I think I read the suggestion somewhere above already, but I'd also be very interested in your take on ageing. Most people around here seem to be from the technical sphere and thus they probably lack the necessary intimacy with the topic of biology and ageing to competently evaluate some of its more intricate aspects.
Specifically your evaluation of Aubrey de Grey's viewpoint and his methods would interest me a lot, if that is something you've looked into and feel competent commenting on. I've read around here that some people donate to his SENS foundation, but if one is not a biologist you can't really evaluate the approach of his methods. I've tried to evaluate his competency by listening to the arguments of his critics and was largely struck by how poor they were - but that in itself is obviously just an indicator and not an evaluation of his approach.
I'm careful to not be biased about this, but let's face it - probably everyone here wants Aubrey to succeed. Still I'm skeptical if the human body is really as malleable as he suggests it is... I'm thinking of problems like protein folding and whatnot.
Your thoughts would be much appreciated.
I’ve been a reader and occasional commenter here for a while now, but previously have not had a solid idea of what I could or wanted to contribute to the community in posting. In light of recent comments stating an interest in more posts that offer concrete, factual information as well as remembering lukeprog’s call for such things in his Back to the Basics of Rationality post, I am considering a series of condensed posts about biology. As someone who has spent my formal education on biologically-focused engineering (bioengineering BS, now studying bioinformatics under a chemical engineering department for my PhD) but has always had the bulk of my friends in electrical engineering, computer science, and more traditional chemical engineering, I’ve gotten used to offering such condensed explanations whenever biology works its way into a discussion. From what I’ve seen on LW thus far, the community educational base leans more in those (non-biology) directions, so I believe this is a niche that could use filling.
Since biology is a rather broad subject, and you could all go read Wikipedia or a textbook if you wanted a very detailed survey course, my intent is to pick targeted topics that are relevant to current events and scientific developments. Each post would focus on one such event/Awesome New Study, discussing the biological background and potential implications, including either short explanations or links to the basics needed to understand the subject. If there are any political ties to the subject, I will withhold my explicit opinions on those aspects unless asked in the comments.
My questions, then, are the following:
UPDATE: Having followed the comments so far and done some preliminary outlining, I'm leaning toward a more organized progression of topics that will still tie into current interests and developments, but not be centered on them. A bit more thought and putting ideas to text indicated that I could group the interest areas into biological categories (molecular, populations, developmental, neuro, etc) fairly easily, which would then allow for a 'foundations' post to introduce each major category, followed by posts that go over What We Know Now, Why We Care, and Where It's Going.