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As an IT person with only a degree in CS and historically little interest except for IT and maybe some engineering topics the best time I invested in decades wa

As an IT person with only a degree in CS and historically little interest except for IT and maybe some engineering topics the best time I invested in decades was to start - completely by accident - on the medical track. Hundreds of lecture hours and a plethora of courses in chemistry, org. chemistry, drug development (chemistry), statistics (with focus on medical topics), anatomy, physiology, (some) bio-chemistry, and neuroscience later I have learned sooooo much. All simplistic/optimistic (or in the case of antibiotics pessimistic) mass-media headlines are almost complete bullshit. In that field you MUST look at the details. Which of course require some knowledge to understand - but actually not all that much, just some basics. I've also met quite a few doctors by now, some of them in research, and see a common path from youthful optimism to disillusionment. Not as in "giving up", just getting rid of baseless optimism about what is achievable and with what effort, and resetting goals (to much lower levels). For an easy example, how many IT people think the brain works like a computer? That it's "binary based"? For illustration, here are two serious (but fun) papers written by a biologist and by a neuroscientist, respectively: "Can a biologist fix a radio?—Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis" - http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(02)00133-2 http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(02)00133... "Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?" - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055624 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055624 I think engineers benefit greatly from studying some (freshman university level) biology, bio-chemistry, physiology. In engineering everything is so much simpler, so one tends to try and use ones experience in ones own field when looking at those fields. In reality it's a great mess. If you had to debug source code written by evolution over more than a billion years you'd have no chance - no chance at all - with any of the methods you used. Even the most disgusting project messed up over decades by rotating hoards of unqualified programmers who in addition all couldn't care less and managers who magnified the mess could not remotely create a software project as messed up. Imagine Microsoft Office Suite source code run through several obfuscation tools. On top of that, the test suites only test an incredibly tiny amount of potential inputs (the amount of "inputs" where a biological system fails exceeds the ones when it works by several orders of magnitude) - and they go "green" as long as the software starts and runs at all for some very small amount of time, even if it runs badly. An it's still easier to debug than even a tiny biological system.

paulmd 10y ago
What exactly is sensationalized about antibiotic headlines? My understanding is that they are indeed massively under-funded in research and development while also being massively abused by the livestock industry (particularly overseas, where drugs-of-last-resort are being used on livestock) and general practitioners (although a tiny factor in comparison). I will grant you that the US is trying to take steps to crack down on livestock use, at least. I don't actually know any IT people who think the brain works like a computer, or that it's "binary based". I know people who think that neural nets attempt to approximate the neural activity of the brain, and also that it's a pale imitation at best, with many modes of action not properly modeled. I know people who think that free will is a myth and that everything we think is just chemical and electrical reactions in the brain, which is likely correct.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  Honestly, your reply doesn't appear to be meant to be constructive. I just have to casually scan major news sites for headlines and what is the first one I find when asking google for two search words (not the first search result but the first one relevant to the topic - I only used two words, as I said): BBC, 2015: > Analysis: Antibiotic apocalypse > A terrible future could be on the horizon, a future which rips one of the greatest tools of medicine out of the hands of doctors. Note the "apocalypse" and the "terrible" future. Of course, not sensationalized at all... As for part 2 of your comment all you have to do is read comment sections. Yes, those who ask are told that is not so, but how many ask? Even "scientists": "The scientist planning to upload his brain to a COMPUTER: Research could allow us to inhabit virtual worlds and 'live forever'" - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2879803/The-scientists-planning-upload-brain-COMPUTER-Research-allow-inhabit-virtual-worlds-live-forever.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2879803/The-s... "The Singularity Is Near: Mind Uploading by 2045?" - http://www.livescience.com/37499-immortality-by-2045-conference.html http://www.livescience.com/37499-immortality-by-2045-confere... I'll stop here. And that's from people who actually thought about that subject, in comment sections you find replies from normal people who don't make headlines. Remember the excited comments when the Human Brain Project (HBP) was announced? I just looked at some comments on this very website when the announcement was being discussed... Or a random brain related Slashdot headline: "Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain" (https://slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/1926252/why-we-should-build-a-supercomputer-replica-of-the-human-brain https://slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/1926252/why-we-should-bu...) - actually another person who even looks at the topic a lot and still comes up with such ideas (never mind the comments below).

paulmd 10y ago

What exactly is sensationalized about antibiotic headlines? My understanding is that they are indeed massively under-funded in research and development while also being massively abused by the livestock industry (particularly overseas, where drugs-of-last-resort are being used on livestock) and general practitioners (although a tiny factor in comparison). I will grant you that the US is trying to take steps to crack down on livestock use, at least. I don't actually know any IT people who think the brain works like a computer, or that it's "binary based". I know people who think that neural nets attempt to approximate the neural activity of the brain, and also that it's a pale imitation at best, with many modes of action not properly modeled. I know people who think that free will is a myth and that everything we think is just chemical and electrical reactions in the brain, which is likely correct.

LionessLover 10y ago
Honestly, your reply doesn't appear to be meant to be constructive. I just have to casually scan major news sites for headlines and what is the first one I find when asking google for two search words (not the first search result but the first one relevant to the topic - I only used two words, as I said): BBC, 2015: > Analysis: Antibiotic apocalypse > A terrible future could be on the horizon, a future which rips one of the greatest tools of medicine out of the hands of doctors. Note the "apocalypse" and the "terrible" future. Of course, not sensationalized at all... As for part 2 of your comment all you have to do is read comment sections. Yes, those who ask are told that is not so, but how many ask? Even "scientists": "The scientist planning to upload his brain to a COMPUTER: Research could allow us to inhabit virtual worlds and 'live forever'" - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2879803/The-scientists-planning-upload-brain-COMPUTER-Research-allow-inhabit-virtual-worlds-live-forever.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2879803/The-s... "The Singularity Is Near: Mind Uploading by 2045?" - http://www.livescience.com/37499-immortality-by-2045-conference.html http://www.livescience.com/37499-immortality-by-2045-confere... I'll stop here. And that's from people who actually thought about that subject, in comment sections you find replies from normal people who don't make headlines. Remember the excited comments when the Human Brain Project (HBP) was announced? I just looked at some comments on this very website when the announcement was being discussed... Or a random brain related Slashdot headline: "Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain" (https://slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/1926252/why-we-should-build-a-supercomputer-replica-of-the-human-brain https://slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/1926252/why-we-should-bu...) - actually another person who even looks at the topic a lot and still comes up with such ideas (never mind the comments below).