Brand new concept (for me) mixed in with some biology news

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm interested as fuck in biology, Twid but I'd ask a favour if poss - could you dumb it down to bullet points as much as poss? I'm a technologist, true, but I'm a couple of technologists removed from academia, if that makes sense? When I read science papers, I can't take them in. It's almost like legalese in that I'd have to devote my life to learning the language, just to make sense of the papers.

When I learn a language (machine language in this context), I expect to be using it for 2-3 years max so I rarely even get as far as memorising it so, when presented with a scientific field, you have to understand that I'm merely skimming over it, along with all the other ones, looking for potential applications.

There's more than one way to skin a cat so maybe the self replicating nanomachine I'm waiting for will come out of reverse engineered biology or maybe it comes from ground up molecular chem or maybe it's the downscaled mechanical/computational roadmap. I don't have enough brain to take in all of these fields and any more which show promise. Doesn't matter to me - my eye is on the prize - developing apps for whatever platform comes to market with the most promise.

I'm a couple of levels of abstraction removed from the research "coalface" but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what's going on down there. I just don't speak "research" so I need an interpreter. 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm interested as fuck in biology, Twid but I'd ask a favour if poss - could you dumb it down to bullet points as much as poss? I'm a technologist, true, but I'm a couple of technologists removed from academia, if that makes sense? When I read science papers, I can't take them in. It's almost like legalese in that I'd have to devote my life to learning the language, just to make sense of the papers.

When I learn a language (machine language in this context), I expect to be using it for 2-3 years max so I rarely even get as far as memorising it so, when presented with a scientific field, you have to understand that I'm merely skimming over it, along with all the other ones, looking for potential applications.

There's more than one way to skin a cat so maybe the self replicating nanomachine I'm waiting for will come out of reverse engineered biology or maybe it comes from ground up molecular chem or maybe it's the downscaled mechanical/computational roadmap. I don't have enough brain to take in all of these fields and any more which show promise. Doesn't matter to me - my eye is on the prize - developing apps for whatever platform comes to market with the most promise.

I'm a couple of levels of abstraction removed from the research "coalface" but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what's going on down there. I just don't speak "research" so I need an interpreter. 

It might take some altering, but the class had no prerequisites, other than I think, ability to communicate in English on a college level and rudimentary mathematics (which we never really used other than to figure out metric---where you have an advantage anyway). If I see something that looks jargony, I'll flag it. But it was BIO-120, so should otherwise be fairly accessible.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Genetics though, since I'll be doing it in real time, I can do post by post.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That's an interesting take and similar to what I was thinking about it earlier. The scientist by nature has to be skeptical, preferably even with his or her own ideas. A scientist has to be cautious and conservative in their estimations.

A scientist has to take a realistic approach, or they will lose all credibility. At the same time, speculating about what gaining certain understandings COULD lead to is not only fun, but creativity drives the direction of research.

At the same time, knowing what realistically can and cannot be an immediate result of certain research breakthroughs is not a lack of vision, it's just literacy. Visionaries may daydream of potentials, but if you can't get there from here, those dreams are unproductive. Scientists look for the next steps to take to get from here to there so that the visionaries can say "I TOLD YOU SO!".

[UB]

I'm interested as fuck in biology......... I don't have enough brain to take in all of these fields and any more which show promise. Doesn't matter to me - my eye is on the prize - developing apps for whatever platform comes to market with the most promise.

You may be surprised how an interest becomes a passion that can change what seemed to be an inability to grasp anything prior.