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It is an absolute nightmare. Biology is fundamentally fuzzy and our knowledge is incomplete. Biological actors, DNA and RNA and proteins, can act in surprising

It is an absolute nightmare. Biology is fundamentally fuzzy and our knowledge is incomplete. Biological actors, DNA and RNA and proteins, can act in surprising ways in feedback loops that are extremely difficult to track and quantify. Imagine every time you needed to troubleshoot something in a computer, you had to break out the multimeter. But the multimeter only works for one specific thing, which is an indirect measurement of the phenomena you’re actually interested in and trying to troubleshoot. Also the multimeter has some serious flaws and biases that make it seem like it’s working, but everything you get out of it is wrong and leads you to misinterpreting your results. That’s what its like to do biology. A lot of innovation and progress is made when new tools to probe what’s going on in biology are invented. For example, cell viability assays used to be conducted by literally counting the number of live cells vs dead cells. Now, you can use a photometric test that’s extremely easy and takes a lot of guesswork out of the assay and makes it routine. Researchers fundamentally need more of those types of assays to make life easier. And that’s where the dream and the profit people in biotech are chasing after.

flushit 3y ago
> Imagine every time you needed to troubleshoot something in a computer, you had to break out the multimeter. What disturbs me sometimes is that many people in software engineering approach debugging like empirical science. Run experiments, gather data, fit some curve, essentially. In the end, a program is a product of the mind. It's pure logic, and fundamentally it's understandable, unlike the real world which can at every turn have new surprises for you. We should think more and measure less.
mwint 3y ago
Also, due to ethics rules, you aren’t allowed to open a computer to probe it with your broken multimeter unless it has already died. With a lot of paperwork, you may be allowed to probe an abacus and extrapolate the results to a computer.
HPsquared 3y ago
Gold rushes and pickaxe sellers comes to mind. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pick-and-shovel-play.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pick-and-shovel-play.as...
renox 3y ago
This reminds me of a school project (building a sound card) where I noticed that when I plugged the oscilloscope at one point it changed the output at another point --> I threw out the board and decided to never do hardware again..
- lowq 3y ago
  If the probe was single ended (e.g. not a differential probe or handheld unit), you may have shorted something to ground without realizing it. Was a long time before I figured that one out.
  - renox 3y ago
    Nope it was a differential probe. I suspect that we broke something in the board when plugging the probes..

flushit 3y ago

> Imagine every time you needed to troubleshoot something in a computer, you had to break out the multimeter. What disturbs me sometimes is that many people in software engineering approach debugging like empirical science. Run experiments, gather data, fit some curve, essentially. In the end, a program is a product of the mind. It's pure logic, and fundamentally it's understandable, unlike the real world which can at every turn have new surprises for you. We should think more and measure less.

mwint 3y ago

Also, due to ethics rules, you aren’t allowed to open a computer to probe it with your broken multimeter unless it has already died. With a lot of paperwork, you may be allowed to probe an abacus and extrapolate the results to a computer.

HPsquared 3y ago

Gold rushes and pickaxe sellers comes to mind. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pick-and-shovel-play.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pick-and-shovel-play.as...

renox 3y ago

This reminds me of a school project (building a sound card) where I noticed that when I plugged the oscilloscope at one point it changed the output at another point --> I threw out the board and decided to never do hardware again..

lowq 3y ago
If the probe was single ended (e.g. not a differential probe or handheld unit), you may have shorted something to ground without realizing it. Was a long time before I figured that one out.
- renox 3y ago
  Nope it was a differential probe. I suspect that we broke something in the board when plugging the probes..