4 ms·

I just wanted to say that this resonated with me, as a former grad student involved in protein research who is now doing dev work. I hope you're doing well thes

I just wanted to say that this resonated with me, as a former grad student involved in protein research who is now doing dev work. I hope you're doing well these days!

dnautics 6y ago
I'm doing pretty good, thank you! I enjoy coding, I've always been a better coder than a biochemist (likely on account of started coding at age 5, started biochemistry at age 19). I'm still doing garage science here and there, and being a programmer affords me the capability to both afford that and have some time to do it.
- panabee 6y ago
  i have been thinking a lot about this problem. society has innumerable unsolved problems in healthcare, and many talented people who would like to contribute but cannot. in software, the open-source model allows people to advance critical initiatives without quitting their day jobs or making onerous commitments. how can we achieve the same in healthcare, that is let outsiders contribute and advance the state of the art?
  - dnautics 6y ago
    I don't know if it will "allow outsiders to contribute" but I would like to see a biotech that makes patent-free drugs. I tried to make nonprofit out of that but there was a lot I didn't understand about how I work, how the world works, and how to get things done, so I will take another crack at it in 5-10 years.
    - panabee 6y ago
      i believe this is not only possible, but will happen sooner rather than later because of advancing capabilities in software, machine learning, and collaboration. we simply need the right people providing capital and launching these biotechs. re patents, the key is to drive down costs for research and testing. research seems like the low-hanging fruit, comparatively speaking, but it's unclear how to reduce the costs of clinical trials in an uncontroversial way.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > how can we achieve the same in healthcare, that is let outsiders contribute and advance the state of the art? The Biohacking community is actually really adept, and had made a lot of progress in making Science accessible, prior to COVID you had teams already working together across continents and different time zones. So when someone like Josiah Zayner wanted to tackle a COVID vaccination trial on himself and other biohackers they already had the means and methods ready to go. The problem is if you want to play by their (academia) rules you're never going to making any inroads, you can't publish and no one will give you a grant for your work, and you're not going to be a chair of anything for your work even if it pans out: but, certain therapies are in development that started off as Biopunk/Biohacker projects. It's super exciting and hard but also way more work than just BSing your way in academia into a professor role as its all too common occurrence. Professional students becoming mediocre professors was a far worse problem in the Sciences than I could have ever imagined, the one's I really felt bad for were the post docs with actual meaningful research, often with severe social anxiety and poor speaking skills, but were forced to teach undergrad and simply just read the book aloud as 'lecture.' My Organic Chem professor comes to mind, my inorganic professor (did his MSc at Cambridge!) was a rockstar to us undergrads and would do office hours during his lunch hour between lab research and the university made him protest before they'd release back pay during the cuts and layoffs.. it was pathetic and I felt so bad for him, my review was scathing of the University as I left and I've never really forgiven them for that. Obviously with no VC model in Science to follow for anything but the most brazen outliers (theranos) it's unlikely to happen. Personally I'd volunteer to help middle school or HS kids get involved in plant and Ag science and take some on in culinary if such an Industry still exists in the US after COVID and help them bypass the University track altogether. That is what I focused on after I left working in a lab, but there aren't many avenues for this model to scale to take on massive projects due to a lack of funding. And the money and stability is abysmal, but the Science and fraternity of actual Scientists doing meaningful work is probably more than half of the reason most of us decided to study it in the first place. Chamath needs to stop pretending to care about politics and solve real problems like funding Community Science wet-labs next to libraries to help the youth care about Science in a meaningful way instead of wasting their time on tik-tok or Instagram with his billions.
    - 6y ago

I just wanted to say that this resonated with me, as a former grad student involved in protein research who is now doing dev work. I hope you're doing well these days!

dnautics 6y ago

I'm doing pretty good, thank you! I enjoy coding, I've always been a better coder than a biochemist (likely on account of started coding at age 5, started biochemistry at age 19). I'm still doing garage science here and there, and being a programmer affords me the capability to both afford that and have some time to do it.

panabee 6y ago
i have been thinking a lot about this problem. society has innumerable unsolved problems in healthcare, and many talented people who would like to contribute but cannot. in software, the open-source model allows people to advance critical initiatives without quitting their day jobs or making onerous commitments. how can we achieve the same in healthcare, that is let outsiders contribute and advance the state of the art?
- dnautics 6y ago
  I don't know if it will "allow outsiders to contribute" but I would like to see a biotech that makes patent-free drugs. I tried to make nonprofit out of that but there was a lot I didn't understand about how I work, how the world works, and how to get things done, so I will take another crack at it in 5-10 years.
  - panabee 6y ago
    i believe this is not only possible, but will happen sooner rather than later because of advancing capabilities in software, machine learning, and collaboration. we simply need the right people providing capital and launching these biotechs. re patents, the key is to drive down costs for research and testing. research seems like the low-hanging fruit, comparatively speaking, but it's unclear how to reduce the costs of clinical trials in an uncontroversial way.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > how can we achieve the same in healthcare, that is let outsiders contribute and advance the state of the art? The Biohacking community is actually really adept, and had made a lot of progress in making Science accessible, prior to COVID you had teams already working together across continents and different time zones. So when someone like Josiah Zayner wanted to tackle a COVID vaccination trial on himself and other biohackers they already had the means and methods ready to go. The problem is if you want to play by their (academia) rules you're never going to making any inroads, you can't publish and no one will give you a grant for your work, and you're not going to be a chair of anything for your work even if it pans out: but, certain therapies are in development that started off as Biopunk/Biohacker projects. It's super exciting and hard but also way more work than just BSing your way in academia into a professor role as its all too common occurrence. Professional students becoming mediocre professors was a far worse problem in the Sciences than I could have ever imagined, the one's I really felt bad for were the post docs with actual meaningful research, often with severe social anxiety and poor speaking skills, but were forced to teach undergrad and simply just read the book aloud as 'lecture.' My Organic Chem professor comes to mind, my inorganic professor (did his MSc at Cambridge!) was a rockstar to us undergrads and would do office hours during his lunch hour between lab research and the university made him protest before they'd release back pay during the cuts and layoffs.. it was pathetic and I felt so bad for him, my review was scathing of the University as I left and I've never really forgiven them for that. Obviously with no VC model in Science to follow for anything but the most brazen outliers (theranos) it's unlikely to happen. Personally I'd volunteer to help middle school or HS kids get involved in plant and Ag science and take some on in culinary if such an Industry still exists in the US after COVID and help them bypass the University track altogether. That is what I focused on after I left working in a lab, but there aren't many avenues for this model to scale to take on massive projects due to a lack of funding. And the money and stability is abysmal, but the Science and fraternity of actual Scientists doing meaningful work is probably more than half of the reason most of us decided to study it in the first place. Chamath needs to stop pretending to care about politics and solve real problems like funding Community Science wet-labs next to libraries to help the youth care about Science in a meaningful way instead of wasting their time on tik-tok or Instagram with his billions.
  - 6y ago