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Technology Without Industry

geohot.github.io

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Re: Technology Without Industry

#51

Post by pulkitsh1234 »

Total bio newb here, Can anyone suggest an easy to digest book on biology ? I am always overwhelmed by the nomenclature while trying to get into biology, and to me it always feels like a field with a lot of rote memorisation (for lack of a better term) for a newbie.

Thinking in terms of abstractions, are there some books which stay on a relatively high level of abstraction ? Or is biology a field where you absolutely need to know the specifics of every particular thing in order to understand something ?

Re: Technology Without Industry

#53

Post by correct_horse »

> Biology is non-toxic

Except for the toxic organisms (poison frogs, newts, fish, etc.). The best you can say on this line of thinking is that biology is biodegradable, except even that isn't true. Modern diatoms don't biodegrade - they mostly turn to sediment at the bottom of the oceans. Further, coal is mostly made of what used to be woody (lignin-containing) plants that couldn't be biodegraded when lignin first evolved[1]. The unique aspect of modern industry that makes it not sustainable is its scale and speed. The solution might involve industrially creating organisms with a similar scale and speed (like ones that can metabolize plastic).

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation

Re: Technology Without Industry

#54

Post by correct_horse »

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #51

Total bio newb here, Can anyone suggest an easy to digest book on biology ? I am always overwhelmed by the nomenclature while trying to get into biology, and to me it always feels like a field with a lot of rote memorisation (for lack of a better term) for a newbie. Thinking in terms of abstractions, are there some books which stay on a relatively high level of abstraction ? Or is biology a field where you absolutely…

I can suggest "The Selfish Gene". It is about evolutionary biology, not molecular biology. I'm not really sure what you're looking for.

Re: Technology Without Industry

#55

Post by Mobleysoft »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #23
catmanjan wrote: post #18

Although only a paragraph is dedicated to the topic, I think this essay is more about the wonders of biology. I've been thinking about this more lately, how cells are more or less the nanomachines we read about in sci-fi. Animals and plants are living machines, much more compatible with humans than the machines we have created - yet the investment in artificial machines dwarfs the natural ones... (I make this stateme…

Biology is inductive technology, built from the specific to the general through trial and error. Human inventions are mostly deductive technology, built from the general to the specific through the understanding of principles, and trial and error. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Biology's biggest advantage is a head start. However biology while sometimes elegant can also be very dumb. For example DNA…

Your assertion that DNA is spaghetti code seems short sighted while the inner-workings of structures, such as human brains, which it can generate remain to be fully understood. There is more to learn. What you deem to be spaghetti may be the most efficient way to make one piece of code perform well under broad spectrum of conditions.

Re: Technology Without Industry

#56

Post by patcon »

hoseja wrote: post #48
patcon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a biochemist, I feel you're too quick to condemn based on what I would assume is an overly rigorous interpretations of these words. I would assume, knowing what I know, and presuming what he knows -- He's not saying biology/nature has no toxins. He's saying biology by and large isn't toxic to ecological systems made of average biological components. And I feel he's more right than wrong. The efficiency th…

(1) isn't really true though, is it?

Heh, thanks for asking instead of downvoting :)

I would say it is true: "toxic" is only a word in reference to effects on other biologies. So on the whole, no, biology is NOT toxic to biology. It is non-toxic. (Though yes, toxins exist in biological niches that are toxic to some biologies and neutral to others.)

Re: Technology Without Industry

#57

Post by clairity »

patcon wrote: post #35
avivo wrote: post #30

With all due respect George, I now disagree, even if I did agree in 2012 (when we road tripped together to SXSW; celebrating the destruction of SOPA!). I still think SOPA was terrible! But my broader thinking has dramatically evolved as I learned more about how technology and power interact in society. You assume a common fallacy that I often bring up on HN — the magical decentralization fallacy — "the mistaken belie…

I go back and forth on this. I am NOT in the "decentralize everything" camp. But I fear power more than chaos. Chaos turns over. Power resists that. Power seeks its own structural stasis. But in chaos, there's a fertile and teeming intertidal zone in every churn of a chaotic system. (though it is uncomfortable for us as inhabitants, and that is fuckin real) I've had the privilege to be involved in both tech, biochemi…

cheers, a vivid and lucid description of the dynamics.

i’ve been thinking along these lines in relation to business and economy, toward a conclusion that our economic policy should be principally geared toward encouraging medium-sized ($10-50MM) and focused businesses, which provides plenty of reward and economies of scale while avoiding the corrupting forces and negative externalities of behemoths and conglomerates. same with personal wealth - encourage people to get to ~$2MM (where you can easily live comfortably without working again) but progressively discourage (not prohibit) wealth accumulation above $10MM (e.g., make wealth be put to work harder and in more provably positively-externalized ways to accumulate further).

Re: Technology Without Industry

#58

Post by patcon »

hoseja wrote: post #47
patcon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really like your comment. And yeah, even cephalization (e.g., evolution of "heads" in almost all species) is a neat artifact of this relentless concentration of power in even a single species. We rightfully cry out against human subjugation, but never cry out for the skin cell on the back of the fist we raise against that. But it's maybe similar processes taking place and emerging within different strata of matter I'…

And if you extrapolate it's easy to see we're bound for the fate of the skin cell.

But hey, maybe that's the eternal struggle of being human. Maybe we die on this hill, and keep agency from drifting upward beyond our scale.

Also, that likely means an alien civilization that DIDN'T resist entropy will eventually come along and run circles around us, in some form...!

If there's an analogy in nature (and I'll admit I've thought often about this), it's probably the slime mold[1]. It's an aggregate of single-celled organisms that managed to preserve their individuality much more than most other multi-cellular organisms. But the contrast in capabilities between slime molds and traditional multi-cellular organisms (bees! insects! us!) is pretty vast.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold#/media/File:Fuligo_...

Re: Technology Without Industry

#59

Post by carapace »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #25
carapace wrote: post #9

An ecologically harmonious lifestyle is economically cheaper, both for the household (in reduced expenses) and the surrounding economy (via reduced degradation of "ecosystem services"[1].) This, along with advances in technology, should result in massive reduction of work required to maintain a given quality of life. E.g. a 24-hour work week, and the option to retire after working only a few years. One's leisure time…

While "we" had the capability of a high-tech, leisure society in the 1970s, "we" probably refers to a minority of people in developed countries at the time, so maybe 1-2% of people on the planet. Indeed since the 1970s the great economic story has been the spread of this way of life to others rather than an acceleration of technology to greater heights. Although the latter has happened, most effort has been focused o…

Well, FWIW, Bucky considered himself to be working on behalf of all humanity. As an engineer he saw that working at the larger scale gave him the greater efficiency. (I.e. instead of heating and cooling individual buildings he proposed putting domes over entire cities!) In his lifetime he traveled the globe (~80 times around!) and was one of the most famous Americans in the world, in part because he was working on everyone's behalf.

- - - -

Anyway, you're right that standards of living have been going up globally, often with environmental degradation, but not always. For example, the revival of the Loess Plateu:

> the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project was launched in 1994[7] to rehabilitate the land and improve the people's livelihoods. The project guided the people living on the plateau to change animal husbandry practices; encouraged natural regeneration of grasslands, tree and shrub cover on slope-lands previously used for farming; and land restoration through terracing and replanting. These efforts allowed the perennial vegetation cover to increase from 17 to 34 percent, and "[e]ven in the lifetime of the project, the ecological balance was restored in a vast area considered by many to be beyond help"; in addition, more than 2.5 million people were lifted out of poverty by doubled incomes.[6]

> Restoration has occurred over an area of about 35,000 square kilometers (about 5% of the plateau's total area).[8] Results have reduced the massive silt loads to the Yellow River by about one percent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess_Plateau#Agriculture_and_...

Re: Technology Without Industry

#60

Post by hoseja »

patcon wrote: post #56
hoseja wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) isn't really true though, is it?

Heh, thanks for asking instead of downvoting :) I would say it is true: "toxic" is only a word in reference to effects on other biologies. So on the whole, no, biology is NOT toxic to biology. It is non-toxic. (Though yes, toxins exist in biological niches that are toxic to some biologies and neutral to others.)

No, I meant "(1) functional state of folded proteins being an exact match with the lowest energy conformational state that it's linear amino acid order allows"

This is untrue.

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