rezz
Top debunking counterpoint from /u/ Tessablu/
I have a PhD in regenerative biology, a field which involves wearing a lot of biological hats. To me, this reads very much like a clever and creative larp. The author clearly has some expertise in some of the areas covered, and they frontloaded that material because it sounds detailed and impressive and makes you want to believe the rest of it. In combination with a lot of vernacular that sounds technical but is really quite basic to people with a STEM background, it gives a fairly convincing illusion of depth. I don’t have time to go into piece-by-piece here, maybe will tomorrow, but these are a few points which stood out to me:
-No biologist would find some novel unannotated genes and just declare that they are “not found in our biosphere.” No chance. Our understanding of the “biosphere” genome is wildly incomplete, and we know it.
-The line about how growth on exposure to FBS “can be explained by the addition of animal genes to the genome, such as growth receptors,” makes no sense. I literally can’t make sense of it. Perhaps this is because “animal” is such a bizarre and non-technical word choice here? If someone can parse this statement, do let me know.
-They go pretty in-depth with the genetics stuff, which mostly reads pretty convincingly, and then they really skim right over the anatomy. It’s all very surface level; the retinal anatomy sounds interesting but doesn’t actually make much sense, and otherwise it’s just anatomy textbook stuff.
-There’s no specificity beyond the genetic stuff, which the writer clearly knows about. I saw “histology” and got a bit excited, but then it just says that histology revealed “a kind of intricate biological circuitry.” This is very silly, and very vague. What does this even mean, aside from sounding cool? Have they really not done any IHC on specific proteins?
-The bit about osteoclasts is another example of “sounds technical, means little.” A lack of osteoclasts would inhibit longer-term bone remodeling in response to mechanical load. The mention of “posture” there is very, very odd and indicates a surface-level understanding of the biology.
-I just kinda laughed when I saw that they skipped over the endocrine and immune system. I would have, too! Those systems are a freaking nightmare, you’d need a PhD in both of them to even get started. Pretty convenient that the biologists in this lab haven’t given it much of a shot either.
-Finally, and I think most tellingly, there are way too many definitive statements in this text. The author seems to tip their hand at certain point, with sentences like “the rationale behind this unusual excretory system is directly related to this excreted ammonia…” But there is no rationale at work here, and no biologist would so confidently assert the evolutionary reasoning behind an alien physiology. The only reason you would write something like this would be to convince yourself, and your readers, of the feasibility of the systems you’ve devised.
tl;dr, I’d love for this to be real, but I know a heck of a lot about biology, and I don’t buy it at all. Sorry.
EDIT: just wanted to say that I appreciate the kind and positive response to this post! Always a bit nerve-wracking to feel like you’re bursting people’s bubbles, but I’m really glad that many of you have found it useful. I have not yet had a chance to read the Q&A comments, but will try to do so at some point today.
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We need an encyclopedia of posts/content like this that is the masterbook of Fediverse ops and scaling “how-to.”
- Succession (and it’s not even close, this is clear cut #1 for the slap factor)
- Bluey
- Halt and Catch Fire
- True Detective S1
- The Righteous Gemstones (cheating since it’s only 10 seconds)
- The Brady Bunch
- Dragonball Z (Toonami airing)
- Scooby Doo, Where Are You? S2
- White Lotus S1 (this is so close to Succession for me)
- Westworld S1
- Severance
This is elite self-hosting, lol. I want more of this content.
