The Dead Biologist

Suppose you're a biologist working with a bacterium. It's a nasty little bug, so you want to make sure your disinfecting protocol is effective. You have a rather good model of how the bacterium works, and it goes like this:

The bacterium contains DNA, which is like a master copy of the instructions as to how it works
This DNA is transcribed to RNA, which are little working copies of parts of the instructions and are disseminated throughout the bacterium
This RNA is translated into proteins, which actually do the stuff that makes the bacterium function

Yes, there are a few special cases where RNA actually does something, and your model seems to be missing some things---for one, the amount of protein produced from each RNA molecule seems to vary, and you can only account for about 90% of this variance; the other 10% appears [...]

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Outline:

(00:09) The Dead Biologist

(01:33) The Thing in the Noise

(03:29) Heavy Pressure

(04:30) Almost-All is not All

(05:42) The Most Forbidden Technique

(06:40) Beyond Imperfect Models

(07:41) Coda

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 25th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gk3wj6mNWMACQDdZQ/lurking-in-the-noise

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Lurking in the Noise” by J Bostock

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Lurking in the Noise” by J Bostock