Folding Forum

Why am I folding: because there's a pandemic and it's the one thing i can do to fight back. Maybe I can save lives.

paulmd199 wrote:Why am I folding: because there's a pandemic and it's the one thing i can do to fight back. Maybe I can save lives.

Hopefully when this is all over (unless another pandemic arrives) you can stay and continue to fight other afflictions affecting health

I am not an "essential worker" and this is one of the ways I can help from home. And I'm in this for the long haul; as long as there is science to be done, I'll be folding.

As far as the research with covid goes, there's at least another five years worth of that. So I'm not going away too soon.

I started because it might help others and it is really simple to do so.
But for the majority of the time i just forget it's working.
It is running on my main (and only) computer and i hardly know it is running. (light mode).

I'm running the F@H client, on multiple systems (currently 3 Fedora PC's and 1 Windows 10 PC). Because even though I do not have the high-level technical knowledge of the various proteins that are possibly linked to Cancer, COVID-19/SARS 1 & 2, Parkinson's Disease, etc. I can at least help process the data which is used to create the simulations that will help those who do, create candidate treatments/cures to test/use.

Paul

I lost some family members to cancer and alzheimer.
For both diseases i get the feeling medicine is experimenting on the sick, dont knowing what to do.

Maybe i can help finding a cure.

[OFF TOPIC]

Foliant wrote:I get the feeling medicine is experimenting on the sick, dont knowing what to do.

Proposed cures always involve experimentation on the sick, even if FAH has already proposed potential cures ... but only with informed consent. Getting that consent from a Cancer patient is more straightforward than getting it from an Alzheimer's patient
[/off topic]

I am a fairly new folder and tip my hat to all of my fellow folders - particularly the early adopters whose point totals today probably don't adequately reflect their initial contributions. My first experience with distributed computing was with SETI, which to me perfectly captured the early promise of the "World Wide Web" to make the world a better place. Times have changed, not always for the better, but I feel the same way about FAH - more so, actually, given the urgency of the current pandemic. As noted in an earlier post, my personal experience is with a Gastro Intestinal Stromal Tumour (GIST) which I was diagnosed with 3 1/2 years ago. The protein folding for this relatively rare cancer is known, which has resulted in an increasing number of targeted therapeutics - most prominently, Gleevec, without which I would probably not be alive today. That is why I donate my time and available computer resources to Folding@home and encourage all my family, friends and associates to join.

Really simple, Covid-19 was kicking off, I saw a youtube video of Linus Sebastion (Linus Tech Tips) building a F@H server and I just decided to throw some some of my computing horsepower at it.
I haven't prioritised any causes because I know even if it's not covid it's still important and needs done.
It has been a bit of a learning experience in building, upgrading and tweaking compact desktop computers to fold 24/7 while keeping cool (I thought I knew how to do this but evidently not).

aetch wrote:Really simple, Covid-19 was kicking off, I saw a youtube video of Linus Sebastion (Linus Tech Tips) building a F@H server and I just decided to throw some some of my computing horsepower at it.
I haven't prioritised any causes because I know even if it's not covid it's still important and needs done.
It has been a bit of a learning experience in building, upgrading and tweaking compact desktop computers to fold 24/7 while keeping cool (I thought I knew how to do this but evidently not).

In practice, keeping your devices cool absolutely is a lot more challenging than you'd anticipate!

I fold because COVID really messed with an unbelievable number of lives this year. That video from Linus also got me to install F@H. I'm happy to help, even if it's just a little bit.

Folding with my dedicated Radeon RX 5700 XT provides me with a constant 200Watts of power flow of happiness because there is a simple truth:

"Giving unconditionally (and not taking/consuming) is what makes us human beings really happy"

When the pandemic reached Germany with the first substantial wave, all private airfields were effectively closed, and that affected my (private) flying. In the letter announcing the restrictions, the Aeroclub NRW, the umbrella organisation for flying clubs in the Federal State of Northrhine-Westphalia put out a call for contributing to the good fight against the virus, including a team name and ID and initial instructions, and so I started.

I fully plan to stay on once the COVID-19-related projects become less and less important (although I expect some to hang on to fully understand the virus to be prepared for future mutations) and contribute to the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's, and everything else that can benefit from F@H.

Ironically, I am now the only regular contributor to our F@H team, and we are but a tiny contribution, but I will continue. Because that is the spirit of F@H, that very many tiny contributions can create something big.

Cheers,
HG.

I fold for a few reasons. The first is that my contributions help fight some very nasty diseases in an objective way. I have a lot of cancer in the family, although my main concern is to find ways to fight coronaviruses and for humanity to have something on hand to help people infected, especially if the virus mutates and current treatments become ineffective. These spiky things have caused more than one epidemic and a full global pandemic, and finding ways to help people infected and mitigate their ability to harm and kill should be a top priority. Honestly, governments should be telling their citizens to help F@H.

The second, is that I have a friend who has Lewy Bodies and will almost certainly develop a fatal neurodegenerative disease, and his wife told me about it. I don't think he knows I know about it and I haven't told him, but I think that F@H may in some way be able to contribute to helping him in some way. I would like to see him live a long and happy life, if possible. He's a very intelligent person with a lot of self-taught knowledge and is always a person someone can ask almost anything about biology, chemistry, pharmacology, physics and other fields and he'll almost always know the answer; he serves as an explainer of scientific knowledge to those around him. I would hate to see his mind destroyed by disease.

The third is that obtaining computer equipment and folding with it has just plain become something to do during the pandemic. Finding good deals on computers and hardware on online marketplaces and seeing how I can maximize what I get out of the resources I have is fun (looking at charts which show which hardware gets the most bang for the buck, reading this forum for knowledge, setting up deals to meet in person to acquire hardware in the least risky way possible in terms of social distancing like a cyberpunk movie or something...it's a game); I'm a hobbyist Linux user and programmer, and learning various new knowledge that helps with setting up a home network, acquiring switches, routers...it's like a big game in some ways but it helps science. Right now I live an idle but comfortable life and it's some way I can occupy myself and better my knowledge and experience.

Another reason is that I feel that we're in a sort of Manichean battle between a certain strain of megalomania and narcissism that thinks it can elevate itself above reality through superstition and obscurantism on one hand, and then on the other there is knowledge that is obtained through "judicious study of reality". The former has a lot of appeal to humans, because judicious study of reality tells you that maybe you have a coffin in your future, and thus turning to superstition and obscurantism is a way to deny this and assuage the death-terror in one's mind. But as Stevie Wonder said, "When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer. Superstition ain't the way." So, I think that the Manichean battle that plays out is between understanding obtained through studying life as it actually is, which will empower humanity to make wise decisions and solve existential threats, and on the other hand there is delusion obtained through denial, fear, and deception that would disempower humanity and cause it to destroy itself. To me, this battle plays out in my own mind due to past and present personal demons, and this is one way I try to give the upper hand to true understanding rather than fear, delusion, solipsism, etc.

In 1998 I was able to afford my own PC with my own money. I started using SETI somewhere along the way. In or around 2002, I decided that F@H was a better (more beneficial) setup than SETI, so I began folding.

It is now 2022 and I have been folding for about 20 years. It is on a different PC, of course.