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This study's result should really not be surprising to anyone. The idea that somehow genetics + big picture environmental conditions are determinative of outcom

This study's result should really not be surprising to anyone. The idea that somehow genetics + big picture environmental conditions are determinative of outcome seems so superficially unlikely to be true to me that I'm kind of baffled that anyone thought otherwise. I'm sure many aspects of an individuals development are largely determined by genetics and big picture environment (anything else would be non-adaptive). But it kind of seems obvious that within the range of reasonably adaptive differences, the outcome is likely often chaotic. That should be the default presumption, and absent some clear reason to expect otherwise, is what they should have expected.

rectangletangle 9y ago
Phenotypic plasticity is a well documented phenomena in biology, this study seems to help confirm it exists in fish. In plants it gets pushed to interesting extremes due to their sessile nature. For instance etiolation occurs when plants are grown in the absence of light. They adapt by growing long thin brittle stems, to optimize the individual's morphology for longer reach, and minimal metabolic impact. "Personality" in animals is just an extremely variable/adaptable manifestation of this.
d4mi3n 9y ago
That's science—even a failed experiment can have significance. So long as it was methodically done and well recorded, work like this is still valuable in that it improves our understanding of the world.
- nolemurs 9y ago
  Ohh, absolutely. I'm glad they did the study. I'm just responding to the expectation stated in the paper. I really don't understand what sort of mindset would lead someone who has actually given it serious thought to expect what they did.
mowenz 9y ago
>not surprisingly [...] the outcome is likely often chaotic. Ok so if we have assumption that to make Identical[DNA + environment] equal to a chaotic outcome, then we need to add variable, random. Random would be determimed by environmental noise or possibly even (even more random) random quantum noise. Why should we expect the effect of Random to be large enough to create easily identifiable personalities, or more accurately, behavior patterns? So to be fair about this: I'm not aware of a specific reason it was so obvious to you (you don't provide any). Your intuition in hindsight will always seem like common sense to you. That's why it's good we do these types of experiments which question our intuition.
- nolemurs 9y ago
  > Why should we expect the effect of Random to be large enough to create easily identifiable personalities, or more accurately, behavior patterns? Well, my main reason for thinking it is that complex systems tend to be chaotic unless there's some reason for them not to be. Two pendulums attached to each other produce a chaotic system. A living being is a lot more complex. When things aren't chaotic, I'm looking for an explanation. I suspect that a little chaos is probably beneficial to the species/gene, so to the extent that there is a reason to expect anything, chaos seems likely (obviously only when the chaos isn't actively maladaptive). My other source for the idea is a little introspection and observation. I can see the effects of small things in my own live and those of others.
  - mowenz 9y ago
    >complexity tends towards chaos Sure, that's a good point, but to play devil's advocate, I could also say something like: "life tends towards patterns of similarity" and point to anything from fractal patterns in life to similar behavioral outcomes in social strata or in culture.
    - nolemurs 9y ago
      > life tends towards patterns of similarity I would argue that this is only true to the extent that there's a reason for the similarity. Similarities arise when they serve an adaptive purpose. And, to be fair, those clonal fish are a lot more similar than they are different. They're all still very similar looking fish! My whole point was that the authors of the paper seemed to expect the similarity to continue beyond what there's any adaptive reason for, and that's just crazy!
      - mowenz 9y ago
        I think we're a bit disconnected b/c I haven't done a good job of communicating my idea. I'm not saying you don't have good ideas about what conclusion we should expect, I'm saying it's a good idea not to worry too much about such ideas in any place where we can conduct an experiment. Humans are notoriously bad at this and shouldn't do it if we have a better way (and we do, experimentation). See: Orwell wrote about the problem of arguments in an essay On Politics, which can be found in the published book (not the essay) Why I Write. He discussed the aquatic screw, and how leading figures published ideas in leading print newspapers and journals arguing both for and against its effectiveness. It was only when an experiment was conducted that we, collectively, could know well-enough to consider it fact which one worked more efficiently. Feynman said, pretty much: 'if it turns out nature is this way or that way so be it, it doesn't matter how good or how beautiful your ideas are, nature is going to come out to be the way she is, that's the beauty of science.'
gwern 9y ago
I think you're engaged in hindsight and rather glibly biting that bullet. Large swathes of sociology, medicine, nutrition, health research, governments (even where genetic influences are accepted) are premised on the assumption that one's environment and shared environment especially causally affect outcomes in ways that can be measured and quantified and used in research and provide paths towards understanding, control, and amelioration. Parenting, or air pollution, things of that ilk. It certainly is not obvious to most people that those are all minor effects of small importance compared to random developmental noise or other things. Of course no one would be surprised to find non shared-environment variance components which were non-zero, but it's very surprising to find that they are so large: often larger than shared-environment effects, and sometimes as large or larger than heritability. This is one of the most interesting and counterintuitive findings of behavioral genetics, and experiments like OP put this in extremely stark relief. If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is science even possible on what causes the differences? See: - "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean" http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf , Turkheimer 2000 - "Why Are Children in the Same Family So Different? Nonshared Environment a Decade Later" https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa4a0a0974874832.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa... , Plomin et al 2001 - "Epidemiology, genetics and the 'Gloomy Prospect': embracing randomness in population health research and practice" http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full , Smith 2011 - "Top 10 Replicated Findings From Behavioral Genetics" https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf , Plomin et al 2016
- choxi 9y ago
  I have a shaky understanding of "non-shared environment", I get the sense that it is based on the context of the study. e.g. If I do a study on genetically identical mice and control their sugar intake, "sugar intake" would be shared environment and something like "exposure to lead" would be non-shared. If I did the same study and controlled their exposure to lead, it would be "shared" in that case. Is that an accurate understanding? Is "non-shared environment" basically the "everything else" category after genetics and shared environment have been controlled for? Also, > If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is science even possible on what causes the differences? Another point in favor of simulation theory? :)

rectangletangle 9y ago

Phenotypic plasticity is a well documented phenomena in biology, this study seems to help confirm it exists in fish. In plants it gets pushed to interesting extremes due to their sessile nature. For instance etiolation occurs when plants are grown in the absence of light. They adapt by growing long thin brittle stems, to optimize the individual's morphology for longer reach, and minimal metabolic impact. "Personality" in animals is just an extremely variable/adaptable manifestation of this.

d4mi3n 9y ago

That's science—even a failed experiment can have significance. So long as it was methodically done and well recorded, work like this is still valuable in that it improves our understanding of the world.

nolemurs 9y ago
Ohh, absolutely. I'm glad they did the study. I'm just responding to the expectation stated in the paper. I really don't understand what sort of mindset would lead someone who has actually given it serious thought to expect what they did.

mowenz 9y ago

>not surprisingly [...] the outcome is likely often chaotic. Ok so if we have assumption that to make Identical[DNA + environment] equal to a chaotic outcome, then we need to add variable, random. Random would be determimed by environmental noise or possibly even (even more random) random quantum noise. Why should we expect the effect of Random to be large enough to create easily identifiable personalities, or more accurately, behavior patterns? So to be fair about this: I'm not aware of a specific reason it was so obvious to you (you don't provide any). Your intuition in hindsight will always seem like common sense to you. That's why it's good we do these types of experiments which question our intuition.

nolemurs 9y ago
> Why should we expect the effect of Random to be large enough to create easily identifiable personalities, or more accurately, behavior patterns? Well, my main reason for thinking it is that complex systems tend to be chaotic unless there's some reason for them not to be. Two pendulums attached to each other produce a chaotic system. A living being is a lot more complex. When things aren't chaotic, I'm looking for an explanation. I suspect that a little chaos is probably beneficial to the species/gene, so to the extent that there is a reason to expect anything, chaos seems likely (obviously only when the chaos isn't actively maladaptive). My other source for the idea is a little introspection and observation. I can see the effects of small things in my own live and those of others.
- mowenz 9y ago
  >complexity tends towards chaos Sure, that's a good point, but to play devil's advocate, I could also say something like: "life tends towards patterns of similarity" and point to anything from fractal patterns in life to similar behavioral outcomes in social strata or in culture.
  - nolemurs 9y ago
    > life tends towards patterns of similarity I would argue that this is only true to the extent that there's a reason for the similarity. Similarities arise when they serve an adaptive purpose. And, to be fair, those clonal fish are a lot more similar than they are different. They're all still very similar looking fish! My whole point was that the authors of the paper seemed to expect the similarity to continue beyond what there's any adaptive reason for, and that's just crazy!
    - mowenz 9y ago
      I think we're a bit disconnected b/c I haven't done a good job of communicating my idea. I'm not saying you don't have good ideas about what conclusion we should expect, I'm saying it's a good idea not to worry too much about such ideas in any place where we can conduct an experiment. Humans are notoriously bad at this and shouldn't do it if we have a better way (and we do, experimentation). See: Orwell wrote about the problem of arguments in an essay On Politics, which can be found in the published book (not the essay) Why I Write. He discussed the aquatic screw, and how leading figures published ideas in leading print newspapers and journals arguing both for and against its effectiveness. It was only when an experiment was conducted that we, collectively, could know well-enough to consider it fact which one worked more efficiently. Feynman said, pretty much: 'if it turns out nature is this way or that way so be it, it doesn't matter how good or how beautiful your ideas are, nature is going to come out to be the way she is, that's the beauty of science.'

gwern 9y ago

I think you're engaged in hindsight and rather glibly biting that bullet. Large swathes of sociology, medicine, nutrition, health research, governments (even where genetic influences are accepted) are premised on the assumption that one's environment and shared environment especially causally affect outcomes in ways that can be measured and quantified and used in research and provide paths towards understanding, control, and amelioration. Parenting, or air pollution, things of that ilk. It certainly is not obvious to most people that those are all minor effects of small importance compared to random developmental noise or other things. Of course no one would be surprised to find non shared-environment variance components which were non-zero, but it's very surprising to find that they are so large: often larger than shared-environment effects, and sometimes as large or larger than heritability. This is one of the most interesting and counterintuitive findings of behavioral genetics, and experiments like OP put this in extremely stark relief. If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is science even possible on what causes the differences? See: - "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean" http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/three_laws.pdf , Turkheimer 2000 - "Why Are Children in the Same Family So Different? Nonshared Environment a Decade Later" https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa4a0a0974874832.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4091/dbfb736a4e793281e6b1aa... , Plomin et al 2001 - "Epidemiology, genetics and the 'Gloomy Prospect': embracing randomness in population health research and practice" http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/3/537.full , Smith 2011 - "Top 10 Replicated Findings From Behavioral Genetics" https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf , Plomin et al 2016

choxi 9y ago
I have a shaky understanding of "non-shared environment", I get the sense that it is based on the context of the study. e.g. If I do a study on genetically identical mice and control their sugar intake, "sugar intake" would be shared environment and something like "exposure to lead" would be non-shared. If I did the same study and controlled their exposure to lead, it would be "shared" in that case. Is that an accurate understanding? Is "non-shared environment" basically the "everything else" category after genetics and shared environment have been controlled for? Also, > If clones in as exactly identical environments as researchers can create and perceive still wind up with such dramatic individual differences, how is science even possible on what causes the differences? Another point in favor of simulation theory? :)