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I should have loved biology

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Re: I should have loved biology

#71

Post by LetThereBeLight »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #17

Ah yes, the recurring obsession hacker news has with biology - except that no startup would pay a biologist a software engineer's wage. Talking about biology is nice. But what's nicer is dismantling the elephant in the room.

Doing biology, as in culturing cells and performing biochemical assays does not come cheap. Software and wetware development are totally different ball games in terms of upfront costs and risk levels. Just building a wetware proof of concept without university resources is non-trivial in terms of the resources it requires. I don't think biology fits at all in the standard startup model.

Re: I should have loved biology

#72

Post by bootcampwhere »

m463 wrote: post #2

I read this and it it fills me with so much melancholy. I took biology 101 in college and what I thought would be really interesting turned out to be SO unexpectedly meaningless. Now years later all I recall is the memorization of phylums and kingdoms on one test and cell structures on another test and sitting in a large auditorium looking at the map and not the territory. The course was so much about WHAT and never…

You people are so dumb trying to blame others for your lack of drive and interest. Study on your own, no one gives a shot if you like it or not all anyone can do is present you with the material. If you choose to ignore it you can't blame them.

Re: I should have loved biology

#74

Post by achenatx »

I have microbiology and electrical engineering degrees. Started a PhD (microbiology and immunology) and washed out with a masters to go into the dot com boom.

There is so much potential for biology to be engineering, but the reality is you can spend your whole life studying one tiny aspect of something esoteric. You can spend your whole life trying to find one amazing cure (or not).

Biology is great if you are interested in learning how the world works, but not so great if you love to create new things.

Even with medicine you are essentially a mechanic for humans instead of cars and the technology improves a lot slower.

I considered doing bioinformatics, but there was essentially no way to make money because grad students were doing everything for 12K/year.

One great thing about biology is that it is easy to understand because everything makes sense and "works" like you think it should. Human created systems often times dont make sense at all.

Re: I should have loved biology

#75

Post by lambdatronics »

Reminds me of The Vital Question by Nick Lane. I highly recommend this book. I had that same sensation reading it: "Man, why was high school biology so boring when it could have been like this?!"

It's about the role of energy in the emergence of life (pre-biotic -> single-cell -> multicellular -> animals). You'll see some chemical names, but it also tells interesting human stories too.

Re: I should have loved biology

#76

Post by neitherboosh »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #65
axiom92 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

Wonderful to hear it’s had such a positive impact on your life. What part of the experience made you decide to learn about genetic engineering?

Re: I should have loved biology

#77

Post by mannykannot »

5d749d7da7d5 wrote: post #70
mannykannot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Point taken, though that article also says "Hershey and Chase concluded that protein was not likely to be the hereditary genetic material. However, they did not make any conclusions regarding the specific function of DNA as hereditary material, and only said that it must have some undefined role."

Arguably, my general point still holds, though with an expanded cast of characters.

Re: I should have loved biology

#78

Post by adrianN »

pm90 wrote: post #19
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #17

Ah yes, the recurring obsession hacker news has with biology - except that no startup would pay a biologist a software engineer's wage. Talking about biology is nice. But what's nicer is dismantling the elephant in the room.

Aren’t salaries determined by the market? Just to be clear, this isn’t snark. I’m curious how salaried are determined.

"The market" sucks in situations where bargaining power is unequal, the participants don't have all the information and transaction costs are very high.

Re: I should have loved biology

#79

Post by Cerium »

geomark wrote: post #44
nneonneo wrote: post #13

This article rings so true to me. My father is a microbiologist - and now, so is my fiancée. I'm very lucky that I get to learn about genetics through osmosis now, and boy, is it ever fascinating! I had a dining-table discussion with my dad the other day where the subject of DNA mismatch repair came up. It turns out that, in E. coli, a very simple & widely studied prokaryote, there's a mechanism called DNA mismatch r…

"I'm very lucky that I get to learn about genetics through osmosis ..." I see what you did there. But...is the genetics knowledge the solute or the solvent, because, well, you know (teaching biology to my homeschooled kid at the moment and we just did a unit on diffusion and osmosis, so please excuse my current state of mind)

I have found that educational osmosis becomes less effective over time as I fill my head with bits of information. I have to exert more pressure learning to cause the information to travel across the barrier into my mind.

This also explains why you start to feel stupid after watching too much television, the osmotic action is working against your self interest.

Re: I should have loved biology

#80

Post by adrianN »

friendlybus wrote: post #16
dannykwells wrote: post #6

If you want to study biology, study evolution. Darwin. Dawkins. Gould. King. Biology only makes sense in light of evolution, and boy howdy is it beautiful.

Probably an annoying question... do you have an opinion on the mathetical unlikelyhood of evolution happening?

How can evolution not happen in a system where you have random mutation and some selection pressure?
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