HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/) and this (https://xkcd.com/793/) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases.
There's also a misleading phenomenon where many of the fields whose "experts" chime in on these questions are called evolutionary psychology or behavioral genetics, making you think that these fields are related to biology and enjoy the same methodological standards of rigor as well as the same consensus from biologists. In reality these fields approach the questions from psychology, and that one field is known for having a bunch of practices, biases and motivated reasoning that'd make many a biologist reluctant to touch it with a ten feet pole.
It's very elegant to see the sleight of hand in action: someone makes a claim about sex, arguing it's a biological reality, and when challenged backs up their claim with a psych paper from a field that disguises as one from biologists and pretends that his claim enjoys a widespread consensus among actual scientists (as opposed to just psychologists). Hence, the claim isn't ideologically motivated, it's just science. Beautiful
There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.
Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders.
I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. You either need to generate original data yourself with costly experiments, collaborate with people who have done so, or explore enormous amounts of data with costly compute. To meet these requirements you need to be affiliated to an institution, i.e. work within the system. (An exception would be Googlers and other such people who already have access to the compute for some reason)
Perhaps the whole thing is ripe for disruption, but so far all I've seen is repeated variations on xkcd #1831.
Well, the biohacker movement begs to differ on the garage part, but academic biologists would beg to differ with the biohackers there. I agree that there arent the diversity of opinion that you get in programming here (I'm certainly not amy sort of expert myself, new grad here), but that might come with time. Just having the experience of having studied biology, worked in a lab, written proposals and papers, all go a long way. Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. But then even people with just an undergrad or masters level of CS training and some work experience with actual programming could make that discussion a thousand times better, even if they aren't AI experts.
Right now, with all the COVID type articles being posted, it feels a bit like that. I'm not a trained virologist, and I dont know how many trained virologist there are on HN. But a basic perspective on what is the diagnostic test (I've done plenty of QPCR), what is primer design, what are antibody tests, and basic virology like what does it mean to be an rna virus, how is remdesivir supposed to work, etc tends to be missing, and I think k people with my level of experience can provide that. I've studied enough healthcare management to know the terminology at least and be able to discuss a placebo controlled trial versus not, and there are a lot of people with that level of basic knowledge than can contribute. And I've seen those sorts of explanations that are quite good. I've also noticed some pushback from people with at least a basic level of statistical/epidemiological training to the narrative that the risks of COVID are overblown, with discussions of exponential growth and SIR models. There are a few glimpses buried on what can be a pretty large initial onslaught of nonsense of actual biological knowledge. I dont think you need 50 years experience to provide that, though of course that would make the perspectives that much richer and deeper.
> Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad.
Yea I’m around biotech forums quite a bit and it is just as bad from a technical side. However, people on HN and tech tend to be better at identifying how technology enables things to happens, which is interesting to me.
> I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics.
Yes. Studying biology is like reverse-engineering extremely complex, constantly changing microscopic systems which developed over thousands of years. Molecular biology in particular is prohibitively expensive. It's just not something people can play with the same way we play with computer programming. A fully equipped laboratory is required to perform even the most basic experiments. Even more resources are required in order to produce original work.
This also causes difficulty in reproducing published results. It's easy to verify that the laws of physics hold true. It's not so easy to reproduce an expensive 10 year long double blind clinical trial.
I mean, I've actually worked in bioinformatics and with biologists who have studied sexual species their entire life and my top-level comment was one of the ones that got buried.
The main thing to learn from this is you can't really talk about this stuff because people don't want certain things to be true. Biologists tended to talk about this stuff openly with me after a few drinks. They dare not speak about it most of the time.
Lol I've heard so many times about the conspiracy of biologists who are afraid to "tell the truth" about sex differences. Everyone is like Damore, cowing in front of the SJW crowd and afraid to be fired4truth. The reality is much more tame.
The crux of the matter (and potential controversy) is not about sex differences in plants or C. elegans. Most biologists I've met who study algae or polar bears usually limit their expert opinion on those species. It's really about transposing such knowledge to humans, where we don't have that level of bottom-up insight for a variety of reasons ranging from "humans are complicated", "most of what works in other species doesn't work in humans" (see: 99% of drug trials) to "you can't just open up people's brains to see what they're made of".
> "most of what works in other species doesn't work in humans" (see: 99% of drug trials)
Isn't the point of doing animal trials that they are "close enough" for most things to deliver good results? I.e. "if you can't do it in mice, dogs and pigs with your proposed medication, you probably won't be able to do it in humans". They're close enough that xenotransplantation is actively considered. "Humans are so special, everything we learn about anything that isn't human does most likely not apply to humans, so don't you dare even suggest that" just sounds strange to me.
It's also not clear how many drug candiates we're missing out on because animal models give false positives for toxicity in humans. Compounds that are extremely poisonous to experimental animals may be tolerated much better in humans.
Humans survive exposure to TCDD at levels that would be more than 50 times higher than the lethal dose in guinea pigs:
Acetaminophen is a deadly poison to cats even at modest doses.
It's impractical and unethical to try novel druglike compounds in humans right away, so we may not know how many premature rejections come from animal models until/unless we're able to grow whole human organs for drug testing.
In terms of false positives, the story of Guinea pigs and penicillin comes to mind. IIRC Guinea pigs were more susceptible (might have been that their gut microflora leaned gram positive and that led to toxic effects after penicillin administration? Dont recall exactly off the top of my head).
"It works in a close animal" is a necessary though far from sufficient condition for "it" working in humans. The point of doing animal trials is to filter out drugs that don't even fulfill that condition. Look at the "in mice" twitter account. How many potential Alzheimer treatments and cures for cancer have been touted in the last decade that proved effective in mice? How many of them turned out to be promising in humans? You need to keep that ratio in mind whenever you feel like conjecturing something.
And keep in mind we're talking here about behavioral differences driven by possibly the most complex organ that diverged the most from other animals'.
One thing to consider is that with the alzheimers trials, the mice might be so different that what works in humans might not work in mice. We dont yet have the tools and infrastructure to deal with that hypothetical, though there is some promising work with lab on a chip and brain organoids that could solve that sort of problem of it turns out to be the case
I don't think you know what a conspiracy is. People don't speak up precisely because they are alone and don't want to be shunned by the echo chamber. If you've heard about it so many times, why do you think you know best and deny the observations of others?
I also happen to work with biologists and I found no such thing as you describe. People aren't afraid to talk about sex differences. There's no hidden truth that everyone speaks in undertones about and is scared of mouthing out loud. People don't mindlessly transpose what they know about their model organisms to humans. People don't buy into evopsych crap either. (There's a reason evopsych papers have trouble even making it into PNAS.) The community isn't filled with Damores either. So maybe you could clarify what you're talking about because I seem to have lost you there.
There is definitely a trend of tech bros 1831'ing biology. While it is very annoying, I do think we should try to be more charitable in how we respond to them. It's ultimately a good thing that other people are interested in what we are doing.
I agree. Maybe I've just gotten jaded from the usual responses I get when trying to talk about biology with tech people (where they just assume it's over their head and want painful analogies to "simplify" it for them) that it's a bit of a breath of fresh air to see people try to engage with it. Even if they're wrong, well, so was I about basically everything when I took bio 101. It's a way to have those assumptions challenged and learn more. If they arent open to it and are operating in bad faith, c'est la vie, peoplle gonna be like that, but if people are approaching fields they dont know in good faith, then it's a first step.
I mean, people being wrong about biology is ok, the issue is when the discussion devolves into some of the touchier subjects and suddenly everyone larps as a scientist. "Do you have citations for that?" "There is a widely accepted consensus that..." "It's not just my opinion, it's science."
This is very strange because in technology threads where actual experts chime in, no one acts like that. People share their experiences about using such-and-such stack, sometimes with very strongly worded and passionate opinions but never with the pretense of scolarship or "quest for truth". Imagine how bewildering it'd be if people cited publications from "The Journal of Serverless Stacks" (IF=1.4) in lieu of experience sharing.
Yes. It takes a lot of time for concepts in biology to sink in and become interconnected mentally. People who are not in the field tend to think about concepts in isolation. Tech people also tend to think more mechanistically/rigidly because they are used to things obeying rules/code.
I agree that it can be annoying when armchair biologists make hollow arguments. But I also do think that we do share some responsibility to not turn people off completely or make them dig in harder in their positions.
given my experiences, HN isn't special in the sense that their experience is deep in one area, and shallow in another and therefore have simplified views of the areas of shallow experiences. I volunteer in a local sports league. The number of times I get the "why are my dues so high? where does the money go? you're just lining your pockets!" in 1 season is absolutely ridiculous. But most people never stop to think about the details.
In this case, biology has a bunch of details, many still unknown, and problems look easy until you get into the details.
> HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this (https://xkcd.com/1831/) and this (https://xkcd.com/793/) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases.
This is the inevitable confusion of a society that insists that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe, who rejects concepts of soul and love and still tries to explain their effects using only what they admit. It's like saying we bleed when we're cut because the skin must be producing that blood, denying the existence of veins or a heart.
Good call on those two XKCDs, but I think it's not society that believes that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe. Poets, writers and artists don't believe that. Hollywood makes a living out of not believing in that. Most people I meet don't believe that -- sometimes believing in all kinds of nonsense to an extreme I find irritating, but that's my problem :P
In any case, what's specifically irritating is the entrepreneur / startuper / tech bro belief that "we can make an app to solve this", which sometimes also occurs here on HN. No, not every problem can be solved with tech or an app. Even when it can, you Random Startuper are the sidekick of the story, not the main hero who's calling the shots.
The end goal is to finally kill local storage and have everything as a service, on the cloud. This way tech companies will finally take back the control on their users they have so foolishly relinquished in the 70s.
The idea that a "scientific consensus" exists on IQ makes it sound like stronger than it actually is - the field of psychology is much less rigorous than actual hard sciences and the bar to clear is very low there. That IQ is universally accepted among psychologists despite a number of very obvious glaring flaws is more damning against psychologists than adding to the credibility of the concept.
Chess is one of the few fields where dominance can easily stretch into several decades - if you're a young prodigy you may breach into top level in your teenage years and last well until your 50s or 60s. Of course you won't be #1 this whole time (check out Lasker's longevity though) but you will always remain a top contender.
FWIW this is why I've adopted Curling after playing hockey for a decade. It is an incredibly skillful and physical game and yet you see 80 year olds at the rink playing it. You can get good at it and be good for a long long time. You don't get too old.
Also the beauty of golf. You can enjoy it until your 70s, some even older. You can do outings with several generations. Has shorter tees for younger, older, ladies if they want to use the. It also has a legitimate handicap system so everyone can compete.
I also really love fishing, mostly for different reasons, but it's multi generational too of course.
I would like to differ on this. It's getting harder and harder to maintain dominance. Kasparov was the one to hold the longest. Magnus, even though he is one of the best ever, is already losing out to Alireza in bullet, blitz and even almost in classical.
Chess theory has a new Renaissance due to neutral networks and we will see newer GM's adapting to it.
This is not how I see it. Carlsen lost one insanely long online bullet match on lichess.
He narrowly lost an online banter blitz match. This is not blitz, since also you have to talk while playing, which does not seem to suit Carlsen's personality.
In classical, you can often "almost lose", except that Carlsen does not "actually lose", as exemplified by his ongoing record non-loss streak.
People are reading a bit too much into this loss. It is a big deal that someone was able to beat Magnus Carlsen at any time control, especially in this era where Magnus has seemingly reached a new level of chess skill, but bullet is by far the the easiest for a champion to make a mistake or series of them. Magnus is ridiculously strong at bullet but I’ve watched his live-streams and sometimes he blunders really badly, that’s just part of bullet. Although he is incredibly strong at bullet, probably 50-100 points higher than the world #2. Anyone not a high ranked GM wouldn’t stand a chance of beating him in a series of more than 5 games. But I’ve seen him lose to players he is obviously better than. He’s the #1 so they try their hardest. Nothing comes easily for Magnus.
The classical time control chess is boring. It really feels like an exercise in memorization.
I stopped watching those as almost every tournament ends in armagedon. Its a statement of the incredible skills top players poses, but its incredibly boring to watch draw after draw.
Quicker time controls are more dynamic and allow to play subpar move to throw off your opponent. Often you can see some crazy attacks.
I watch a variety of games on Twitch, and I am fairly sure that no player would claim they play optimally while commentating themselves and explaining their thought processes.
I think if anyone has benefited from the coming of AlphaGo and Leela, it's Magnus himself. 2019 was such a renaissance for him partly because all these intuitive positional lines with pawn sacrifices opened up, and I felt in the years previous to that that his love for the game seemed slightly on the wane as he regularly became mired in others' Stockfish prep (while still being able to mostly pull it out due to endgame technique).
In fact, it was Magnus himself (currently 29 years old, as of April 2020) who said his favorite chess player was himself, when he was around 23. That Magnus apparently saw things on the board that current (overwhelmingly dominant) Magnus can't any more. So even in chess there's a physical prime, just like in pretty much any other sport.
He said that (jokingly) before his fabulous 2019 year.
Right now he's spending a lot of time promoting chess24 with banter blitz, hanging around on lichess playing 100 games bullet matches, commenting on chess24 and other things that would profoundly ruin anyone else's concentration.
So, no big deal if he very occasionally loses (online!) games.
I am really curious if we are going too see players adopting AlphaZero tactics. Games I saw goes so against current intuition and it would be interesting to see chess evolving.
Current crop of GMs benefited greatly from short feedback loops by using computers, but they still operate in explored problem space.
For what it's worth, Magnus has recently hit an all-time ratings high after a very, very slow decline over the last 5 years. And he attributes his recent bump to studying the AlphaZero games.
Magnus is so incredibly strong that people think he's about to decline when suffering one (1) loss from another rising star in a niche online format. This is like when Capablanca didn't lose a single game between 1917 and 1924 and everyone acted like "the Schachmachine ist kaputt" when he broke his streak. The fact is that competition is incredibly tough and differences betwene player levels are imperceptible to all but the very most trained eyes. In fact that's why championships need so many games and tie-breakers - the people are so equal in ability that the most likely result from a match between to top level players is a draw.
He is. Carlsen is a unique player in many respects and he usually comes back even stronger from losses. To say that he is "losing out" to someone is a bit premature I would say.
> if you're a young prodigy you may breach into top level in your teenage years and last well until your 50s or 60s. Of course you won't be #1 this whole time (check out Lasker's longevity though) but you will always remain a top contender.
No. There is nobody 50 or older in the fide ranking ( top 100 ).
Anand is about 100 Elo points weaker than Carlsen at all time controls. It's impressive that Anand is still #15 at his age (50 years), but he's the only 50-year-old at that elite level (2700+ Elo).
The age distribution of the top 100 Classical players is:
16-19: 5
20-29: 39
30-39: 40
40-49: 12
50-51: 4
The 20s and 30s are really the peak ages for chess.
> Easily? No. The only player to have the top rating longer than 10 years is kasparov.
That's because you are looking at a FIDE list which starts in 1971. Mikhail Botvinnik was the world champion from a nearly uninterrupted period from 1948 to 1963 (he lost to Tal once).
Capablanca was undefeated from 10 February 1916 to 21 March 1924 and remained a contender for best player in the world until his retirement in 1931.
Drivers become aś good as they every can in pure pure driving skill in karting when they are still teenagers. All skills needed for driving fast are developed early.
Rest of the career in F3/F2/GP2 feeder series to F1 is just maturing psychologically, getting experience and learning stuff you need outside the track. Ultimate skill level is already there or not. Drivers will eventually fade out when their physical performance declines in late 30's.
(actual career performance depends on cars, teams, money, business and marketing)
Because Formula 1 - like most other sports - has such a dependence on an athlete's physical fitness to actually express the skill they have, I think it - and most other sports - is rather unlike chess.
The dominant risk when I ski is traveling to and from the resort. So I suppose your point stands if you only play from home. Even so, it seems a bit irrelevant to the discussion.
Maybe for you the travel to skiing is dominant, but I've known many people (UK acquaintances) who've been injured skiing but none who've been injured on route to go skiing. And that's just leisure skiing, in racing I'd imagine injuries are far more common.
They were responding to the assertion that skiing holds a larger risk of dying than the travel to the ski resort. Statistically, it seems more likely that a person would die in a car accident versus skiing.
"The rate of sustaining an injury while skiing or snowboarding on Swiss slopes was 2.8 per 1000 skier days on average from 2008 to 2010. The fatality rate was 0.7 deaths per one million skier days in the same period of time."
"In cars, one person died per 5.5 million passenger hours traveled."
So skiing seems 4x more dangerous.
Anecdotally, I've read that one hospital in the Swiss Alps was struggling money wise, because the ski season was ended early, and ski accidents were a major revenue for them.
According to [1], Skiing is 0.7 micromorts, whereas driving is about 400km per micromort. Therefore, the break-even point is 140km (0.7 * 400 / 2 way trip). If your local ski resort is < 140km away, the skiing is more likely to kill you.
That's per day of skiing, and a lot of ski trips are more than one day.
This doesn't take individual behavior into account though. A lot of people are skiing more cautiously than the insane risk takers who kill themselves in avalanches or falls in deep woods or backcountry. Also, the driving to the ski resort is likely to be more dangerous than regular driving because you're more likely to encounter icing, snow on the road, and low visibility conditions.
All in my guess would be that the driving is more dangerous for most skiers.
Injured skiing? Absolutely, and if you race it's a question of when, not if. But I was responding to a claim about deaths.
For the last decade, every ski trip I've done has required either 4+ hours of driving or a cross-country plane trip. Add in the fact that much of that driving is on icy, narrow mountain roads in storm conditions, and the stats that other people shared make it clear that driving is the bigger risk to me.
>Is it good science if the standards research are held to are not consistent depending upon the topic?
Passing a single standard would be a start.