more complicated than recombinant vaccines to get right and can cause serious damage if done wrong. That and the fact that the more complex a project, the more likely I’m going to procrastinate and let it die, made me stick with the simpler recombinant approach.

  At least the ELISA approach to antibody testing is one I could have borrowed, though, and in hindsight I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t think of it myself.

• caffemacchiavelli 10 Feb 2021 20:45 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Mak­ing Vaccine

  From what preliminary legal advice I’ve received, I’m allowed to hand it out as a research chemical but anything beyond that might get me into trouble. That sadly limits me to offering it to other nerds who I can reasonably expect to use it for research purposes, but I also highly doubt that anyone outside that cluster would even be interested.