I couldn't figure out if the author is trying to make a point about the definition of machine, or if they're trying to make a point that the animations are misl

I couldn't figure out if the author is trying to make a point about the definition of machine, or if they're trying to make a point that the animations are misleading. Because they say the animations are misleading, but then they go into a discussion about what makes a machine a machine. > the animations are misleading. Ok, why are the animations misleading? Are they representing a process that does not occur? > Let's go from the start. Why isn't the cell run by molecular machines like the animations suggest? Well, first we need to come up with some criteria to distinguish machines from non-machines. Wait, what? No, we don't first need to define what we mean by machine. I just want to know why the animation is misleading as an approximate model. Does the animation represent the interactions occurring in the cell or not? > I also know that many machines have bendy parts, and that some machines have multi-functional parts. Ok, further digging into what people think about when they talk about a machine. I still just want to know if the thing in the video is misleading, as accused. > the structure of proteins isn't hard and rigid like we see in the animations. They're actually more like "dense liquids" that constantly jiggle around inside the cell. But do they do what is shown in the video? Maybe just in a less rigid manner? It's just a model! In the ted talk there's another video of some process and you can see it's all liquid. Can we focus on the animation and why it's misleading? > This is already strike one for the machine metaphor because, if my bike jiggled this much I wouldn't be able to go very far. Well yeah, it wouldn't work very well as a bicycle, but a jiggly machine wouldn't be a bicycle, it would be something else. Doesn't mean it's not a machine. And we're still not talking about the accusation of misleading videos. > Proteins almost never have one shape, they have a bunch of different configurations that they shift between. But for the model in the video, for that particular protein shape, does it represent the interactions that are occurring? Does the Helicase process the DNA strands? Does the DNA wrap around Histones? > It is finally dawning on us that the cell is not a machine. No, there was an accusation made that was not backed up aside from an elaborate side argument about whether the cell is machine-like. Obviously the animations don't completely represent reality. They're just models after all. Simplified for presentation and communication of a particular concept. I still don't know if the interactions in the animation are false or not. Or if the author is really calling them misleading because they're more rigid than in real life, and they don't represent the full complexity of every possible protein type.