3 ms·

> A "gene" is a particular part of a "genome" (DNA base-pair sequence) See, this is a non-starter. Sure it's coherent, but you've simply failed on step one to

> A "gene" is a particular part of a "genome" (DNA base-pair sequence) See, this is a non-starter. Sure it's coherent, but you've simply failed on step one to identify how humans communicate. Regardless of if you're referring to "coding" or "encoding" (I'm not sure of the semantic difference between these two terms, frankly, nor an understanding why this distinction is worth presenting without remediation) a gene is still a heritable trait, not a specific span of a specific encoding of a specific molecule. A gene is, colloquially, a heritable trait that implies no specifics about how it's coded/encoded into whatever substrate you choose. You're referring to a far more specific term most people won't recognize as meaningful, and you can either explicitly describe what you're discussing or accept that people will misunderstand you. I see you're trying to advocate for specific terminology to agree on, but it's far more effective to meet people where they already are rather than trying to push jargon onto others. If I'm wrong, that people specifically refer to subsets of a DNA encoding by referring to "gene", please educate me.

derefr 2y ago
> See, this is a non-starter. Sure it's coherent, but you've simply failed on step one to identify how humans communicate. No. There are two distinct ways in which humans communicate. • Humans create and use words, whose usage stretches and spreads and grows and can only be defined descriptively. • Humans (doing professional/technical/scientific work) also define-into-existence jargon terms — the meaning of which is set in stone at the moment of creation. Jargon terms are verbal handles we use to grasp parts of particular, well-defined mental models — models that are taught and learned as coherent systems of such terms; models that exist to enable their users to think rigorously, and collaborate without corruption of meaning/loss of rigor, to "get things done" in those professional/technical/academic contexts. Jargon terms, therefore, can always be said — definitively, objectively(!) — to have been employed correctly or incorrectly in any given text, per the mental model in which the jargon term is defined. Sometimes, professionals/technical people/scientists are dumb and silly, and attempt to invent a jargon term made of words, where those words, put together in that order, have such an obvious, novel, and useful lay usage, that it is inevitable that anyone who hears the term will already think they know what it means, before ever being formally taught what it means. "Begs the question" is an example of this — there is something so uniquely useful about the lay meaning of that phrase (essentially "a situation that demands that an unstated question be asked"), that whoever named (or more likely, translated from Latin into English) that logical fallacy, made a mistake by choosing to use those words to name it. But that situation is rare. Most of the time, professionals/technical people/scientists make up a word all on their own, to be jargon, entirely for their own use. (Often they use Latin for this, as an intentional way to dodge the aforementioned problem of the word "seeming like it has an intuitive meaning" in any living language. But they don't have to. They can also just make up a nonsense word, perhaps one inspired by a Latin prefix or something — a word like "gene.") And then, through a pipeline of scientific discoveries, to science journalism, to pop-science, to regular people just talking about how their aunt has asthma due to "that bad gene she got from her father" — somewhere along the line, someone screws up in how they're using the jargon term; and that screwed-up understanding proliferates. But jargon terms — at least the ones that are part of mental models anyone still employs any more — must still be used to do work. And they cannot function to do that work, if people can't use them with the implicit understanding that they are communicating an exact, precise, well-defined idea. Such words are not merely words; they are professional tools. The professionals that use these tools, cannot allow them to be corrupted, to have their meanings diffuse. And so, at least the professionals themselves, will always be taught that any jargon term they learn has one specific meaning — that it acts as a handle for a particular concept in a particular mental model. And those professionals will insist on this strictness when working with any technical writer or editor. And this strictness diffuses from there, into any editorial context where editors consider themselves to be professionals, working for a publication that expects professionalism — whether that publication is technical or non-technical. In professional editing, is always expected that if any term (word or phrase) is used which is known to be a (unique, non-colliding) jargon term rooted in some technical/academic mental model, then that term should only be permitted if it is being used with its original jargon meaning. Any other handling of such a term is considered a usage error, effectively a typo. (For non-unique/colliding jargon terms where lay usage exceeds jargon usage, the lay-usage is given represented by plain printing, while the jargon usage is represented by italic printing. This only ever comes up with phrases — "begging the question" again — because even the most ivory-tower academics know that overloading the meanings of single extant lay words is a stupid way to invent jargon.)
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  This is a long spiel to justify refusing trying to communicate in an effective manner. I understand the concept of professionals recognizing the quality standards others put forward, but at some point you've got to care if you even come of as sensical to non-professionals if you want to communicate to them. This necessarily implies a reaction to something not being "but they misused the word gene!!!".
  - derefr 2y ago
    It doesn't matter when lay people misuse professional jargon. It matters when professionals speaking to lay people misuse professional jargon. (As was what was being pointed out as wrong about the OP article — it is professional writing, from the PR department of a university!) In other words, it's about "those who know" being a role model for correct usage by "those who don't know." (Why bother? Because then people are more likely to come into the profession with an understanding of the concept that's at least compatible with teaching them the model; rather than having an understanding of the model so debased that they need to actively unlearn it before they can learn the correct model.)
    - ForTheKidz 2y ago
      > It matters when professionals speaking to lay people misuse professional jargon. Who is the grand arbiter of whether or not use this use is "misuses" or, perahs "correct", whatever that means—the professionals, or the lay people?
robwwilliams 2y ago
You are not wrong but even among biologists and geneticists there are differences of opinion and differences of context. If a mouse geneticist says they knocked out gene X they usually mean that they inactivated the production of mRNA from a specific gene “model”. If you were talking to Richard Dawkins he would have a much more expansive definition of a “gene” that would include a much longer sequence of DNA (many protein-coding genes) that remains in a particular state long enough to be selected for (or not) or to drift to fixation or extinction. It is not quite right to say: “a gene is … a heritable trait.” This definition equates gene with trait. Yes that is how Mendel thought about his results since he could only see and quantify traits. But there are still a depressingly large number of protein-coding genes without linkage to traits.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  We are not generally mouse geneticists, though. We are assumably a proxy for the general public. > It is not quite right to say: “a gene is … a heritable trait.” This is a reality of communication you need to deal with: that's absolutely how people will interpret the term "gene". > Yes that is how Mendel thought about his results since he could only see and quantify traits. But there are still a depressingly large number of protein-coding genes without linkage to traits. From my perspective, from my exceedingly humble opinion, "heritable trait linked by reproduction and not culture" is absolutely how the public at large understands the term "gene". The fact that scientists cannot successfully link protein-coding to linguistically-bound traits is an issue that scientists will have to work around when communicating about the specifics of heritability, genetic determinism, and discretization of individuals. "Gene" is simply not a term you can reliably link to DNA in the popular consciousness and is likely not worth the effort or money to redefine.
  - robwwilliams 2y ago
    Perfect example of the context of a definition being important.

derefr 2y ago

> See, this is a non-starter. Sure it's coherent, but you've simply failed on step one to identify how humans communicate. No. There are two distinct ways in which humans communicate. • Humans create and use words, whose usage stretches and spreads and grows and can only be defined descriptively. • Humans (doing professional/technical/scientific work) also define-into-existence jargon terms — the meaning of which is set in stone at the moment of creation. Jargon terms are verbal handles we use to grasp parts of particular, well-defined mental models — models that are taught and learned as coherent systems of such terms; models that exist to enable their users to think rigorously, and collaborate without corruption of meaning/loss of rigor, to "get things done" in those professional/technical/academic contexts. Jargon terms, therefore, can always be said — definitively, objectively(!) — to have been employed correctly or incorrectly in any given text, per the mental model in which the jargon term is defined. Sometimes, professionals/technical people/scientists are dumb and silly, and attempt to invent a jargon term made of words, where those words, put together in that order, have such an obvious, novel, and useful lay usage, that it is inevitable that anyone who hears the term will already think they know what it means, before ever being formally taught what it means. "Begs the question" is an example of this — there is something so uniquely useful about the lay meaning of that phrase (essentially "a situation that demands that an unstated question be asked"), that whoever named (or more likely, translated from Latin into English) that logical fallacy, made a mistake by choosing to use those words to name it. But that situation is rare. Most of the time, professionals/technical people/scientists make up a word all on their own, to be jargon, entirely for their own use. (Often they use Latin for this, as an intentional way to dodge the aforementioned problem of the word "seeming like it has an intuitive meaning" in any living language. But they don't have to. They can also just make up a nonsense word, perhaps one inspired by a Latin prefix or something — a word like "gene.") And then, through a pipeline of scientific discoveries, to science journalism, to pop-science, to regular people just talking about how their aunt has asthma due to "that bad gene she got from her father" — somewhere along the line, someone screws up in how they're using the jargon term; and that screwed-up understanding proliferates. But jargon terms — at least the ones that are part of mental models anyone still employs any more — must still be used to do work. And they cannot function to do that work, if people can't use them with the implicit understanding that they are communicating an exact, precise, well-defined idea. Such words are not merely words; they are professional tools. The professionals that use these tools, cannot allow them to be corrupted, to have their meanings diffuse. And so, at least the professionals themselves, will always be taught that any jargon term they learn has one specific meaning — that it acts as a handle for a particular concept in a particular mental model. And those professionals will insist on this strictness when working with any technical writer or editor. And this strictness diffuses from there, into any editorial context where editors consider themselves to be professionals, working for a publication that expects professionalism — whether that publication is technical or non-technical. In professional editing, is always expected that if any term (word or phrase) is used which is known to be a (unique, non-colliding) jargon term rooted in some technical/academic mental model, then that term should only be permitted if it is being used with its original jargon meaning. Any other handling of such a term is considered a usage error, effectively a typo. (For non-unique/colliding jargon terms where lay usage exceeds jargon usage, the lay-usage is given represented by plain printing, while the jargon usage is represented by italic printing. This only ever comes up with phrases — "begging the question" again — because even the most ivory-tower academics know that overloading the meanings of single extant lay words is a stupid way to invent jargon.)

ForTheKidz 2y ago
This is a long spiel to justify refusing trying to communicate in an effective manner. I understand the concept of professionals recognizing the quality standards others put forward, but at some point you've got to care if you even come of as sensical to non-professionals if you want to communicate to them. This necessarily implies a reaction to something not being "but they misused the word gene!!!".
- derefr 2y ago
  It doesn't matter when lay people misuse professional jargon. It matters when professionals speaking to lay people misuse professional jargon. (As was what was being pointed out as wrong about the OP article — it is professional writing, from the PR department of a university!) In other words, it's about "those who know" being a role model for correct usage by "those who don't know." (Why bother? Because then people are more likely to come into the profession with an understanding of the concept that's at least compatible with teaching them the model; rather than having an understanding of the model so debased that they need to actively unlearn it before they can learn the correct model.)
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    > It matters when professionals speaking to lay people misuse professional jargon. Who is the grand arbiter of whether or not use this use is "misuses" or, perahs "correct", whatever that means—the professionals, or the lay people?

robwwilliams 2y ago

You are not wrong but even among biologists and geneticists there are differences of opinion and differences of context. If a mouse geneticist says they knocked out gene X they usually mean that they inactivated the production of mRNA from a specific gene “model”. If you were talking to Richard Dawkins he would have a much more expansive definition of a “gene” that would include a much longer sequence of DNA (many protein-coding genes) that remains in a particular state long enough to be selected for (or not) or to drift to fixation or extinction. It is not quite right to say: “a gene is … a heritable trait.” This definition equates gene with trait. Yes that is how Mendel thought about his results since he could only see and quantify traits. But there are still a depressingly large number of protein-coding genes without linkage to traits.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
We are not generally mouse geneticists, though. We are assumably a proxy for the general public. > It is not quite right to say: “a gene is … a heritable trait.” This is a reality of communication you need to deal with: that's absolutely how people will interpret the term "gene". > Yes that is how Mendel thought about his results since he could only see and quantify traits. But there are still a depressingly large number of protein-coding genes without linkage to traits. From my perspective, from my exceedingly humble opinion, "heritable trait linked by reproduction and not culture" is absolutely how the public at large understands the term "gene". The fact that scientists cannot successfully link protein-coding to linguistically-bound traits is an issue that scientists will have to work around when communicating about the specifics of heritability, genetic determinism, and discretization of individuals. "Gene" is simply not a term you can reliably link to DNA in the popular consciousness and is likely not worth the effort or money to redefine.
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  Perfect example of the context of a definition being important.