Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
nick-lane.net69 points by mitchbob 19 days ago
69 points by mitchbob 19 days ago
Context: I've read this and The Vital Question and watched several interviews with Nick Lane, so a lot of his ideas have blended together in my mind. A lot of the detail in this book went over my head, but it was well written enough to overcome my shortcoming in biochemistry. Similar in depth to Siddhartha Mukherjee's Song of the Cell and The Gene.
This book was a fascinating walk through evolutionary history and the way that different organisms handle energy, and how earlier, less efficient metabolic paths were limited but sufficient to bootstrap the much more efficient and flexible Kreb's cycle. I remember the term and the loop diagram from high school biology, but to actually dive into the elegant chemical pathways felt like discovering the rocket equation or the path from radioactivity to atomic bombs. If you're at all interested in Biology or Chemistry, I highly recommend this book.
To try to stay in topic: Nick Lane is a top tier biochemist who can even make the Krebs cycle riveting (aka the citric acid cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle ) His book “Power, Sex, and Suicide” is probably a better book to start with.
Don't love when books try to SEO optimize by hijacking another more popular term (the transformer which has nothing to do with this). Just pick a nice classy title instead. Seems like an interesting read though.
I've read this book, I don't think this was the case. I think the name was made in good-faith. It's "transformer" because it involves transformations of molecules involved in life (reactions, enzymes, metabolism). The author has used this term before 2022.
The same argument could be made for the transformer paper: hijacking a nostalgia pop-culture name to name a deep learning bi-linear operator. Many papers are guilty of this, some just become very influencial.
Indeed. This transformer has nothing to do with electrical currents and voltages.
But it actually does. Watch the video embedded on the page, it actually has everything to do with electrical currents.
That... doesn't make sense? If anything, using a popular term would be a disadvantage wrt. SEO, because now they need to compete against many many many unrelated websites.
Yep it wasn't about Lou Reed's seminal album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(Lou_Reed_album)
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You haven't read the book, and apparently think modern LLM tech invented the word "transformer".
And based on that, you try to prevent other people from commenting on the post.
So, when's your Emily Latella mea culpa?
I actually found the subject of this book interesting, but the book review lacking. I was looking here in hopes of finding more info about the subject, or links with more detail about the book.
Instead, what I find is another example of brand identity cancel culture.
If you don't have interest (or knowledge) in something, maybe just try ignoring it, and let people who do have interest (and/or knowledge) comment on it...
I've read part of Nick Lane's other book, The Vital Question, cannot comment on this new one; TL;DR competent biochemist (from complete amateur standpoint at any rate), excellent science communicator; you can watch some of his talks online. e.g. the one linked on this new book's page is good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBiIDwBOqQA
He's really fascinated by the overall transformation process of inorganic matter -> organic matter, a sort of scientific fixation - which is always enjoyable when it's done by a competent scientist - and it's really captivating stuff. (The fact I haven't finished his previous book has nothing to do with the book material itself, if anything it really captivated me; it's just my not-amazing new habit of not finishing books...)