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> yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. I'm a programmer and I do understand that these maps are "as much as we currently know" and the "we currentl

> yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. I'm a programmer and I do understand that these maps are "as much as we currently know" and the "we currently know" is expanding rapidly. I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. The one thing that really strikes me about biology is how young of a science it actually is and how much progress we've made in so little time. It was only 1953 when the structure and function of DNA was discovered. In terms of history, it's not even yesterday. Yet now, 68 years later, we're literally injecting people with correctly encoded instructions to make a harmless part of a deadly virus to save their lives. This kinda blows my mind.

hprotagonist 5y ago
>I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. Be really careful here, though, otherwise you'll hoodwink yourself. The two famous things that come to mind for me are these, both of which remind me to tread carefully: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/andy_grove_rich_famous_smart_and_wrong https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/an... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E...