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> Some traits just pop up due to random mutations This seems like an extraordinary claim. I can get behind the idea that it’s possible for a random mutation to

by dpark 5y ago

> Some traits just pop up due to random mutations This seems like an extraordinary claim. I can get behind the idea that it’s possible for a random mutation to impact personality traits. It is entirely different to turn to this as a general purpose mechanism for things that are hard to explain. It seems overwhelmingly likely that most traits are in some way selected for, because useful traits are naturally more likely to propagate than random useless (which will pass on, or not, at random)

echelon 5y ago
I think our species is post-genome for a lot of the complex behavior you see in society. Cultural and ideological memes use us as information carriers. We fixate on certain ideals and values, and some of us make them our entire lives. Preferring Pokemon over Halo doesn't entirely reduce to one's genes. Being too busy to have kids is situational and part of a complicated modern life. There is genetic contribution to these outcomes, but we're well past the point of genes being the most complicated factor. Now you have to model society and a person's random walk through it.
- dpark 5y ago
  I agree with most of what you said except for this notion that we’re “post genome”. We are absolutely not. What you described is just “nature vs nurture”. Genes don’t make anyone prefer Pokémon over Halo directly, but the mechanism was built by evolution. A person who makes friends playing Pokémon is certainly likely to develop a fondness for Pokémon, because having friends is beneficial to survival and reproduction.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Modern computing is “post hardware”. That doesn't mean the hardware doesn't matter, or that changes to the hardware don't make a difference; it means describing the hardware is insufficient to describe computers, whereas describing the software is mostly sufficient.
    - dpark 5y ago
      This is a meaningless distinction, though. Of course you can’t describe a human’s behavior purely in terms of genome. Essentially no one holds the position that this is possible. You can’t even describe a bacteria’s behavior purely in genomic terms. Behavior is inextricably linked to the environment. The environment for humans is incredibly complex so the interactions between environment and genome are even more complex. You cannot describe human behavior in terms of just environment either. Maybe this is an interesting position for software, because modern CPUs are explicitly intended to be general purpose and as such are all theoretically equivalent. Even there the abstraction falls apart pretty regularly, though, as Intel gets destroyed by M1 battery life and attacks like rowhammer affect some hardware far more than others. It’s only post Harare as long as the hardware it’s good enough for the purpose.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        > Of course you can’t describe a human’s behavior purely in terms of genome. Phenotype, whatever. > It’s only post Harare as long as the hardware it’s good enough for the purpose. Most human brains and bodies are good enough for most human purposes. Sure, there's large variation between humans, but the variation between populations isn't great enough to be significant, as far as I'm aware.
        dpark 5y ago
        > Most human brains and bodies are good enough for most human purposes. The difference is that we know how general purpose computers work. We literally know exactly how they work due to the fact that we built them, but also we have developed very useful abstractions for how to use them. We do not have an equivalent understanding of human behavior. Humans are not general purpose computing devices that we know how to program. Humans are extremely complex systems that are already running software and we don’t understand that software. We’re engaged in black box debugging and we are nowhere close to actually understanding the software running on the box (and we’re little closer to understanding the hardware).
        5y ago
- visarga 5y ago
  Well said. I'd like to add (a bit off topic) that humans are not necessarily capable of causal reasoning, at least not alone. It's a cultural process where the true causes are separated from correlations in time, with lots of experimentation. Only with special training and in specific domains can we reason causally, and most population just learns the surface never getting to real understanding. In that regard we're like language models. So part of what makes us so smart is not in the brain, it's culture itself. If you observe feral people - they never get far on their own.
  - pontifier 5y ago
    Great insight here. I wonder how changing culture could effect reasoning ability in the future. Perhaps there are critical aspects that might be important to protect or eliminate in order to avoid a return to feral nature. Could this be one of the great filters that we, as a species, still need to pass?
goatlover 5y ago
But are those traits behavioral, or are they the mechanism that give rise to flexible behavior? Let's take language. Imagine saying that linguistic components are naturally selected for in the genome. It's the wrong level. Language happens at the level of brains and societies, not genes. Genes are used to build proteins which are used to build brains, but brains interact and learn from their environments, and even shape their environments, causing feedback loops.
- dpark 5y ago
  > But are those traits behavioral, or are they the mechanism that give rise to flexible behavior? I don’t know what you mean here. The specific traits mentioned (building muscle past the point of attractiveness, climbing deadly mountains)? Traits in general? Something else? > Imagine saying that linguistic components are naturally selected for in the genome. It's the wrong level. Language happens at the level of brains and societies, not genes. It’s not the wrong level. From what we can tell, other animals are literally incapable of complex language. That’s genetic. Language traits literally have been selected for in the human genome. We have a brain that can process language and a tongue structure capable of making complex sounds that other animals can’t apparently replicate. Certainly language also has environmental/societal components. But it’s inaccurate to say that it’s not also genetic. Unless you mean that literal languages are not genetic, in which case, sure. There’s nothing in the human genome that encodes English. There’s also nothing in the human genome that encodes the taste for yogurt, or the drive to be the fastest runner, or the Catholic wedding ceremony. And yet genetic components still certainly underly those in a meaningful way. It’s worthwhile understanding the genetic components even if they cannot explain the entire phenomenon.

by dpark 5y ago

echelon 5y ago

I think our species is post-genome for a lot of the complex behavior you see in society. Cultural and ideological memes use us as information carriers. We fixate on certain ideals and values, and some of us make them our entire lives. Preferring Pokemon over Halo doesn't entirely reduce to one's genes. Being too busy to have kids is situational and part of a complicated modern life. There is genetic contribution to these outcomes, but we're well past the point of genes being the most complicated factor. Now you have to model society and a person's random walk through it.

dpark 5y ago
I agree with most of what you said except for this notion that we’re “post genome”. We are absolutely not. What you described is just “nature vs nurture”. Genes don’t make anyone prefer Pokémon over Halo directly, but the mechanism was built by evolution. A person who makes friends playing Pokémon is certainly likely to develop a fondness for Pokémon, because having friends is beneficial to survival and reproduction.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Modern computing is “post hardware”. That doesn't mean the hardware doesn't matter, or that changes to the hardware don't make a difference; it means describing the hardware is insufficient to describe computers, whereas describing the software is mostly sufficient.
  - dpark 5y ago
    This is a meaningless distinction, though. Of course you can’t describe a human’s behavior purely in terms of genome. Essentially no one holds the position that this is possible. You can’t even describe a bacteria’s behavior purely in genomic terms. Behavior is inextricably linked to the environment. The environment for humans is incredibly complex so the interactions between environment and genome are even more complex. You cannot describe human behavior in terms of just environment either. Maybe this is an interesting position for software, because modern CPUs are explicitly intended to be general purpose and as such are all theoretically equivalent. Even there the abstraction falls apart pretty regularly, though, as Intel gets destroyed by M1 battery life and attacks like rowhammer affect some hardware far more than others. It’s only post Harare as long as the hardware it’s good enough for the purpose.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > Of course you can’t describe a human’s behavior purely in terms of genome. Phenotype, whatever. > It’s only post Harare as long as the hardware it’s good enough for the purpose. Most human brains and bodies are good enough for most human purposes. Sure, there's large variation between humans, but the variation between populations isn't great enough to be significant, as far as I'm aware.
      - dpark 5y ago
        > Most human brains and bodies are good enough for most human purposes. The difference is that we know how general purpose computers work. We literally know exactly how they work due to the fact that we built them, but also we have developed very useful abstractions for how to use them. We do not have an equivalent understanding of human behavior. Humans are not general purpose computing devices that we know how to program. Humans are extremely complex systems that are already running software and we don’t understand that software. We’re engaged in black box debugging and we are nowhere close to actually understanding the software running on the box (and we’re little closer to understanding the hardware).
        5y ago
visarga 5y ago
Well said. I'd like to add (a bit off topic) that humans are not necessarily capable of causal reasoning, at least not alone. It's a cultural process where the true causes are separated from correlations in time, with lots of experimentation. Only with special training and in specific domains can we reason causally, and most population just learns the surface never getting to real understanding. In that regard we're like language models. So part of what makes us so smart is not in the brain, it's culture itself. If you observe feral people - they never get far on their own.
- pontifier 5y ago
  Great insight here. I wonder how changing culture could effect reasoning ability in the future. Perhaps there are critical aspects that might be important to protect or eliminate in order to avoid a return to feral nature. Could this be one of the great filters that we, as a species, still need to pass?

goatlover 5y ago

But are those traits behavioral, or are they the mechanism that give rise to flexible behavior? Let's take language. Imagine saying that linguistic components are naturally selected for in the genome. It's the wrong level. Language happens at the level of brains and societies, not genes. Genes are used to build proteins which are used to build brains, but brains interact and learn from their environments, and even shape their environments, causing feedback loops.

dpark 5y ago
> But are those traits behavioral, or are they the mechanism that give rise to flexible behavior? I don’t know what you mean here. The specific traits mentioned (building muscle past the point of attractiveness, climbing deadly mountains)? Traits in general? Something else? > Imagine saying that linguistic components are naturally selected for in the genome. It's the wrong level. Language happens at the level of brains and societies, not genes. It’s not the wrong level. From what we can tell, other animals are literally incapable of complex language. That’s genetic. Language traits literally have been selected for in the human genome. We have a brain that can process language and a tongue structure capable of making complex sounds that other animals can’t apparently replicate. Certainly language also has environmental/societal components. But it’s inaccurate to say that it’s not also genetic. Unless you mean that literal languages are not genetic, in which case, sure. There’s nothing in the human genome that encodes English. There’s also nothing in the human genome that encodes the taste for yogurt, or the drive to be the fastest runner, or the Catholic wedding ceremony. And yet genetic components still certainly underly those in a meaningful way. It’s worthwhile understanding the genetic components even if they cannot explain the entire phenomenon.