George Church
Article
George Church is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between December 28, 2021 and December 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Ivy Natal … is advised by George Church”; “One applicant mentioned that his bio project was advised by George Church - Harvard professor, National Academy of Sciences member”; “We called up George Church, the guy who’s using cloning to try to bring back the woolly mammoth”. It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, effective altruism, Emergent Ventures.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: December 28, 2021
- Last seen: December 12, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- ACX Grants (2 shared issues)
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- effective altruism (2 shared issues)
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- Emergent Ventures (2 shared issues)
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- GiveWell (2 shared issues)
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- Long Term Future Fund (2 shared issues)
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- Peter Thiel (2 shared issues)
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- Sam Bankman-Fried (2 shared issues)
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- Tyler Cowen (2 shared issues)
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- Uganda (2 shared issues)
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- 1DaySooner (1 shared issues)
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- 2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative (1 shared issues)
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- 2024 (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Jeffrey Hsu, $50,000, to support his startup Ivy Natal. Ivy Natal works on in vitro gametogenesis, the process of turning ordinary cells into gametes like egg cells. This would solve a lot of infertility problems, remove the need for difficult egg freezing cycles, and allow same-sex couples to have biological children; it would also allow some more exciting forms of embryo screening. Jeffrey has a PhD in molecular medicine and did his postdoctoral research at the Cleveland Clinic; Ivy Natal has raised initial capital from Indie Bio and is advised by George Church.
Inline links: Ivy Natal
(5) Being advised by George Church is not as impressive as it sounds
One applicant mentioned that his bio project was advised by George Church - Harvard professor, National Academy of Sciences member, one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People In The World”, and generally amazing guy. I was astonished that a project with Church’s endorsement was pitching to me, and not to Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or someone.
What finally cleared up the mystery is that one of my Biology Grants Evaluation Committee members also worked for George Church, and clarified that Church has seven zillion grad students, and is extremely nice, and is bad at saying no to people, and so half the biology startups in the world are advised by him. There are lots of things like this. Remember: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure!
Inline links: Remember
“Yeah,” said the man. “That’s our moat! We called up George Church, the guy who’s using cloning to try to bring back the woolly mammoth. Asked him, what’s the ROI on mammoths? Not great, right? We’ll buy as many ground sloths as you can produce. He lent us a grad student. We’re making progress. All we need is funding. It’s the same old mon -”
Inline links: using cloning to try to bring back the woolly mammoth