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This Biology Book Blew Me Away

gatesnotes.com

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Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#11

Post by xrange »

jrcii wrote: post #4

"Nick reminds me of writers like Jared Diamond, people who develop a grand theory that explains a lot about the world. He is one of those original thinkers who makes you say: More people should know about this guy’s work." I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world but no one cares because Bill Gates didn't tell everyone to listen to me. * Can anyone remind me why we care what Bill Gates thinks about bi…

>I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world

Surely you aren't going to leave us hanging without giving us a synopsis of the top three...

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#12

Post by searine »

red-indian wrote: post #5

I recommend these biology books: Molecular Cell Biology - Lodish http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Cell-Biology-Harvey-Lodish/d... Molecular Biology of the Cell - Alberts http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0815344325/

Classics.

I think I have a subtle preference for Alberts, rather than Lodish in terms of text, but I think the Lodish illustrations are better.

At this point I think I have three copies of Alberts stashed in various closets and trunks.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#13

Post by jrcii »

xrange wrote: post #11
jrcii wrote: post #4

"Nick reminds me of writers like Jared Diamond, people who develop a grand theory that explains a lot about the world. He is one of those original thinkers who makes you say: More people should know about this guy’s work." I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world but no one cares because Bill Gates didn't tell everyone to listen to me. * Can anyone remind me why we care what Bill Gates thinks about bi…

>I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world Surely you aren't going to leave us hanging without giving us a synopsis of the top three...

1. The evolutionary advantage of cooperative problem solving is what gives rise to the human tendency to self-identify with mutually exclusive groups of every scope including political territories, religions, sports teams, etc. and in turn some of the largest aspects of human culture. 2. Our concept of knowledge, which is based on prediction from past observations, is rooted in the design of our nervous system. Intuition is the product of micro-observations and predictions calculated with this system. 3. Organic life responds to its environment using a closed-loop feedback system that can be modeled as a series of steps (Sense, Organize, Analyze, Decide, Execute) where the Execute step changes the input in the Sense step.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#14

Post by tokenadult »

niels_olson wrote: post #3

> All complex life on earth shares a common ancestor, a cell that arose from simple bacterial progenitors on just one occasion in 4 billion years. This strikes me as a commonly held but deeply flawed origin story, and a close read suggests Gates doesn't buy it either, but fell into the literary trap of writing it anyway. If we believe the first form of life occurred on the sea floor, why shouldn't we believe that new…

The economical (Occam's Razor) explanation of the patterning of life on earth, based on genetic studies, is that all current living things share a common ancestor. That's what the quoted sentence says, and what you wrote doesn't show that the quoted sentence is a "deeply flawed origin story".

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#15

Post by jerf »

niels_olson wrote: post #3

> All complex life on earth shares a common ancestor, a cell that arose from simple bacterial progenitors on just one occasion in 4 billion years. This strikes me as a commonly held but deeply flawed origin story, and a close read suggests Gates doesn't buy it either, but fell into the literary trap of writing it anyway. If we believe the first form of life occurred on the sea floor, why shouldn't we believe that new…

If scientists are biased at all, they're biased against life being hard; generally the party line is that it is easy. The standard line is that life arose once because all the evidence seems to point to the fact that all observable life comes from the same line, not because they can't conceive of any alternative.

It is still thought that there could be a slight possibility of a different life line still alive in some extreme environment, which we would have a hard time observing with our existing tools; e.g., if it was not built on DNA then some of the tooling we use to detect small amounts of otherwise-unknown life might not work. But to the best of my knowledge this is just speculation with no current concrete evidence.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#16

Post by latj »

red-indian wrote: post #5

I recommend these biology books: Molecular Cell Biology - Lodish http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Cell-Biology-Harvey-Lodish/d... Molecular Biology of the Cell - Alberts http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0815344325/

The Processes of Life: An Introduction to Molecular Biology (MIT Press) Lawerence E. Hunter

This book great for people who want more than a pop-science book but less than a textbook.

http://amzn.com/0262013053

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#17

Post by civilian »

itodd wrote: post #7

Radiolab [as usual] did a great episode on this theory called Cellmates. http://www.radiolab.org/story/cellmates/

Was it a great episode? I felt like they added a lot of silly soundclips and used a lot of bad analogies. And per usual, you can almost literally hear the gears in Robert Krulwich's head grinding.

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#18

Post by civilian »

jrcii wrote: post #13
xrange wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world Surely you aren't going to leave us hanging without giving us a synopsis of the top three...

1. The evolutionary advantage of cooperative problem solving is what gives rise to the human tendency to self-identify with mutually exclusive groups of every scope including political territories, religions, sports teams, etc. and in turn some of the largest aspects of human culture. 2. Our concept of knowledge, which is based on prediction from past observations, is rooted in the design of our nervous system. Intui…

#2 seems like it could be tested.

#3 seems like a decent model, but is the model actually consistent with how "all organic life" functions? And what is the distinction between Organize&Analyze and Analyze&Decide and Decide&Execute?

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#19

Post by rusanu »

I have read The Vital Question, after hearing about it from BillG's blog. And it did blew me away. I immediately read also Oxygen, by same author, and I found it equally interesting (it goes in more detail on some topics, but some of the ideas in Oxygen are superseded by his later books).

If you can spare an hour, I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGxAB4Weq0U . Is made by the author and it covers the ideas of life origin exposed in The Vital Question.

Also interesting his paper on the double-agent theory of aging: http://www.nick-lane.net/double-agent%20theory.pdf

Re: This Biology Book Blew Me Away

#20

Post by civilian »

niels_olson wrote: post #3

> All complex life on earth shares a common ancestor, a cell that arose from simple bacterial progenitors on just one occasion in 4 billion years. This strikes me as a commonly held but deeply flawed origin story, and a close read suggests Gates doesn't buy it either, but fell into the literary trap of writing it anyway. If we believe the first form of life occurred on the sea floor, why shouldn't we believe that new…

If you had read the book, you would know that Archaea and Bacteria both share some genes. Not many genes, but a few genes that are very fundamental. And not even the genes we were expecting to be the "minimum viable product" for life. Nick Lane thinks that the evidence is for there being a common ancestor between Archaea and Bacteria too.

The genetic evidence backs it. Your intuition and suspicious about bias just don't matter. :)

But, I think the mistake you're making is a misunderstanding of how long this early evolution takes, vs. how long it takes for life to spread around the ocean. Abiogenesis is probably much slower than the time it takes for a unicellular alkaline vent-dweller to occupy the globe.

And, as far as eukaryotes go, keep in mind that there was about a billion years where there were only bacteria & archaea on the globe. A billion years! Why did it take so long to form a eukaryote then? It's because it's very x 10^9 unlikely to happen.

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