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Paraphrasing Feynman: "I believe that a hacker looking at nonhackerish problems is just as dumb as the next guy." The level of ignorance revealed in most commen

by Rod 16y ago

Paraphrasing Feynman: "I believe that a hacker looking at nonhackerish problems is just as dumb as the next guy." The level of ignorance revealed in most comments on this post so far is somewhat shocking. Michael Nielsen once mentioned that HN'ers could be incredibly arrogant when treading outside of their area of expertise, and this is all the proof one needs. Either that, or Biology gets all the HN simpletons out of the closet.

Ratufa 16y ago
Whether or not you are correct, your post would be greatly improved if it gave reasons why many of the comments are ignorant, or at least provided a specific critique of one of the more representative ones.
danielford 16y ago
Yeah, I haven't wanted to reach through the internet and smack so many people since the last time I read the comments for a YouTube video. I suppose they deserve to know why they're wrong though. For starters the article isn't saying anything beyond the fact that there are people who buy used PCR machines and run reactions in their basement. Now, I think that's pretty cool, but nothing meaningful is going to come of it. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Biological Research Is Expensive - Setting up a real lab so you can do the basic stuff like running gels and western blots is going to cost somewhere around $100,000. Note that this isn't like buying a computer where once you pay for it you're set. Actually performing an experiment can cost hundreds of dollars for reagents alone. 2) Biological Research Requires Oversight - If you're going to work with radioisotopes, or toxic chemicals, or animals you need permits that are not offered outside of an academic or industrial setting. Two of the basic techniques of molecular biology, northern blots and southern blots, use radioactive reagents. I'll grant that there are alternatives that use fluorescence, but they're expensive, and aren't widely used. 3) Biological Research Is Tedious and Slow - I think part of the reason computers took off so quickly is that you can run a program and get quick feedback on whether or not it worked. Most of biological research is not like that. In graduate school I worked on genetic modifications that hypothetically extended the life spans of fruit flies. In order to see if a modification worked, I had to assay their life span over a hundred days. I'd normally be incredibly excited about getting the result on day one, but by day forty my interest was mostly exhausted. Biology doesn't give you the instant thrill of knowing a piece of code worked, which is one of the reasons it's not going to take off like personal computers did. I'm not going to single anyone out, but if you've been making comments in this thread there's a high probability you have no idea what you're talking about.

by Rod 16y ago

Ratufa 16y ago

Whether or not you are correct, your post would be greatly improved if it gave reasons why many of the comments are ignorant, or at least provided a specific critique of one of the more representative ones.

danielford 16y ago

Yeah, I haven't wanted to reach through the internet and smack so many people since the last time I read the comments for a YouTube video. I suppose they deserve to know why they're wrong though. For starters the article isn't saying anything beyond the fact that there are people who buy used PCR machines and run reactions in their basement. Now, I think that's pretty cool, but nothing meaningful is going to come of it. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Biological Research Is Expensive - Setting up a real lab so you can do the basic stuff like running gels and western blots is going to cost somewhere around $100,000. Note that this isn't like buying a computer where once you pay for it you're set. Actually performing an experiment can cost hundreds of dollars for reagents alone. 2) Biological Research Requires Oversight - If you're going to work with radioisotopes, or toxic chemicals, or animals you need permits that are not offered outside of an academic or industrial setting. Two of the basic techniques of molecular biology, northern blots and southern blots, use radioactive reagents. I'll grant that there are alternatives that use fluorescence, but they're expensive, and aren't widely used. 3) Biological Research Is Tedious and Slow - I think part of the reason computers took off so quickly is that you can run a program and get quick feedback on whether or not it worked. Most of biological research is not like that. In graduate school I worked on genetic modifications that hypothetically extended the life spans of fruit flies. In order to see if a modification worked, I had to assay their life span over a hundred days. I'd normally be incredibly excited about getting the result on day one, but by day forty my interest was mostly exhausted. Biology doesn't give you the instant thrill of knowing a piece of code worked, which is one of the reasons it's not going to take off like personal computers did. I'm not going to single anyone out, but if you've been making comments in this thread there's a high probability you have no idea what you're talking about.