Theoretical biologist here. I consider viruses to define the lower edge of what I’d consider “alive.” I similarly consider prions to be “not alive,” but to define a position towards the upper limit of complex, self-reproducing chemistry. There’s some research going on here to better understand how replication reactions (maybe encased in a lipid bubble to keep the reaction free from the environment) may lead to increasing complexity and proto-cells. That’s not what prions are, but the idea is that a property like replication is necessary but not sufficient and to build from what we know regarding the environment and possible chemicals.

I consider a virus to be alive because they rise to the level of complexity and adaptive dynamics I feel should be associated with living systems. I’ll paint with a broad brush here, but they have genes, a division between genotype and phenotype, the populations evolve as part of an ecosystem with all of the associated dynamics of adaptation and speciation, and they have relatively complex structures consisting of multiple distinct elements. “Alive,” to me, shouldn’t be approached as a binary concept - I’m not sure what it conceptually adds to the discussion. Instead, I think it should be approached as a gradient of properties any one of which may be more or less present. I feel the same about intelligence, theory of mind, and animal communication.

The thing to remember when thinking about questions like this is that when science (or history or literature…) is taught as a beginner’s subject (primary and secondary school), it’s often approached in a highly simplified manner - simplified to the point of inaccuracy sometimes. Many instructors will take the approach of having students memorize lists for regurgitation on exams - the seven properties of life, a gene is a length of dna that encodes for a protein, the definition of a species, and so on. I don’t really like that approach, and to be honest I was never any good at it myself.

No, computer engineering tends to focus more on hardware. When I was doing that kind of thing in college, computer engineering did things like chip design and logic boards and so on. I had courses on DSP and VLSI, multiple assembly languages, RISC vs CISC systems, and so on. In my university, it was considered a subspecializqtion of electrical engineering, with the first two years of undergraduate study being identical.

When I switched over to CS, I was doing things like numerical analysis and software systems architecture.

Both majors used math, but CE (as an EE major) required students to go through (iirc) calculus 5, and I think that CS majors could stop at calc 3 but would end up having to do different kinds of math after that.

I’m a theoretical biologist.

The best book I read on multilevel selection theory was actually written by a professor of philosophy. The author broke down the individual concepts, as they do, so that anyone reading it knew exactly what each technical term referred to. Biology is my favorite subject because there’s so much that we’re still figuring out and it’s just ridiculously complex.

I might have had a similar hot take as an undergrad when everyone has an ego based on their major - and I was even a computer engineering student for awhile, and engineers tend to be even worse at that sort of thing.

I cannot accept this spider as payment because it only has seven legs.

If he goes to the hotel, though, he will get to hear a great story from the owner of the hotel about a once beautiful but now decaying resort that includes a sweeping adventure involving a not-exactly-straight con man, an art theft that was not a theft, Willem Dafoe, and Tilda Swinton.

I don’t see a future utopia (or non-utopian) society a thousand years from now feeling at all compelled by a legal agreement between two independent parties a millennium ago. The law firms that set up the contracts will be long gone, the legal framework that established them will have evolved if not been replaced completely. I mean, compare where we are now with where “we” were in 1024, and then think about how much more quickly things change today. Any money is going to be more meaningless than 11th century money, but with no collector’s value since they’re just numbers in a database that probably won’t even exist in a thousand years.

I think we can legitimately view having your body/head frozen in the hopes of being woken up as a tech version of the Catholic last rites.

Cool! There’s probably a small factor differentiating the two, but it’s not that noticeable.

I did a research project looking at (iirc) kinase cascades, in which we were using a molecule-by-molecule simulation to look at cascading signals in hypothetical signaling networks, and varied the levels of phosphorylation required for activation required at each tier, and showed how the different topologies/rules governed the relationship between input and output signals, and their relationship to noise tolerance (since chemical networks can be quite noisy). It was very abstract in that we weren’t reconstructing known networks, but rather using sandbox physics to explore the idea.

Exactly. For me, it’s been about creating mathematical and computational models of biological and ecological dynamics. There’s a researcher in what we could safely call computational sociology, which similarly tries to create a working model of social dynamics that exhibit/explore social processes (eg, altruism and contagion models). I e done a lot of work in that field too, because a lot of the math and systems theory is the same behind both.

I was in a freshman bio lab where an unbalanced centrifuge using glass test tubes sent blood and broken glass spraying over half the lab.

I hated lab courses so much I ended up just going into theoretical biology.

I think that peacock spiders and related species can help people get past arachnophobia. They’re cute, they’re intelligent, and they have entertaining behaviors. The fact that they have the two large forward facing eyes makes them look less alien.

If you want to try exposure therapy for arachnophobia, they’re a great starting point imo.

This is how biologists reproduce.

Here’s the thing. You said a “jackdaw is a crow.” Is it in the same family? Yes. No one’s arguing that. As someone who is a scientist who studies crows, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be “specific” like you said, then you shouldn’t either. They’re not the same thing. If you’re saying “crow family” you’re referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which includes things from nutcrackers to blue jays to ravens. So your reasoning for calling a jackdaw a crow is because random people “call the black ones crows?” Let’s get grackles and blackbirds in there, then, too. Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It’s not one or the other, that’s not how taxonomy works. They’re both. A jackdaw is a jackdaw and a member of the crow family. But that’s not what you said. You said a jackdaw is a crow, which is not true unless you’re okay with calling all members of the crow family crows, which means you’d call blue jays, ravens, and other birds crows, too. Which you said you don’t. It’s okay to just admit you’re wrong, you know?

Negative tip value.

It sounds like someone made a wish to a genie and it was granted in the worst possible way.

I am going to try this, but I’d really like to know why it works. Someone else suggested cold water on the knife. Do the irritant molecules from the onion react with the water on your hands/wrists/knife before getting up in your eyes?

I am especially sensitive to this. I’ve found that using a very, very sharp knife can help, but some onions are especially strong. At that point I’m breaking out the swimming goggles.

I can’t say what their corporate culture is like now, but they’ve had a pretty poor reputation in the past, including the notion that the lowest performing 10% should be fired every year. The Amazon folks I’ve known have been great people - not at all the Gordon Gecko types you’d imagine from that - but culture in large corporations varies a lot by the team you’re in.

I came up with a saying back in the 90s when I was doing the startup scene - “Do you want it right, or by Tuesday?” Sometimes they do indeed need it by Tuesday. More of the time they have no idea why you need the extra days to get it right. But it’s really important for those in a leadership position - whether they’re managers or senior engineers - to push back and set expectations.

Smalltalk would probably make more sense than C++.

Uno Reverse

In 2012 I voted against Obama because I thought he was too conservative. I didn’t think his healthcare program went far enough, I didn’t like his foreign policy of continuing the Bush wars, and I thought he turned out to be far more establishment than he had indicated as a candidate in 2008.

I voted for Jill Stein. I said it wasn’t a protest vote and that I was voting my conscience, but it was totally a protest vote. Stein would have been the worst president in US history, and I even knew that at the time. I did it because Obama had a predicted 99% chance of winning my state, so I figured it was safe and would communicate to the democrats that there was a preference for more left leaning candidates.

What I did not do was try to campaign for Stein to try to get swing state voters to vote for her. I didn’t try to get swing state voters to not vote.