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by JumpCrisscross 250 days ago
> for the purposes of working out what ALDH2 deficiency is and clicking through it was successful

Does your code model acetaldehyde metabolism?

The exercise is an interesting proof of concept for a click-through model of a biological system. But it's also a warning for trusting LLMs for understanding.
1 comments
lleong1618 250 days ago
no it didn't do click through for this metabolism at first but it read your comment and then added it I guess. "examples/acetaldehyde_metabolism.rs" its about to push this in a moment
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JumpCrisscross 250 days ago
> its about to push this in a moment

The point is acetaldehyde metabolism is at the heart of your question: Why do some people flush red with alcohol.

Reading the first reference on Wikipedia's article about alcohol flushing [1][2] would have generated, I believe, more understanding about the biochemistry involved. (And the fact that ALDH2 deficiency simply exacerbates something we all do--acetaldehyde is a big part of what causes hangovers.)

What that would not have done is demonstrate (a) a genuinely interesting way to "step through" a physical system and (b) the ease with which a biochemist might be able to do so. As a hack and a project and a mode of communicating a model, I love this. Where I'm objecting is in pitching it per se as a mode for understanding a phenomenon, in this case, "what ALDH2 deficiency is."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction#cite_no...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2659709/

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