[tridint]

Listening to CS people talk about biology is maddening.

"CRISPR... is to genomics what vi (Unix’s visual text editor) is to software. "

This terrible comparison between DNA and code has been happening for years. In 2012, Thiel did the same thing in CS 183. We get to look back and see that he was wrong, but we'll have to wait a while before the 'DNA is code' group will admit this essay is bad. At least its not a TED talk and at least its better than Aubrey De Grey.

"Each VC on the panel made 2 predictions about technology in the next 5 years. The audience voted on whether they agreed with each prediction. One of my predictions was that biology would become an information science." -PT

[jfarlow]

So help educate. There is clearly an interest. If you know the bio then you know it gets a fraction of the funding and attention of standard tech stuff. Help smooth the analogies out, correct timelines, and otherwise inform outside industries about the powerful things biology is doing.

[Ralfp]

> Listening to CS people talk about biology is maddening.

The case of CS people commenting on biology via misinformed comparisons to computing eventually became known as the Andy's Grove Fallacy, named after his comments on the state of cancer therapies:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Andy-Grove-fallacy

[axefrog]

I'm curious; what don't you like about Aubrey De Grey? I haven't yet seen an interview or conversation with him where he doesn't seem extremely knowledgeable about his field, or lacks an understanding of anything relevant that he's queried on. He also seems to have a fairly significant number of credible people on his side in the biotech/medical fields.

[microcolonel]

Insofar as coding DNA sequences are like computer instructions in that they instruct to replicate proteins, I don't see why it can't be thought of as computational. I get that there is more to it, and I agree that vi is a terrible analogy to CRISPR, but I don't think genomics and turing-model computation are two worlds apart. It is silly to see CRISPR compared to text editing, because it is significantly more restrictive than that. However, by definition genomics and computation share a basis on logic and combinatorics.