Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I should have loved biology

jsomers.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 306 posts

Re: I should have loved biology

#181

Post by kls »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #98

This isn't just biology, it's school . The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters. But most of all, you're being kept o…

Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often wonder how many great minds we have lost to being store clerk (no looking down on them, its just a waste of a mind if you have it)

Re: I should have loved biology

#182

Post by kls »

MauranKilom wrote: post #173
Sophistifunk wrote: post #98

This isn't just biology, it's school . The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters. But most of all, you're being kept o…

Probably not the same education system, but there are many things I no longer do explicitly that are nevertheless important for understanding the concept. Off the top of my head, for just mathematics: - Long division - Calculate limits - Curve sketching These aren't things I do by hand any more. But if I hadn't learned how to do them, I wouldn't be able to apply them to more advanced problems. From my extremely limit…

I would say the times tables is a good example, once you know the mechanics of multiplying 2 numbers you don't need to redundantly memorize the exact values of tables of numbers. The mechanics and how to solve for it are the important pieces to learn. Further I think it actually does more harm as it hinders the child's ability to look at numbers as placeholders and variables when they get into higher level maths. Spending so many years on the basics of mathematics could be speed up if we ensured that children fundamentally understood the mechanics and principles and then moved on to more interesting math like algebra and geometry. Where you can see more real world applications by applying them to easily solve those word problems that we all hated as children. We really don't do a good job of teaching children how to think most of it is teaching them how to memorize. It's the whole concept of cramming for a test, memorize it just long enough to get past this test, then let it fall out of your brain.

I don't even know where to start with english and literature, I just muscled thru those but man that was like death to me, just not my interest at all. It's very evident in my writing that I was not very attentive in those classes. Thank goodness for spellcheck and a very pedantic highschool friend that did not mind proofreading and shaking his head at me, after each paragraph.

Re: I should have loved biology

#183

Post by bart__ »

ros86 wrote: post #153
bart__ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I am in my masters of bioinformatics in the Netherlands and was wondering what kinds of salaries you are seeing for metabolic engineering and related fields. In my uni things like salaries rarely get discussed but I think it's quite important.

Are you interested in salary ranges in the US and/or NL?

Mostly the NL since I don't plan on moving to the US.

Re: I should have loved biology

#184

Post by john_minsk »

jeromenerf wrote: post #154
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…

I love biology yet I could not have described more opposite interests. I have zero interests in producing gmo in my kitchen, but I am definitely hooked on plants interaction and selection in open fields. Biology is pretty broad a field. Science of the living.

Not to start a holy war, but what is the difference at the end of the day? Isn't one just faster?

Re: I should have loved biology

#185

Post by veddox »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #114
hnmm23 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i asked this elsehwere in the thread, and if you scroll lower you'll see why i want to learn but this is going to sound like a bit of a ramble as im tired and feeling passionate and emotional right now but bear with me... ..if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as: understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues…

Go to scholar.google.com, search "autoimmune disease treatment", filter by last five years, use sci-hub to read the paper. Repeat until you learn enough to find your next step forward.

Absolutely not. You probably won't understand 10% of what you read. Better: go to your local university library, check out a good medicine/biology textbooks, and read that. Then go read the papers.

Re: I should have loved biology

#186

Post by choutos »

ros86 wrote: post #135
hnmm23 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i asked this elsehwere in the thread, and if you scroll lower you'll see why i want to learn but this is going to sound like a bit of a ramble as im tired and feeling passionate and emotional right now but bear with me... ..if i want to learn more bio not bc i want to hack or edit genes or whatever but because of reasons such as: understanding autoimmune diseases, the treatments for them, relationship to other issues…

What about some MOOCS? There are plenty that will introduce you to this area.

Can you (or anyone) recommend a good one? Thank you!

Re: I should have loved biology

#187

Post by learnstats2 »

kls wrote: post #181
Sophistifunk wrote: post #98

This isn't just biology, it's school . The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters. But most of all, you're being kept o…

Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often won…

I think student-led education is a useful model: where students have a say in what they find important and in their own education. (This applies for all children, not only for adolescent boys)

The curriculum has too much influence from adults whose goals (sometimes openly stated!) are for a compliant labour force with a reduced training cost on particular work-focussed skills.

That's at the expense of (for example:) relationship and mental health education, creative arts, critical thinking skills, financial education, talent development, practical entrepreneurship, and the idea that children can have and create value in their own right.

As such, this is regularly a complete mismatch to what's going to be useful to kids when and as they grow up, and kids often know it: even while they don't have the political power to make change.

Re: I should have loved biology

#188

Post by learnstats2 »

MauranKilom wrote: post #173
Sophistifunk wrote: post #98

This isn't just biology, it's school . The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters. But most of all, you're being kept o…

Probably not the same education system, but there are many things I no longer do explicitly that are nevertheless important for understanding the concept. Off the top of my head, for just mathematics: - Long division - Calculate limits - Curve sketching These aren't things I do by hand any more. But if I hadn't learned how to do them, I wouldn't be able to apply them to more advanced problems. From my extremely limit…

Long division perhaps does teach you how to follow a complex algorithm by hand, but it's not at all necessary for the math curriculum at any stage from K-12 up to university.

It's somewhat out of fashion because a good sense of number is just as useful for dividing by hand, and more useful for understanding what's going on (plus, you do now always have a calculator in your pocket).

Re: I should have loved biology

#189

Post by watwut »

brundolf wrote: post #111
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…

This is how nearly every STEM class I've ever taken has been (and really, things like history too). I retained a passing interest in math despite my classes. I was lucky to develop a foundational interest in programming before classes had the chance to ruin it. It's simply par for the course of our education system, at least in the United States. I wonder how many talented scientists never got started because they we…

> I wonder how many talented scientists never got started because they were turned off by their first exposure to a subject.

On the positive side, we dont need more scientists. There are too many people trying to be scientists leading to pretty shitty working conditions for PhDs and post docs.

Re: I should have loved biology

#190

Post by ufo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #147
redvenom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you something about memorizing phyla, orders, families, genera, and species. If you've never had exposure to any of that, it might seem arbitrary. But now, go out in the woods and try and identify species you see. You can start with birds and mammals because they are the easiest. As you begin to do so, you can keep a record of them in a spreadsheet or notebook. Look up their biological classifications. All…

Which is why I suspect the obsession of education around the world with biological classification dates to the period where most people lived in the country, not in urban spaces. Us city kids, we didn't get to spend so much time in the woods, to see so many different kinds of plants and animals - and the ones we did, we've already known by their laymen names. Tangential: it would be helpful if schools explained to ki…

There is one important part of taxonomy that is not arbitrary, however. The classification should be hierarchical, reflecting the evolution of the tree of life.
Post reply on HN