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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: [Solved] WCGrid Cost-Benefit Analysis |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 133
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1671 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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@wcgridmember
----------------------------------------You seem not to take into account (or to purposefully ignore) that there is a significant difference between basic research work and applied research work. Until the impact and efficiency of applied research work can be evaluated and quantified, basic research work has to be considered within a completely different perspective and time frame. Do you think that Einstein imagined that his research work and discoveries would be useful 70 years later for building a GPS and helping people to be rescued faster and safer? Beside the direct impact the research work supported by WCG has, this work results can maybe help decades later by further research; nobody knows today, even if such eventuality remains significant. All these considerations should not de-emphasize the importance of efficient computation. Because of the huge number of WCG contributors, it is obviously necessary to optimize, as far as possible, the computational work. |
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wcgridmember
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Post Count: 110 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Let X have two or three digits, then.
----------------------------------------UPDATE: Also, results that may be useful in the future (and have not been yet) could be counted as partial goal met. UPDATE2: Assuming the difficulty in assessing the cost-benefit analysis in a quantified way, since the benefits will be useful for as long as humanity exists and the cost happens for a relatively short time, it should be relatively easy to say: with at least this or that goal met (in, say, X decades), then the costs that we've run into were all worthwhile. (This would be good enough for me.) [Edit 4 times, last edit by wcgridmember at Jul 16, 2019 7:18:41 PM] |
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adriverhoef
Master Cruncher The Netherlands Joined: Apr 3, 2009 Post Count: 2089 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Then, let's set goals and in case we don't get anywhere (in terms of useful findings) in X years, let's pause WCGrid (or at least the sub-projects that are going in a dead end) and reflect. Are there any subprojects without goals? |
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wcgridmember
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Post Count: 110 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Goals with a deadline, that is.
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mmonnin
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jul 20, 2016 Post Count: 148 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hi wcgridmember, I do respect your contribution as well as your opinion. However I agree with Nanoprobe: If WCG upsets you so much then why are you here? Shut down and move on if what’s going on doesn’t fit into your box. Your argument that it would be more efficient to cure blind patients instead of providing them guide-dogs is kurile and questionable. Helping some people does not imply that it is not necessary to take care of the others. In the contrary, you suggest that participating to WCG for helping to cure some patients would cause the death of many others. Beside that you do neither have nor provide real facts for justifying your statement, such a statement is not really constructive. May I ask you if you use cloud services, if you listen music or watch video using streaming services, if you consider to use crypto-currency, if you upload every of your pictures - in particular selfies - into the cloud? ... All these activities are surely much more destructive for "mother earth" than WCG contribution beside the fact that such services are relatively useless for the humanity! If you decide to leave WCG, it is your decision; however I do not see the necessity to criticize without any real facts. Yves To add onto the point about providing cures for blind people example...that is kind of the point for WCG and BOINC in general. We are crunching data for scientists to provide knowledge for the betterment of humankind. Sometimes the most quickest/cost efficient way is with mass CPU power.  |
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wcgridmember
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Post Count: 110 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I don't question your first two assertions. I only question the third. How do we know it is a quick and cost-efficient way? In the meanwhile, I would still like to get feedback on my comments in this post from WCGrid developers, but I'm letting you know that I'm resuming my contribution to WCGrid. This is because of the fact that all of you have shown interest in this discussion. I hope WCGrid developers get on board soon.
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hchc
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Aug 15, 2006 Post Count: 746 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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How do we know it is a quick and cost-efficient way? Because in silico is both faster and cheaper than in vivo or in vitro, you silly goose. Hence why it's often a first step screening tool, followed by analysis and then, e.g. ordering actual compounds for in vivo and in vitro research based on the most promising leads. You lack quite a bit of knowledge on research, so I recommend before asking more questions that you learn the basics. It'll save you some embarrassment. Edited to Add: Let's take for sake of example the ZINC15 database, with ~30 million compounds. Do you know how humanly impossible it would be to order all those compounds and how many human lifetimes it would take to test every one for a lead? Doing the screening in silico saves millions (billions?) of dollars and tens of thousands of years. With something like protein folding, I'm not sure how else that could be observed or simulated except for in silico.
[Edit 2 times, last edit by hchc at Jul 18, 2019 3:04:41 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
You lack quite a bit of knowledge on research, so I recommend before asking more questions that you learn the basics. It'll save you some embarrassment. Just want to make clear, that I disagree with that. wcgridmember, please continue to ask questions if you have any! |
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adriverhoef
Master Cruncher The Netherlands Joined: Apr 3, 2009 Post Count: 2089 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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wcgridmember, hopefully you may find that this is an interesting article about the conclusion of subproject CEP2.
I remember back in the days, not so long ago, that CEP2-workunits had a high error rate, while candidate molecules were getting bigger and bigger, and that the project was therefore temporarily paused. The project was resumed after a longish pause, but in the end it failed to run. So it took a while before the scientists wrote/published the aforementioned interim report. |
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wcgridmember
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 30, 2005 Post Count: 110 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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@hchc By cost-efficient I don't mean in terms of research per se, I mean in terms of costs and results for society as a whole. Also, is all research derived from computer simulations like the ones WCGrid compute (requiring huge amounts of energy and CO2 emissions - I'm not mentioning here the other costs to society)? Is all research based on brute-force, testing all possible compounds? Of course not. As I said before, I will be satisfied when I get a basic statement that will tell me that (in a reasonable deadline, no matter if years or a few decades away) for these or those results, the costs we're spending while running WCGrid will be all worthwhile and I think it will not be that hard as the benefits go into the far-future and the costs are relatively temporary.
----------------------------------------@adriverhoef Thanks for the tip! [Edit 1 times, last edit by wcgridmember at Jul 18, 2019 6:23:00 PM] |
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