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I should have loved biology too

nehalslearnings.substack.com

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Re: I should have loved biology too

#101

Post by flobosg »

frereubu wrote: post #8

The post by James Somers that this article references at the top inspired me to buy the David Goodsell book The Machinery of Life . I would seriously recommend that to anyone who doesn't have a background in biology (like me). The phrase is a bit of a cliché, but it genuinely blew my mind, to the extent that I had to read it slowly because there's so much fascinating stuff packed into such a small book. It's obvious…

Check out his[1] Molecule of the Month series (https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/) if you haven’t already!

[1]: Although he just retired from it. Janet Iwasa will continue the project.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#102

Post by Wojtkie »

dekhn wrote: post #23

I invested a great deal of effort over 30+ years to learn biology, which I started to love in high school when a teacher introduced us to molecular biology. Over time I've come to appreciate that biology is a huge field and people who master one area often know little to nothing about many others. To be proficient in biology you need to have "Extra" skills: extra ability to work with ambiguity,ability to memorize eno…

I've got a background in neuroscience and transitioned to data science a few years ago. Your comment about the rabbit hole of modern biology is spot on. I've been hearing for 10+ years about how ML like computer vision will revolutionize medical diagnosis and treatment. It hasn't happened yet and I think that enthusiasm comes from the fact that we built computer systems from the ground up and therefore know them deeply, whereas biological systems aren't fully understood.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#103

Post by ramraj07 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #72
ramraj07 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a biologist with a tech background (but actual biotechnology majors) - please we have enough tech bros who think they're biology's saviors. They'll just come in fascinated by some technological problem, call it the only blocker to solving aids and cancer and take away a billion dollars in funding over decades and show nothing of actual consequence. Like the entire protein folding field. It's a tool. Not the soluti…

I've been working my way towards a biololgy degree very slowly (can only really fit one-class-at-a-time alongside working full time). I'm maybe 70% to a bachelor's degree in it. Been writing code for ages, but I've saved enough to accept a lower salary if it means I get to work on a real problem for once in my life. So I guess I'm one of those people you're frustrated with. Do you have any advice for how to not be th…

In my (possibly not the best) opinion the most important quality will be to not delude oneself with the idea that their method or field is the most important field in all of science. Unfortunately academic structures force you to think and believe that and then proselytize that way. But if you stay above it at least in my books you're above most folks. But then I'm a lowly guy in a corner lol.

Practically what this means is that you should decide what you truly want to change (not necessarily what you can change with your current expertise) and pursue it across whatever fields necessary. If it's curing a disease, you have to decide what is the most important thing that's stopping us from curing that disease and pursue that exact topic. More often than not it's not anything software related. You have to grab a pipette at some point and guillotine a few mice at another lol.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#104

Post by sundarurfriend »

1auralynn wrote: post #39

The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. This has resulted in what we have now: A subject where the prerequisite to understanding is the ability to read long passages of text littered with jargon and visualize what that might represent. Even if everyone's reading skills were where they should be, the second part is not a super common skillset. It's one of the reasons why I work in…

> The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things.

More to the point, the field of biology is so complex that for the longest time we could only name and classify things. Understanding came later, when we'd accummulated enough data and had hints from chemistry and other fields.

The problem is that once we gain that understanding, we add that as one more chapter to our textbooks, one more lesson tacked on, instead of rethinking the curriculum around our understanding.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#105

Post by nitwit005 »

1auralynn wrote: post #39

The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. This has resulted in what we have now: A subject where the prerequisite to understanding is the ability to read long passages of text littered with jargon and visualize what that might represent. Even if everyone's reading skills were where they should be, the second part is not a super common skillset. It's one of the reasons why I work in…

It's not that they love to classify things, it's that you have no choice but to do so for people to know what you're talking about.

Not a lot of point in spending time researching something, only for no one to know what you're even referring to.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#106

Post by ern »

kleiba wrote: post #2

A while ago, I taught CS for a year in a local high school. I can very much relate to the notion of "astonishing facts were presented without astonishment": as a teacher, you don't have the freedom to teach whatever you want (of course), but you're very tightly bound to a curriculum that's developed by the state government. And for CS, this curriculum was so uninteresting and uninspiring (what a surprise: 13 year old…

I can really relate to your experience, even though mine was from a parent's perspective rather than as a teacher. I found a similar thing when tutoring one of my children in trigonometry. The way the material was being presented in school didn't click with him, but astonishingly, despite having studied it decades ago both at school and university, explaining it to him, it finally made sense to me. The unit circle definition of a tangent is a thing of beauty. I had the time to get my child to appreciate it as well, because of the extra time I had to spend with him, whereas the teacher had to hit curriculum benchmarks.

I also think this is where things like intergenerational math-phobia come from: parents who don't grasp core concepts and are scared off, and can't help their own children, creating an ongoing cycle.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#107

Post by sundarurfriend »

seydor wrote: post #17

If you want to be fascinated with biology just go to nature, or a park and stay there for a while. After a while you ll start to wonder about the birds, the plants the snails, the cats. Biology is descriptive science , nothing wrong with it

I sometimes skywatch late at night, marveling at the vastness of what's out there, and the glimpse of it we get over here. That gives me a sense of wonder about space, but did not make astronomy any more appealing to me.

Gaining an appreciation for nature is good, getting fascinated with biology is also good, but one is not necessarily related to the other in practice.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#108

Post by raincom »

One thing I was suggested when learning a new subject: pick a book like "history and philosophy of physics/chemistry/biology". This has served me well. Most of the teachers are bad; most of the text book writers are bad. In my considered view, a philosopher of biology can write a better biology textbook for newbies.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#109

Post by hintymad »

> I liked math and physics and economics and even chemistry,

I think the reason is that these subjects give students a sense of instant gratification and instant empowering. Every concept and every theorem could be a breakthrough to my problem-solving skills, and I can immediately see how I can solve more problems through the learning.

But of course, nothing gives more instant gratification than CS. I can try and build things via my keyboard at any time. The learning and the associated work does not get better than that.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#110

Post by girvo »

nightpool wrote: post #77
slicktux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole teaching the history of computers is a big failure at an attempt to Segway into computer organization and architecture. Nonetheless, I get what is happening. If it’s a pure Computer programming class then the goal maybe to have them understand the “basics”…like what is the hard drive vs RAM (memory allocation) or what is a transistor (Boolean logic) and what is a punch card (mnemonics and abstractio…

(Unless you're riding a motorized vehicle, the word is segue, not Segway)

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another"

The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it will eventually become the actual way it is spelled!

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