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I should have loved biology

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Re: I should have loved biology

#261

Post by cambalache »

an_opabinia wrote: post #8
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…

> 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…

Only in HN a comment like this is not laughed out of the room.

Biology is packed with useful, relevant models, from the lock and key model for enzymes in one extreme to the Lotka-Volterra (predator-prey) for ecosystems population in the other, there are plenty of models who are A) Theoretically sound. B)Has great quantitative explanatory power.

> Watson and Crick were not math savants. They did not have natural gifts.

You have a very quaint and naive view of biology. Since the work of Maynard-Smith at the very least, has rigorous mathematics taken an important role in biology. Population genetics,neuroscience, systems biology, biochemistry among others are underpinned by lots of math. People working deciphering all the signaling pathways in the cell are working with what is effectively a complicated,messy but fascinating discretely-encoding program.

Re: I should have loved biology

#262

Post by whatshisface »

infinite8s wrote: post #255
svara wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's making an interesting point that's largely true, but not the whole truth. It's the typical physicist arrogance towards biology. ;) For example, evolution through natural selection would not have been understood if Darwin and Wallace hadn't put great effort into cataloguing and classifying species. You might say they obviously were thinking about mechanisms at the same time, but the cataloguing was the preconditi…

The same was true of physics (for example, Tycho Brahe's extensive astronomical measurements paved the way for Copernicus's heliocentrism model and Newton's later theories of mechanics).

Brahe's measurements weren't classifications, they were measurements.

Physics-through-classification dates back to the failed attempts of ancient philosophers to explain the natural world. They had ideas like, "there are two kinds of things, things that fall down, and things that do not. The things that fall fall because they are things-that-fall." The present-day bad blood that physicists have towards taxonomies probably has something to do with the fact that their field was founded the day physics taxonomies were abandoned.

Re: I should have loved biology

#263

Post by Melting_Harps »

Rochus wrote: post #155

This is about molecular biology , which is only one of many branches of biology . The biggest books I ever bought were those on molecular biology and biochemistry. Huge and weighing several kilos. Until then I did not know that it was possible to produce such large paperbacks at all. Some of these books are also among the best I have ever seen in terms of design and didactics. This is also necessary because the area…

> My entry into the field was when I did a PhD in molecular biology and biophysics after ten years of professional experience as a computer scientist. That was almost twenty years ago now, and I still have the feeling that I'm only scratching the surface.

Wait... I know there are cross-disciplines that let you get into certain programs, but you skipped and entire undergrad's worth of core classes in Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics (and possibly Masters level research) and got into a Molecular Biology PhD program with 10 years as a CS?

That really is amazing, and kind of disheartening as a person with a BSc in Cellular/Molecular biology. Goes to show just how irrelevant it really way in the grand-scheme of things--though, to be honest I had already had that thought as I was doing it.

I actually double majored as a Bio-Chem major but never went past my junior year requirements for it, and was never even given the option to have my completed lower division course work be deemed as a minor when I graduated.

And, yes you are right; once you understand how immense the field is and how wide reaching it is, you cannot fathom being able to ever really grasp it in one Lifetime. It's an amazing field of study, but despite my credentials saying a concentration in Molecular Biology I honestly had a much greater fascination in Microbiology and the role it has on Human and Plant Health and disease and the correlation between the two via diet.

Re: I should have loved biology

#264

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> The course was so much about WHAT and never about WHY.

WHY is philosophy/metaphysics.

WHAT is science.

Re: I should have loved biology

#266

Post by dragonwriter »

kernoble wrote: post #24
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…

I excelled at AP biology, but college biology was a total drag. Honestly, it's just the teachers, my high school teachers taught with passion in college it was a chore for my professors. At least software has more jobs and better pay, even if it's less fundamentally interesting.

> I excelled at AP biology, but college biology was a total drag. Honestly, it's just the teachers, my high school teachers taught with passion in college it was a chore for my professors.

An AP biology teacher in high school is teaching a class with disproportionately the most predisposed-to-be-engaged students, and its the central part of their job, in which they are secure and focussed. A lower-division biology professor in a university is probably teaching a class with disproportionately the least predisposed-to-be-engaged students, and if they are a tenured or tenure-track professor at a research university, its also not the core of their job (if they aren't, its a core part of their job -- but one in which they are insecure, are more likely to be adjusting to, and which may be one of several jobs.)

Re: I should have loved biology

#267

Post by text70 »

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 am an out of work scientist. If you want someone that is happy to chat all things bio, pm me.

Re: I should have loved biology

#268

Post by tejtm »

watwut wrote: post #127
tejtm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my observations which I think broadly agrees. -Math/CS: inherently better at abstracting & are "proof" centric. -Life Sciences: inherently better at observing then reasoning and are "argument" centric. Coming from the CS side this is not a marriage made in heaven as opinions don't matter by design.

As a Math/CS graduate (I focused on mathy aspects of CS): math cs people struggle at working with real world abstractions. They abstract and simplify, but then tend to convince themselves that simplified model and its conclusions are totally all there is to reality. And if they accept that model is not super perfect, they completely reject model - to find another simplified model that they convince themselves if flaw…

I'm also from the mathy aspects of CS. To avoid ticking off a local majority I will simply agree that there are technical practitioners for whom accepting the that life science and data it produces are at best "a system of exceptions" is difficult.

And that this lack of flexibility can create hard times when they attempt to fit biology into a banking app because that is what they learned programming is.

On the converse side life sciences may feel everything is debatable and that having a strong personality should mater as much as an absolute mathematical proof.

Re: I should have loved biology

#269

Post by _mt3y »

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…

> School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types.

The point of school is to teach discipline and grit - the subjects in and of themselves are merely incidental. Do you really think that these "great minds" - the kids who can't sit through a lecture and half-ass everything off of natural talent alone - would be doing great things if it weren't for the evil school system getting in the way?

"Smart but lazy" is probably the most insufferable combination of character traits. Nothing else even comes close.

(See also: "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" - http://www.marktarver.com/bipolar.html)

Re: I should have loved biology

#270

Post by eyeundersand »

text70 wrote: post #267
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 am an out of work scientist. If you want someone that is happy to chat all things bio, pm me.

If I may ask, what were you working on before? (Just curious, feel free to disregard)
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