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> Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heri

> Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this.

jusssi 9y ago
And people who have mismatched eye color? Totally predictable? There's more to the output than the blueprint.
wutbrodo 9y ago
> that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this. Eye color inheritance isn't "totally predictable"; this is so obviously wrong to anyone who's ever met more than a couple humans that perhaps I'm misunderstanding the assertion you're making here. Come to think of it, I think you might be saying that _conditioned on the alleles you receive_, there are traits that are fully predictable. In that case, I think you're just misunderstanding the comment you're responding to, since conditioning on the alleles received is begging the question. Alternatively, you may not know what a random variable is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable. It doesn't mean that the trait is "random" in the colloquial sense of uniform distribution across all possible values.
- metaphorm 9y ago
  Eye color in humans pretty closely follows the Dominant/recessive allele characteristics from classic Mendelian genetics. If you show me a person's family tree and I notice that all 4 of their grandparents have brown eyes I can predict with almost total certainty (barring new mutations or epigenetic effects) that they will have brown eyes. other combinations of eye color at the grandparents lead to predictable distributions of the expression of that trait in the grandchild generation. this may be what was meant by "random variable", but it's really a population effect so modeling it as a random variable is peculiar. it's not random at the level of the individual, or at least it isn't after the recombination phase of fertilization in the embryo. given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question. Right, this is what I suspected you may have been saying. I think we were talking past each other a bit. I still don't think it makes much sense to challenge someone who says "X is a random variable" by saying "that's not remotely true, X is not a random variable if you condition on the probabilistic component of X". Well, duh.

jusssi 9y ago

And people who have mismatched eye color? Totally predictable? There's more to the output than the blueprint.

wutbrodo 9y ago

> that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this. Eye color inheritance isn't "totally predictable"; this is so obviously wrong to anyone who's ever met more than a couple humans that perhaps I'm misunderstanding the assertion you're making here. Come to think of it, I think you might be saying that _conditioned on the alleles you receive_, there are traits that are fully predictable. In that case, I think you're just misunderstanding the comment you're responding to, since conditioning on the alleles received is begging the question. Alternatively, you may not know what a random variable is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable. It doesn't mean that the trait is "random" in the colloquial sense of uniform distribution across all possible values.

metaphorm 9y ago
Eye color in humans pretty closely follows the Dominant/recessive allele characteristics from classic Mendelian genetics. If you show me a person's family tree and I notice that all 4 of their grandparents have brown eyes I can predict with almost total certainty (barring new mutations or epigenetic effects) that they will have brown eyes. other combinations of eye color at the grandparents lead to predictable distributions of the expression of that trait in the grandchild generation. this may be what was meant by "random variable", but it's really a population effect so modeling it as a random variable is peculiar. it's not random at the level of the individual, or at least it isn't after the recombination phase of fertilization in the embryo. given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question. Right, this is what I suspected you may have been saying. I think we were talking past each other a bit. I still don't think it makes much sense to challenge someone who says "X is a random variable" by saying "that's not remotely true, X is not a random variable if you condition on the probabilistic component of X". Well, duh.