4 ms·

Whilst interesting, I'm left wondering. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer of what this achieved. Just to note I'm not bashing the work here (it appear

by rob_c 4y ago

Whilst interesting, I'm left wondering. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer of what this achieved. Just to note I'm not bashing the work here (it appears solid unlike a lot of papers from a lot of fields). I just assume I must not be the target audience (which is a little odd for nature) as I can't easily see what the main takeaway from this should be. I'm not expecting an 'explain me like I'm 5', but a short abstract-ending paragraph on what the research has achieved would have been nice. Unfortunately my takeaway otherwise is "thing is complex", "did complex machine learning", "made a thing which approximates reality". Made a model of it again in the lab based on this. Therefore this means new therapy for??? (this last line is what makes me pause and wonder is this here for grant/committe money, or just to claim this was part of understanding/curing lupus in 10 years?) I'm all for trying to classify different interactions into groups (even if that makes sense) and tring to understand the immune system as a whole. What (if anything) does this contribute to our current understanding other than being a first attempt at framework to classify a complex system? (not complaining, that in itself is a reasonable goal). If it is practically a first attempt at this. Why don't they say so? If this is one of a hundred similar models what makes this one better/special?

w10-1 4y ago
> If this is one of a hundred similar models what makes this one better/special? There aren't any similar models. The complexity of the immune system has defeated any systemic model. In most cases, even the simple cascade from a single interaction is not modeled. Most importantly, this is an *experimental* model: it simplifies the complexity by focusing on a narrow range of interactions that can be modeled in-silico and validated experimentally, but whose collective behavior can *also* be modeled and validated -- and, most importantly, tied to systemic outcomes, of health and disease. It defines a waltz of truth, that could be the fashion for decades.

by rob_c 4y ago

w10-1 4y ago

> If this is one of a hundred similar models what makes this one better/special? There aren't any similar models. The complexity of the immune system has defeated any systemic model. In most cases, even the simple cascade from a single interaction is not modeled. Most importantly, this is an *experimental* model: it simplifies the complexity by focusing on a narrow range of interactions that can be modeled in-silico and validated experimentally, but whose collective behavior can *also* be modeled and validated -- and, most importantly, tied to systemic outcomes, of health and disease. It defines a waltz of truth, that could be the fashion for decades.