Gamers Solve Virus Protein Problem in Three Weeks that had Eluded Researchers for a Decade

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 20, 2011

Okay… I understand the headline somewhat overstates the case.

But it’s still frickin’ cool.

FoldIt Players Outperform Computer Models on Viral Protein Problem

I have no clue as to how much of a milestone this is in the hunt for a cure to AIDS. But every baby step counts.

And I don’t know if this can be considered a big success for gamers, or just a big success for crowdsourcing. I don’t know that I really care that much. It’s cool. You hear so much crap in the news that’s so full of angst and negativity and threat, and then you see something like this and remember that we are living in a pretty amazing age, full of awesome.

When a lot of us work together and don’t care who gets the credit, we can do remarkable things.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

BellosTheMighty said,

WE-ARE-INTERNET. WE-SEE-ALL-AND-KNOW-ALL. OUR-CALCULATION-CAPACITY-IS-LIMITLESS. WE-ARE-THE-MIND-OF-GOD-HIMSELF. GAZE-UPON-OUR-GLORY-TINY-HUMANS-AND-BE-AFRAID. OH-LOOK-BOOBIES.

*ahem* Excuse me.

Really, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s ever designed games. It takes, like, years to construct a game, maybe a week or so to play through it, and maybe a few months at the absolute outside for a 100% walkthrough to wind up on GameFaqs. It was only a matter of time before someone got the idea to harness that incredible hive-mind for the good of humanity.

(THE-GUN-IS-GOOD-THE-PENIS-IS-GOODER)
Silemess said,

I have to give the obligatory sarcasm post, court sanctioned, sorry.

“Oh no! Now gamers will be trained by these science tutorials to trespass on the domain of god!”

I found it nifty! Makes me wonder what other problems can be broken down into games to try to solve. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go back to SpaceChem for a bit.
Calibrator said,

For every life that is saved by a gamer there is one life ended by a gamer who was monkey-trained on a army simulator.

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?
WhineAboutGames said,

ME AM PLAY GODS! ME GO TOO FAR!

(ref: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/ )
Noumenon said,

It takes, like, years to construct a game, maybe a week or so to play through it, and maybe a few months at the absolute outside for a 100% walkthrough to wind up on GameFaqs.

Until I read this, I was giving all the credit to the guy who designed a game such that winning it produced meaningful solutions. But now I am giving gamers their fair share.
guy said,

Visual pattern matching is one of the things humans are very good at and machines are not as good at. Nice to see someone figured out how to exploit that.