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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   4789 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Have we figured out robot hearts or lab grown hearts yet?

Didn't Jarvik make a robot heart a few decades ago?

Doesn't count as "figured out" until we make a robot heart that doesn't suck. Making a working pump isn't hard, but making one that won't clot blood and won't trigger immune rejection (and won't limit mobility and won't fail to deliver enough O2 when you exercise and won't be too big and won't ever break and...) seems to be much harder.

There are certainly people trying, this study from 2015 claims to have grown 'functional human myocardial-like tissue of multiple complexities.' (1) Not well read enough to comment on the accuracy, but the field is certainly advancing.

1 - https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circresaha.115.306874

You know I just had a thought bubble. Perhaps the reason societies used to seem far more stable in the past is because anyone who acted outside the system or had such tendencies used to die out, but in modern times for the first time we are keeping all personality types alive and functional in a society.

So we have extreme traditionalists and futurists existing within the same system to extremes that wouldn't have been possible in the past.

Nice. I look forward to perfected body replacements for every single part of the body.

Liver replacement business would boom.

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