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I should have loved biology

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Re: I should have loved biology

#61

Post by emmanueloga_ »

Kaze404 wrote: post #51
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #39

"I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names" This is a common complaint when learning many subjects, and many teachers don't explain why the names are needed. Take music theory, it has an insane amount of vocabulary and concepts to assimilate, but if you watch any of the popular music theory videos on YouTube around these days, you get a glimpse of what mastering those terms looks…

This is entirely off topic, but the way you phrased your comment makes me think you have experience learning music theory. If so, could you share some resources that you found helpful? I've always wanted to learn music theory (and put it to practice), but besides hiring a teacher I could never get solid recommendations of where to start.

Indeed! There is a vast bibliography but starting with a music-school theory book is often really daunting... so searching for something different I found this series from Michael Hewitt [1], there are 3 books, one for theory, one for harmony and one for composition.

Halfway through reading the first book I decided I needed to get better at inputting music to my computer, so I started to learn Reaper (which is a bit like "the emacs of DAWs" :-).

https://www.hooktheory.com/ is also a great practical resource, focusing on numeral analysis of popular music, and the their composition tool is fantastic!

I have a backburner of other resources that I want to eventually cover but I figured that was as good a starting point as any.

1: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001I7U4SM

Re: I should have loved biology

#62

Post by jonas21 »

dnautics wrote: post #46
postingpals wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries are determined by the market, but no one ever mentions how the market determines it... which is usually some combination of scarcity, quality, and, more realistically, how many connections you have, etc. These things give you bargaining power which you can use to negotiate salaries. (This is all very basic stuff but it's more fleshed out than just saying 'the market determines salary'. The market isn't a mag…

it's an oversupply relative to demand: - lots of washout MDs - lots of students who wanted to postpone adulthood by getting a PhD (master's are just not respected anymore) - lots of PhDs who couldn't hack the academic game or got disillusioned by it and are used to low salaries because postdocs exploit the high-stakes attempt to get social cachet of professorships. - few jobs. Biology is a capital-intensive endeavour…

> Biology is a capital-intensive endeavour

Or, looking at it another way, software is a uniquely capital-light endeavor.

Many people who have been in the industry for a few years have enough savings that they could just quit their job and try whatever crazy idea they have without any external funding. You can't do that in biology, or most other fields for that matter.

Part of the reason software companies pay such high salaries is to make this option less attractive.

Re: I should have loved biology

#63

Post by xrd »

I love this article.

Does anyone have suggestions on starting down this path as someone that understands programming but has forgotten all the high school biology I learned?

I love the way I can now learn new programming frameworks. Read small bit by bit projects that build up slowly and teach the important components. Svelte for example. Solving problems and practicing the techniques are the best way for me to memorize things and then apply them to my own projects.

Is there anything similar that could start me down this path?

I'm less interested in videos like the Ninja Nerd. They look great, but it isn't a way of learning that sticks with me.

Re: I should have loved biology

#64

Post by koeng »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

It is awesome that you're getting started in this community! Here are just a few very biased recommendations of interesting folks for your podcast:

There are a bunch of different cliches (community bio vs biohacking vs citizen bio vs grinders vs transhumanists are all VERY different), but I'd recommend checking out a few of the conferences. iGEM is going on right now which is super cool, and BioHTP and Biosummit are 2 I always recommend. Since you're into fungi, there are a few cool folks in the DIYbio community you might want to talk to - Rolando Cruz Perez (in Endy Lab right now, off to do amazing fungi things soon! PhD on standardizing fungi growth conditions for distribution of strains) and Phil Ross (Mycoworks CTO, extremely eccentric, very artist, supremely interesting)

If you haven't followed them, David Ishee on Facebook+Twitter and Sebastian Cocioba on Facebook are also real good to follow. I love David's spirit+integrity of hacking and science, and Sebastian radiates an aurora of childlike wonder (specifically in plants) that is inspiring but calming. Might want to also give Josiah Zayner a follow, he is an interesting case of definitely knows-what-he-is-doing but still extremely controversial. He's a generous and kind guy though, and it is extremely respectable what he does.

Gabriel Licinia is another interesting individual in the DIYbio community you might want to reach out to - him and Justin Atkin (the thought emporium on youtube) are some of the few folks who actually do things in the community. Real science and real cool. Gabe is the local angry man who'll always tell ya if something is BS on the DIYbio facebook groups. Those 2 also work with Andreas Stuermer, who is a fantastic DNA designer. Those 3 are quite a superpower.

On the startup side, I'd recommend checking out Ryan Bethencourt's stuff. He is a great guy, transitioned from diy->startup stuff, and often helps others do too. I personally like Elliot Roth's company Spira and what they are doing with cyanobacteria and photosynthetic organisms. The future is cyanobacteria!

On the non-profit side, I really like what the BioBricks Foundation is doing and what the Open Bioeconomy Lab is doing.

Hope some of those things help! Glad your P.olymerase C.rap R.eaction worked - GMO yeast is easier IMO, just follow the culture timings and you'll be fine. Also Sanger is terrible, and Nanopore is awesome. I'd be happy to talk with you too if you'd like - I've been around for a bit, and I love helping other people get started in these communities!

PS: on your website you say you want to "Learn to navigate GenBank". Please be prepared to be disappointed.

Re: I should have loved biology

#65

Post by joshuamcginnis »

axiom92 wrote: post #48
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #41

After 15 years in tech and a life-changing psychedelic trip, I decided to self-learn genetic engineering and share it with the world[1][2] while I look for a meaningful biotech venture to found. What you can do today from your kitchen or home lab is remarkable. For instance, I taught myself PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and recently published my first genetic sequence at GenBank from fungi that I cultured, extracte…

>life-changing psychedelic trip Fascinating stuff. Any chance you could expand on this?

I suffer from pretty bad depression and have been battling with it for a while using all available treatments. Someone recommended I try psilocybin mushrooms. I learned how to grow them, grew them and then had my wife help facilitate a safe well-intentioned trip using 7g of dried mushrooms. Happy to answer any questions about it. It was a profound experience. It isn't a cure but it's certainly a tool in my toolbox that has helped reshaped my life in a real and lasting way.

Re: I should have loved biology

#66

Post by emmanueloga_ »

kortilla wrote: post #55
dnautics wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what superpowers does mastering those languages unlock? Maybe think of it this way: it isn't unlocking the superpowers, it's an ultrafilter. If you aren't capable of performing precise and contextualized recall of trivia, then your engagement with the subject is going to be limited to diletanttery. When I was a biochemist, there were several critical instances when recall of some minor thing that I had learned year…

House was effective because the writers made him that way. The real top people in fields are not walking encyclopedias. They have extremely good grasps of core principles, key findings, relationships between ideas, etc. Specific names and other specifics that don’t fundamentally affect things are not things they clutter their minds with.

Encyclopedic knowledge can be a great tool, no question about it! I think of it as memoization for the brain.

It may well turn out to be that some problem you are attacking could be simplified if you only knew that piece of "trivia", but if you don't know it you need to spend some brainpower re-discovering the thing instead of attacking the main problem.

The way I think about the learning / performance is a bit like an RPG game. Encyclopedic knowledge is just another bar to fill in, with the corresponding trade offs.

Re: I should have loved biology

#67

Post by koeng »

xrd wrote: post #63

I love this article. Does anyone have suggestions on starting down this path as someone that understands programming but has forgotten all the high school biology I learned? I love the way I can now learn new programming frameworks. Read small bit by bit projects that build up slowly and teach the important components. Svelte for example. Solving problems and practicing the techniques are the best way for me to memor…

What are you interested in? Synthetic biology? Bioinformatics? Something else?

Biology is really broad - As an analogy, not sure if you’re interested in how to build a gaming computer or want to learn how make web apps.

Re: I should have loved biology

#68

Post by DavidPiper »

Kaze404 wrote: post #51
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #39

"I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names" This is a common complaint when learning many subjects, and many teachers don't explain why the names are needed. Take music theory, it has an insane amount of vocabulary and concepts to assimilate, but if you watch any of the popular music theory videos on YouTube around these days, you get a glimpse of what mastering those terms looks…

This is entirely off topic, but the way you phrased your comment makes me think you have experience learning music theory. If so, could you share some resources that you found helpful? I've always wanted to learn music theory (and put it to practice), but besides hiring a teacher I could never get solid recommendations of where to start.

Not OP, but, I've only ever used online resources -

- https://www.musictheory.net/ is surprisingly good for the basics; their apps are good quality.

- https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/ used to have a lot of rabbit holes that were fascinating, but not sure what the community is like now. From a quick look it could still be a useful place to lurk.

- The Youtube channels 12tone, Sideways, 8-Bit Music Theory and Nahre Sol are my go-tos now that I'm no longer in active learning mode. Music Matters, Adam Neely and Signals Music Studio are also good. There are others in the Youtube sphere too but those are the channels I'm most familiar with.

- Music composition videos and classes also tend to be fairly theory-heavy without advertising it overtly.

Re: I should have loved biology

#69

Post by xrd »

koeng wrote: post #67
xrd wrote: post #63

I love this article. Does anyone have suggestions on starting down this path as someone that understands programming but has forgotten all the high school biology I learned? I love the way I can now learn new programming frameworks. Read small bit by bit projects that build up slowly and teach the important components. Svelte for example. Solving problems and practicing the techniques are the best way for me to memor…

What are you interested in? Synthetic biology? Bioinformatics? Something else? Biology is really broad - As an analogy, not sure if you’re interested in how to build a gaming computer or want to learn how make web apps.

I don't know. Which of those is the most fun? I suppose I don't care as much about building something or a career as much as I want to learn something new. Can you suggest a focus for me?

Re: I should have loved biology

#70

Post by 5d749d7da7d5 »

mannykannot wrote: post #52
an_opabinia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The course was so much about WHAT and never about WHY. Biology is pretty notorious for most stuff being arbitrary. There is no model. People who say there's a model, they're talking about something else - sometimes, a literal Platonic ideal of biology, that makes for an appealing pop science course, but not knowledge that like, helps you design experiments or better use drugs or whatever. From the article: > It was…

> Watson and Crick were not math savants. They did not have natural gifts. They had the 'natural gift' of picking up on the clues hinting that DNA, rather than protein, was central to the mechanism of biological inheritance. It is the natural gift of being able to identify the key features of the forest despite the preponderance of obfuscating trunks and branches. It is the gift of seeing some sort of order behind ci…

>They had the 'natural gift' of picking up on the clues hinting that DNA, rather than protein, was central to the mechanism of biological inheritance.

That was Hershey and Chase [0]. Watson and Crick were the first to solve the structure of DNA.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%E2%80%93Chase_experime...

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