confidence level: I am a physicist, not a biologist, so don’t take this the account of a domain level expert. But this is really basic stuff, and is very easy to verify. Recently I encountered a scientific claim about biology, made by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I searched around for the source of the claim, and found that he has been repeating versions of the claim for over a decade and a half, including in “the sequences” and his TED talk. In recent years, this claim has primarily been used as an argument for why an AGI attack would be extremely deadly. I believe this claim is factually incorrect.

This is my article on one of the dumbest and most obviously false claims Yudkowsky has ever made, about biology not using covalent bonds.

  • @GorillasAreForEatingEnglish
    8•10 months ago

    The so called “experts” say that spider silk is stronger than steel, but steel beams can hold up bridges while I can break a spider web with my little finger. Looks like the “experts” are wrong and spider silk isn’t very strong after all - probably because it’s made of proteins held together by weak van der Waals forces instead of covalent bonds.