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HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/) and th

HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/) and this (https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. There's also a misleading phenomenon where many of the fields whose "experts" chime in on these questions are called evolutionary psychology or behavioral genetics, making you think that these fields are related to biology and enjoy the same methodological standards of rigor as well as the same consensus from biologists. In reality these fields approach the questions from psychology, and that one field is known for having a bunch of practices, biases and motivated reasoning that'd make many a biologist reluctant to touch it with a ten feet pole. It's very elegant to see the sleight of hand in action: someone makes a claim about sex, arguing it's a biological reality, and when challenged backs up their claim with a psych paper from a field that disguises as one from biologists and pretends that his claim enjoys a widespread consensus among actual scientists (as opposed to just psychologists). Hence, the claim isn't ideologically motivated, it's just science. Beautiful

vikramkr 6y ago
There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.
- throwaway6575 6y ago
  Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders. I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. You either need to generate original data yourself with costly experiments, collaborate with people who have done so, or explore enormous amounts of data with costly compute. To meet these requirements you need to be affiliated to an institution, i.e. work within the system. (An exception would be Googlers and other such people who already have access to the compute for some reason) Perhaps the whole thing is ripe for disruption, but so far all I've seen is repeated variations on xkcd #1831.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Well, the biohacker movement begs to differ on the garage part, but academic biologists would beg to differ with the biohackers there. I agree that there arent the diversity of opinion that you get in programming here (I'm certainly not amy sort of expert myself, new grad here), but that might come with time. Just having the experience of having studied biology, worked in a lab, written proposals and papers, all go a long way. Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. But then even people with just an undergrad or masters level of CS training and some work experience with actual programming could make that discussion a thousand times better, even if they aren't AI experts. Right now, with all the COVID type articles being posted, it feels a bit like that. I'm not a trained virologist, and I dont know how many trained virologist there are on HN. But a basic perspective on what is the diagnostic test (I've done plenty of QPCR), what is primer design, what are antibody tests, and basic virology like what does it mean to be an rna virus, how is remdesivir supposed to work, etc tends to be missing, and I think k people with my level of experience can provide that. I've studied enough healthcare management to know the terminology at least and be able to discuss a placebo controlled trial versus not, and there are a lot of people with that level of basic knowledge than can contribute. And I've seen those sorts of explanations that are quite good. I've also noticed some pushback from people with at least a basic level of statistical/epidemiological training to the narrative that the risks of COVID are overblown, with discussions of exponential growth and SIR models. There are a few glimpses buried on what can be a pretty large initial onslaught of nonsense of actual biological knowledge. I dont think you need 50 years experience to provide that, though of course that would make the perspectives that much richer and deeper.
    - koeng 6y ago
      > Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. Yea I’m around biotech forums quite a bit and it is just as bad from a technical side. However, people on HN and tech tend to be better at identifying how technology enables things to happens, which is interesting to me.
  - 6y ago
abfan1127 6y ago
given my experiences, HN isn't special in the sense that their experience is deep in one area, and shallow in another and therefore have simplified views of the areas of shallow experiences. I volunteer in a local sports league. The number of times I get the "why are my dues so high? where does the money go? you're just lining your pockets!" in 1 season is absolutely ridiculous. But most people never stop to think about the details. In this case, biology has a bunch of details, many still unknown, and problems look easy until you get into the details.
daemonk 6y ago
There is definitely a trend of tech bros 1831'ing biology. While it is very annoying, I do think we should try to be more charitable in how we respond to them. It's ultimately a good thing that other people are interested in what we are doing.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  I agree. Maybe I've just gotten jaded from the usual responses I get when trying to talk about biology with tech people (where they just assume it's over their head and want painful analogies to "simplify" it for them) that it's a bit of a breath of fresh air to see people try to engage with it. Even if they're wrong, well, so was I about basically everything when I took bio 101. It's a way to have those assumptions challenged and learn more. If they arent open to it and are operating in bad faith, c'est la vie, peoplle gonna be like that, but if people are approaching fields they dont know in good faith, then it's a first step.
  - throwaway6575 6y ago
    I mean, people being wrong about biology is ok, the issue is when the discussion devolves into some of the touchier subjects and suddenly everyone larps as a scientist. "Do you have citations for that?" "There is a widely accepted consensus that..." "It's not just my opinion, it's science." This is very strange because in technology threads where actual experts chime in, no one acts like that. People share their experiences about using such-and-such stack, sometimes with very strongly worded and passionate opinions but never with the pretense of scolarship or "quest for truth". Imagine how bewildering it'd be if people cited publications from "The Journal of Serverless Stacks" (IF=1.4) in lieu of experience sharing.
    - daemonk 6y ago
      Yes. It takes a lot of time for concepts in biology to sink in and become interconnected mentally. People who are not in the field tend to think about concepts in isolation. Tech people also tend to think more mechanistically/rigidly because they are used to things obeying rules/code. I agree that it can be annoying when armchair biologists make hollow arguments. But I also do think that we do share some responsibility to not turn people off completely or make them dig in harder in their positions.
sdegutis 6y ago
> HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/) and this (https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. Also https://xkcd.com/55/ https://xkcd.com/55/ and https://xkcd.com/128/ https://xkcd.com/128/ This is the inevitable confusion of a society that insists that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe, who rejects concepts of soul and love and still tries to explain their effects using only what they admit. It's like saying we bleed when we're cut because the skin must be producing that blood, denying the existence of veins or a heart.
- the_af 6y ago
  Good call on those two XKCDs, but I think it's not society that believes that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe. Poets, writers and artists don't believe that. Hollywood makes a living out of not believing in that. Most people I meet don't believe that -- sometimes believing in all kinds of nonsense to an extreme I find irritating, but that's my problem :P In any case, what's specifically irritating is the entrepreneur / startuper / tech bro belief that "we can make an app to solve this", which sometimes also occurs here on HN. No, not every problem can be solved with tech or an app. Even when it can, you Random Startuper are the sidekick of the story, not the main hero who's calling the shots.

vikramkr 6y ago

There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.

throwaway6575 6y ago
Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders. I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. You either need to generate original data yourself with costly experiments, collaborate with people who have done so, or explore enormous amounts of data with costly compute. To meet these requirements you need to be affiliated to an institution, i.e. work within the system. (An exception would be Googlers and other such people who already have access to the compute for some reason) Perhaps the whole thing is ripe for disruption, but so far all I've seen is repeated variations on xkcd #1831.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Well, the biohacker movement begs to differ on the garage part, but academic biologists would beg to differ with the biohackers there. I agree that there arent the diversity of opinion that you get in programming here (I'm certainly not amy sort of expert myself, new grad here), but that might come with time. Just having the experience of having studied biology, worked in a lab, written proposals and papers, all go a long way. Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. But then even people with just an undergrad or masters level of CS training and some work experience with actual programming could make that discussion a thousand times better, even if they aren't AI experts. Right now, with all the COVID type articles being posted, it feels a bit like that. I'm not a trained virologist, and I dont know how many trained virologist there are on HN. But a basic perspective on what is the diagnostic test (I've done plenty of QPCR), what is primer design, what are antibody tests, and basic virology like what does it mean to be an rna virus, how is remdesivir supposed to work, etc tends to be missing, and I think k people with my level of experience can provide that. I've studied enough healthcare management to know the terminology at least and be able to discuss a placebo controlled trial versus not, and there are a lot of people with that level of basic knowledge than can contribute. And I've seen those sorts of explanations that are quite good. I've also noticed some pushback from people with at least a basic level of statistical/epidemiological training to the narrative that the risks of COVID are overblown, with discussions of exponential growth and SIR models. There are a few glimpses buried on what can be a pretty large initial onslaught of nonsense of actual biological knowledge. I dont think you need 50 years experience to provide that, though of course that would make the perspectives that much richer and deeper.
  - koeng 6y ago
    > Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. Yea I’m around biotech forums quite a bit and it is just as bad from a technical side. However, people on HN and tech tend to be better at identifying how technology enables things to happens, which is interesting to me.
- 6y ago

abfan1127 6y ago

given my experiences, HN isn't special in the sense that their experience is deep in one area, and shallow in another and therefore have simplified views of the areas of shallow experiences. I volunteer in a local sports league. The number of times I get the "why are my dues so high? where does the money go? you're just lining your pockets!" in 1 season is absolutely ridiculous. But most people never stop to think about the details. In this case, biology has a bunch of details, many still unknown, and problems look easy until you get into the details.

daemonk 6y ago

There is definitely a trend of tech bros 1831'ing biology. While it is very annoying, I do think we should try to be more charitable in how we respond to them. It's ultimately a good thing that other people are interested in what we are doing.

vikramkr 6y ago
I agree. Maybe I've just gotten jaded from the usual responses I get when trying to talk about biology with tech people (where they just assume it's over their head and want painful analogies to "simplify" it for them) that it's a bit of a breath of fresh air to see people try to engage with it. Even if they're wrong, well, so was I about basically everything when I took bio 101. It's a way to have those assumptions challenged and learn more. If they arent open to it and are operating in bad faith, c'est la vie, peoplle gonna be like that, but if people are approaching fields they dont know in good faith, then it's a first step.
- throwaway6575 6y ago
  I mean, people being wrong about biology is ok, the issue is when the discussion devolves into some of the touchier subjects and suddenly everyone larps as a scientist. "Do you have citations for that?" "There is a widely accepted consensus that..." "It's not just my opinion, it's science." This is very strange because in technology threads where actual experts chime in, no one acts like that. People share their experiences about using such-and-such stack, sometimes with very strongly worded and passionate opinions but never with the pretense of scolarship or "quest for truth". Imagine how bewildering it'd be if people cited publications from "The Journal of Serverless Stacks" (IF=1.4) in lieu of experience sharing.
  - daemonk 6y ago
    Yes. It takes a lot of time for concepts in biology to sink in and become interconnected mentally. People who are not in the field tend to think about concepts in isolation. Tech people also tend to think more mechanistically/rigidly because they are used to things obeying rules/code. I agree that it can be annoying when armchair biologists make hollow arguments. But I also do think that we do share some responsibility to not turn people off completely or make them dig in harder in their positions.

sdegutis 6y ago

> HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/) and this (https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. Also https://xkcd.com/55/ https://xkcd.com/55/ and https://xkcd.com/128/ https://xkcd.com/128/ This is the inevitable confusion of a society that insists that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe, who rejects concepts of soul and love and still tries to explain their effects using only what they admit. It's like saying we bleed when we're cut because the skin must be producing that blood, denying the existence of veins or a heart.

the_af 6y ago
Good call on those two XKCDs, but I think it's not society that believes that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe. Poets, writers and artists don't believe that. Hollywood makes a living out of not believing in that. Most people I meet don't believe that -- sometimes believing in all kinds of nonsense to an extreme I find irritating, but that's my problem :P In any case, what's specifically irritating is the entrepreneur / startuper / tech bro belief that "we can make an app to solve this", which sometimes also occurs here on HN. No, not every problem can be solved with tech or an app. Even when it can, you Random Startuper are the sidekick of the story, not the main hero who's calling the shots.