> Biology doesn't work like that most of the time, it's squishy and weird and unpredictable, and the models we have of biology (including genomics!) are faulty at best, misleading at worst.

interesting. i came to tech from a molecular biology background and my impression was the opposite. biology is predictable most of the time, but sometimes random and squishy. the trick is that we’re trying to learn why things work predictably and what causes the variations, and that why/how unknown is what is most uncomfortable for people outside of the disciplines.

i’m not fully disagreeing with you because it sounds like you have experiences that inform your perspective. i find it interesting because my own experiences bring me in from the inverse perspective.

Biologists have a superiority complex about the “complexity” and “singular difficulty” of their field born out of a need for justification for the vast deficiencies of their field’s progress compared to others. Its an elaborate coping mechanism where the people in other fields which make envyable progress (eg software, cs etc)- sighted enough to have recognized and avoided the decrepitude of biological sciences- are in fact the ignorant ones who “struggle” , “incapable of grasping” the way that biologists think. Its an inversion designed to obscure the harsh truth that these outsiders in fact see quite clearly the way that biologists think and it is the reason they have so diligently avoided their field.

No biologist stays an essentialist for long, that is for sure.

The world of uncertainty and the idea that we might not be able to understand everything or control it as much as we'd like.

It seems to me a lot of the modern "tech-bro culture" is trying to control the future and reduce uncertainty: Stop death, merge with the robotic super intelligence, colonize Mars to escape Earth inevitable decay, etc.

I'm still waiting for the startups claiming to reduce entropy or solve the false vacuum decay