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my unwavering focus on specific seemingly intractable problems.
Which specific problems are you talking about?
I am interested in understanding the molecular basis of chronic diseases such as metabolic syndrome. I am also interested in understanding the relationship between various homeostasis mechanisms and small molecule drug activity.
I voiced interest in making a career switch into BME. Would you still be doing biomedical engineering now if you knew what you now know about it? What would you change and why?
Yes, I would still be doing biomedical engineering given what I now know. However, I am driven mostly by curiosity and a desire to answer medical questions- if I worked in another field, I would likely be doing so to support myself while I work on these medical questions in my free time. I am a 'dry lab' bioengineer. If my primary goal was to make a high income, I would instead do software development.
If I could change anything, it would be seeking out problem-oriented instead of method-oriented mentors. Scientists and engineers can often be divided into two categories: those who are experts at a given method and look for problems to apply it to, and those who are experts at a given problem and look for tools to attack it with. Both can be productive strategies. I have a problem-oriented perspective, but most of my mentors have been method-oriented and don't understand my unwavering focus on specific seemingly intractable problems.
In response to
Biomedical research as a career
Value creation depends entirely on you. Like any field, to make major advances you will need to tackle big problems and come up with creative solutions.
In my opinion (as a biomedical engineer) the field is currently stalled in some areas (and advancing rapidly in others) but is ripe for a major paradigm shift which will accelerate progress. Some verifiably false ideas about basic biology remain commonly accepted in the field, and will need to be reinvestigated for progress to continue.
As for the grad student debt issue, most major research universities in the USA pay students in doctoral programs. It is very much possible to obtain a PhD in the life sciences or bioengineering with zero debt, if you have good spending habits while in school. I managed to actually accrue some investments during graduate school, rather than debt.
I would only recommend getting into the field if you have a strong passion for solving medical problems, and have some clear ideas about how you will attack these problems very differently than others already working on them. If you don't have such clear ideas, I would start by reading journal articles and books on your own. Personally, I think it's valuable to seek out little known unusual experimental results and iconoclastic theories, as these are the leads that are being missed by others already working on the same problems. The more distinct your education is, the more it will complement the almost cookie-cutter identical educations of your peers, and allow you to become a major catalyst in problem solving.
In response to
Rationality Quotes March 2014
Don't you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, 'My goodness, this appears to be bullshit'?
-Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
You're missing the point. "Authorities are always wrong" is not only demonstrably false (I could have listed a dozen other examples), it practically invites the reader to think that reversed stupidity is intelligence. We follow the wisdom of the majority because we don't have the cognitive capacity to reason through every problem as if it were new, and by doing what the majority does in scenarios where we're not domain experts, we're at least guaranteed a "not-terrible" outcome, even if it's sub-optimal.
My interpretation is that this quote is aimed at people who do have the cognitive capacity to reason through specific problems that are important to them, but are failing to do so because they put too much trust in authorities.
You are less likely to do the wrong thing if you believe that ‘the authorities are always wrong,’
Guess I'd better start driving without a seatbelt, smoking cigarettes, drinking while pregnant, avoiding healthy food and exercise, having unprotected sex with strangers ...
He's not literally saying to believe this, but to consider this idea to enable you to then look at the evidence yourself.
The problem is so many people hold a 'prior' that the authorities are always right, it becomes possible for wrong ideas to become entrenched, and never seriously reinvestigated.
I googled Ray Peat, and he is someone with rather definite views about nutrition and biochemistry. Can I go against his advice in the other quote to read a lot of technical stuff, and ask those on LW who have done so, to say how they judge his ideas?
His ideas are all based on the Association-Induction hypothesis, which is a little known and iconoclastic theory of cell biology... however it seems to have a strong experimental basis.
His writing seemed crazy to me at first (almost like schizophrenic word salad, despite having graduate level training in biology), but I've spent much of the last year studying the papers he cites... and I cannot find any mistakes in his reasoning yet. It's seeming more and more reasonable, but I think it's better to use his writings to find new ideas about basic biology, rather than just follow his health recommendations without understanding them.
I'm planning a post on the Association-Induction hypothesis. It's status is very similar to that of timeless physics: it's largely ignored and unknown however it is researched seriously by a small number of academics.
You are less likely to do the wrong thing if you believe that ‘the authorities are always wrong,’
Is this reverse stupidity? It's a demonstrably false statement, but I think it's a useful heuristic to compensate for a bias we are prone to, allowing you to then collect evidence and evaluate the situation rationally. It might help overcome the also demonstrably false 'prior belief' that the authorities are always correct, which prevents people from ever expending energy to confirm or question them.
In response to
Daily Low-Dose Aspirin, Round 2
It appears that the evolutionarily unprecedented high omega-6 and low omega-3 intake in the modern western diet causes excessive series-2 prostaglandin and thromboxane (TXA2) formation, and resulting inflammation and cardiovascular effects- and low dose aspirin is an attempt to combat this. Why not fix the problem at it's source?
Reducing omega-6 oils in your diet and increasing omega-3 should have a similar effect, but with more proven safety and effectiveness: nearly all humans did this until industrial seed oils became popular in the last few decades (see this video series from biochemist Dr. Bill Lands for more details http://youtu.be/dgU3cNppzO0 ).
Aspirin works primarily by suppressing production of thromboxane and inflammatory series-2 prostaglandins from omega-6 fats, by inactivating the cyclooxygenase enzymes (COX-1, and COX-2). Omega-3 fats also competitively inhibit this same enzyme, by competing with omega-6 fats to be metabolized into less inflammatory series-1 and series-3 prostaglandins.
There are other important benefits of fixing the omega 3/6 ratio in your diet as well- their ratio is reflected in tissue lipid membranes, and likely influences the proper function of these membranes. Continuing on a high omega-6 diet and trying to counter-act this with aspirin seems less than ideal.
It would be interesting to see some data showing the effectiveness of low dose aspirin in countries that already have a healthy omega 3/6 ratio (such as Greenland or Japan). I would be very surprised if it still has the same benefit in such a group.
As a person who has a nearly 1/1 omega-6 to long chain omega-3 ratio in my diet (I regularly eat fatty cold water fish and avoid seed oils), I wouldn't consider low dose aspirin to be a prudent risk adverse decision unless I saw data showing it's benefits reproduced in others with a similar intake ratio.
I retracted this, because I have learned a lot more about this issue in the last year. I am still undecided on aspirin, however I no longer think that the mechanisms mentioned above are the only important roles aspirin plays. I am also no longer convinced that omega-3 offers a health benefit, and that omega-6 restriction alone may be superior to replacing omega-6 with omega-3.
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I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.
At a major research university in a cheap medium-sized town (at least compared to where I grew up) I am saving 25% of my income - though once one of my fellowships wears off that will probably drop to 10% or less unless I change my spending habits.
I've been planning on writing some articles on here, but I don't feel comfortable throwing out outlandish statements without explaining all of my reasoning and evidence in detail... and I don't have time to do so yet. This is a project at least on the order of the Timeless Physics sequences.
This is just the tip of the iceberg but one thing I have been looking at recently is Gilbert Ling's Association-Induction hypothesis which is centered around the idea that gel-like phase shifts in the cytoplasm are central to regulating and fueling many biological reactions. Initially this came from his observation that poisoning energy production in cells doesn't destroy ion partitioning, they still retain potassium and exclude sodium. He also found that if you slice cells in half, or otherwise remove or destroy the membrane in many different ways, this ion partitioning persists. It seems to be supported by an incredible amount of empirical evidence, yet is virtually unknown. There was some mainstream debate in the 1970s but the idea seems to have faded away without any convincing evidence against it. I think this could be partly due to Ling's attitude of "everything you know is wrong, and the stuff you're studying doesn't even exist," which is hard for other scientists to stomach. Personally I think his discoveries are better viewed as additional phenomena within the cell, rather than in opposition to other discoveries. The book "Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life" by Gerald Pollack (Amazon Link) is a relatively recent, and easy to read introduction to this idea.
Are you familiar with this idea, and if so what is your opinion?