I’m a current PhD student in computational biology, so I can offer a perspective on academic research in biology. I agree that biologists aren’t optimizing for benefiting humanity—instead, I think high-quality basic research gets the most respect and that academia can’t be beat here in most cases.
EAs attempting to do biology outside academia have two options. They can try to circumvent basic research and simply “hack” biology by experimenting with various interventions. However, given the complexity of biological systems, this seems unlikely to work unless you have access to tens of thousands of organic compounds and a way to screen them, for example. And this obviously puts you in competition with pharmaceutical companies. Or they can try to make novel biological discoveries. (I include “translating” basic research to applications here, given how easy it is to misinterpret findings.) Much of the life extension, genetic engineering, and transhumanism community relies on this. Even if you believe that a field is being ignored by academia for political reasons, you’re still unlikely to advance knowledge outside academia. Academia teaches a framework for studying biology that’s impossible to replicate independently:
“It’s not just that you have to read lots of books, although you do. It’s the experience of working with an advisor and other grad students, of coming up with theories and having them be shot down. Two stories I’ve heard from multiple grad student friends: “I spent two months working on something really cool, and in the first thirty seconds of presenting it to my advisor she came up with a simple proof it could never work” and “I spent two months working on something really cool, and in the first thirty seconds of presenting it to my advisor, she said ‘Oh yeah, that’s Smith’s Lemma, very exciting when it was published forty years ago.’” But eventually you come out of it not just with book learning, but with the thought-patterns and methods of a field baked into your brain, a strong sense of what is or isn’t interesting, can or can’t be done.”
I’m a current PhD student in computational biology, so I can offer a perspective on academic research in biology. I agree that biologists aren’t optimizing for benefiting humanity—instead, I think high-quality basic research gets the most respect and that academia can’t be beat here in most cases.
EAs attempting to do biology outside academia have two options. They can try to circumvent basic research and simply “hack” biology by experimenting with various interventions. However, given the complexity of biological systems, this seems unlikely to work unless you have access to tens of thousands of organic compounds and a way to screen them, for example. And this obviously puts you in competition with pharmaceutical companies. Or they can try to make novel biological discoveries. (I include “translating” basic research to applications here, given how easy it is to misinterpret findings.) Much of the life extension, genetic engineering, and transhumanism community relies on this. Even if you believe that a field is being ignored by academia for political reasons, you’re still unlikely to advance knowledge outside academia. Academia teaches a framework for studying biology that’s impossible to replicate independently:
“It’s not just that you have to read lots of books, although you do. It’s the experience of working with an advisor and other grad students, of coming up with theories and having them be shot down. Two stories I’ve heard from multiple grad student friends: “I spent two months working on something really cool, and in the first thirty seconds of presenting it to my advisor she came up with a simple proof it could never work” and “I spent two months working on something really cool, and in the first thirty seconds of presenting it to my advisor, she said ‘Oh yeah, that’s Smith’s Lemma, very exciting when it was published forty years ago.’” But eventually you come out of it not just with book learning, but with the thought-patterns and methods of a field baked into your brain, a strong sense of what is or isn’t interesting, can or can’t be done.”