"In the last few months, someone working in crypto trading derogatorily called me a “biofoid”. That is because I studied biology and worked in the field, despite being intelligent. Why, he wondered, did I waste my brains and potential on such a cursed topic? I could have done crypto trading and made money. This stuck with me and caused somewhat of an identity crisis. If people are wondering why I have written less recently, part of it is struggling with the inferiority of being a biofoid."
First of all, seriously, I would try to get not too worked up about things people tell you while arguing about politics on the Internet. People are nasty when arguing about politics, and people are nasty on the Internet, and...
Second, you seem to have a very strong desire to improve the world, which crypto probably isn't going to do (and he specifically mentioned making money). Biology obviously is quite relevant to that even if it's not mathematically tractable. (And you might have a bit of an edge if you actually are good at math.) So you have different values from your interlocutor, and shouldn't be surprised when you come up with different life goals. If you start from different axioms, you get different results.
Third, the 'foid' thing is a contraction of the antifeminist term 'femoid', implying women aren't real people. So you're probably not going to please him no matter what.
If the blog's getting in the way of your more important work, that's one thing. But letting yourself get into identity crises because someone said something nasty to you on the Internet...I realize it's kind of an occupational hazard of dealing with ideas and taking them seriously, but I'd say it's one to avoid.
Ah, my apologies. (I think my argument still holds though. If you start with Euclid's postulates, you get planar geometry; if you decide all your parallel lines intersect and the sum of the angles of a triangle is more than 180 you get spherical geometry, and if you go the other way you get hyperbolic geometry and the occasional tentacle monster.)
I never had much faith in 'earn to give' frankly; it struck me as an excuse to focus on making money. (Which, to be clear, is what I did, but I never claimed I was earning to give. ;) )
My gut says: who cares what he says, it's your life, do what you want with it, you only get one.
But, OK, your blog has a picture of Athena on it, you want a logical argument. You don't believe in an afterlife; you have only this life. You like learning about biology, you don't like learning about crypto. Why waste your time doing something you don't like? Besides, most breakthroughs come from people with a genuine interest, because they'll think harder about it. So you're more likely to make a real breakthrough in something you actually like doing.
Keep going on the path. Play the long term game. Everything we enjoy is because someone made it a reality. Your turn to create a legacy for future generations. I am with you.
If it makes you feel better, I believe a *lot* of software engineers have "hardware envy" where they feel inadequate for writing code instead of doing stuff in the physical world. (Speaking as a software engineer here.) It is software entrepreneur Peter Thiel who complained that we got Twitter instead of flying cars. It is software entrepreneur Elon Musk who went into electric cars and rockets and became the envy of all Silicon Valley as a result. If you look at the people who say "software engineering is not real engineering", those people tend to be software engineers. (Ironically, most other sorts of engineers actually acknowledge that software engineering is "real engineering".) That's my general impression. So yeah, biofoids are awesome.
Great deep dive into a real problem that is hurting our ability to develop new drugs. A lot of this is closely related to regulatory capture where the incumbents are incentivized to use inefficient third parties and to ignore better ways of conducting clinical trials. I know a little about this because I worked at Abbott Labs briefly in their statistical clinical trials department.
It's a lot to think about, the drug approval process is wickedly complex but I think we really need to do better. I don't see this administration being any help in resolving it, they just want to make America "healthy" again, whatever that means....
How many do you think are needed? 10s? 100s? 1000s? I suppose there can be pretty specific issues with any particular drug, such that even the 500th document could be valuable as long as it's in a category where there aren't more than say 2 other CTDs public? 500 x $25K = $12.5M. Though demand would push up the price? Let's say $25M and you'd have a really valuable database. A prototype with 10 documents for $250K?
I suppose you need the full document + complete response letter.
You are doing genuinely valuable unlike crypto creatures.
I don’t think crypto is bad
It enables cybercrime and often seems like a solution in search of a problem.
"In the last few months, someone working in crypto trading derogatorily called me a “biofoid”. That is because I studied biology and worked in the field, despite being intelligent. Why, he wondered, did I waste my brains and potential on such a cursed topic? I could have done crypto trading and made money. This stuck with me and caused somewhat of an identity crisis. If people are wondering why I have written less recently, part of it is struggling with the inferiority of being a biofoid."
First of all, seriously, I would try to get not too worked up about things people tell you while arguing about politics on the Internet. People are nasty when arguing about politics, and people are nasty on the Internet, and...
Second, you seem to have a very strong desire to improve the world, which crypto probably isn't going to do (and he specifically mentioned making money). Biology obviously is quite relevant to that even if it's not mathematically tractable. (And you might have a bit of an edge if you actually are good at math.) So you have different values from your interlocutor, and shouldn't be surprised when you come up with different life goals. If you start from different axioms, you get different results.
Third, the 'foid' thing is a contraction of the antifeminist term 'femoid', implying women aren't real people. So you're probably not going to please him no matter what.
If the blog's getting in the way of your more important work, that's one thing. But letting yourself get into identity crises because someone said something nasty to you on the Internet...I realize it's kind of an occupational hazard of dealing with ideas and taking them seriously, but I'd say it's one to avoid.
It wasn't a random person on the internet, it was someone I was familiar with.
I guess the idea here is to make money and "earn to give"
Ah, my apologies. (I think my argument still holds though. If you start with Euclid's postulates, you get planar geometry; if you decide all your parallel lines intersect and the sum of the angles of a triangle is more than 180 you get spherical geometry, and if you go the other way you get hyperbolic geometry and the occasional tentacle monster.)
I never had much faith in 'earn to give' frankly; it struck me as an excuse to focus on making money. (Which, to be clear, is what I did, but I never claimed I was earning to give. ;) )
My gut says: who cares what he says, it's your life, do what you want with it, you only get one.
But, OK, your blog has a picture of Athena on it, you want a logical argument. You don't believe in an afterlife; you have only this life. You like learning about biology, you don't like learning about crypto. Why waste your time doing something you don't like? Besides, most breakthroughs come from people with a genuine interest, because they'll think harder about it. So you're more likely to make a real breakthrough in something you actually like doing.
That's true, it just made me feel very anxious and like I was dumb.
OK. Sorry to hear that! That can be hard to deal with from someone close, I get it.
Well, you have all the people on your blog telling you you're not. ;)
Of course, we don't know you IRL, so it's not as effective.
That's very kind, thank you!
Keep going on the path. Play the long term game. Everything we enjoy is because someone made it a reality. Your turn to create a legacy for future generations. I am with you.
If it makes you feel better, I believe a *lot* of software engineers have "hardware envy" where they feel inadequate for writing code instead of doing stuff in the physical world. (Speaking as a software engineer here.) It is software entrepreneur Peter Thiel who complained that we got Twitter instead of flying cars. It is software entrepreneur Elon Musk who went into electric cars and rockets and became the envy of all Silicon Valley as a result. If you look at the people who say "software engineering is not real engineering", those people tend to be software engineers. (Ironically, most other sorts of engineers actually acknowledge that software engineering is "real engineering".) That's my general impression. So yeah, biofoids are awesome.
Great deep dive into a real problem that is hurting our ability to develop new drugs. A lot of this is closely related to regulatory capture where the incumbents are incentivized to use inefficient third parties and to ignore better ways of conducting clinical trials. I know a little about this because I worked at Abbott Labs briefly in their statistical clinical trials department.
Would be great to hear more about your perspective into this and how transparency would help with specific details.
It's sometimes hard to explain to people the dynamics of the market, because how do you explain smth that's opaque?
It's a lot to think about, the drug approval process is wickedly complex but I think we really need to do better. I don't see this administration being any help in resolving it, they just want to make America "healthy" again, whatever that means....
How many do you think are needed? 10s? 100s? 1000s? I suppose there can be pretty specific issues with any particular drug, such that even the 500th document could be valuable as long as it's in a category where there aren't more than say 2 other CTDs public? 500 x $25K = $12.5M. Though demand would push up the price? Let's say $25M and you'd have a really valuable database. A prototype with 10 documents for $250K?
I suppose you need the full document + complete response letter.
Do we know the going rate for acquiring a failed biotech company? That $25K doesn't sound like much...
you’re not acquiring the company, just the data.
Yeah oops, good correction 😅