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Re:New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet by api on Friday July 10, 2015 @03:03PM (#9866054)
"And when this one test gives them some nice data, they say: "Hey, our stuff is better than everything all of nature has ever done!""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Re:New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet by MaxScheiber on Friday July 10, 2015 @03:49PM (#9866320)
Steven Benner is an expert in the field. Dunning-Kruger does not apply at all.

It looks more like he's trying (EDIT: or his funding foundation is trying) to talk up his research, which is understandable.

Re:New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet by api on Friday July 10, 2015 @04:13PM (#9866446)
I wasn't referring to anyone's expertise in the field, but to humanity's understanding of a five billion year old intelligent system. What we've done so far is impressive, but we've really only scratched the surface. It's a bit early to claim superiority.

We actually do know something about why the genetic code might have only four codons, and other aspects of its structure. It gets into combinatorics and search.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9732450

Re:New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet by dnautics on Friday July 10, 2015 @03:56PM (#9866366)
It's not him, it's the simons foundation which funds his work.