It's nice to throw around claims like that, or like "microtubules connect the brain the quantum realm" (Penrose). Fortunately that's not how science works.

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dingaling911 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I understand what happened. You took my claim literally. Like DNA translates by a simple function to random initialization. I was saying that all else being equal, DNA will influence the way the brain initializes. Of course, many factors will influence it.

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dingaling911 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Science starts with a hypothesis. If DNA has everything encoded, then it stands to reason that it influences the initial state of the brain.

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wernam 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> If DNA has everything encoded

It is not. There are many biological examples of random processes generating patterns and weights, such tiger stripes, fingerprints, etc. DNA only encodes the reaction, but the pattern itself is seeded by initial position of random molecules, not the DNA.

> that it influences the initial state of the brain.

You've gone from "DNA is probably the seed for the random initialization", as in the deterministic seed for a PRNG, to "influences". Those are 2 different claims.

Most scientists will agree that DNA encodes the large-scale connectivity in the brain, ie from region to region, thickness of corpus callosum etc.

Most scientists will disagree that it is "probable" that DNA encodes/seeds the weights of each and every synapse.

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alembic_fumes 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you are mostly debating against a strawman of your own construction here. The person you're responding to never claimed that "seeding the random initialization" means literally the same thing as seeding a pseudo-random number generator, and the second message was likely intended as a clarification after being misunderstood. So it's not "2 different claims" contradicting; it's a single underlying claim being expressed through a lossy medium in an increasing level of detail.

My own reading of the poster's intent aligns with this: "DNA encodes the large-scale connectivity in the brain, ie from region to region, thickness of corpus callosum etc."

	▲	wernam an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The grandparent comment is: "humans aren’t born with randomly initialised neural weights", with commenters throwing around harebrained hypotheses about those weights. Most biologists will fully disagree with the whole premise, and support the reverse claim that we are born with random weights, we learn to walk/speak English/etc after we're born. Not from weights seeded from our DNA.

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spwa4 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Except Penrose is like Chomsky. They have past accomplishments, but nothing recent and everybody keeps bringing them up because they constantly comment on stuff so far outside of their area of expertise it's not funny anymore, it's just sad.

At least Penrose had the good manners to make relevant contributions (meaning Chomsky effectively managed to steer his field in entirely the wrong direction, take everybody along with nothing to show for it. Nobody uses his contributions today in study. Yes he's celebrated ... but why? He's like a prime minister that presided over a country causing an economic crisis, throwing everyone into misery. I guess those are exactly the kind of politicians celebrated. Bush is celebrated while he destroyed half the economy, Clinton is forgotten (well, except for that one thing) despite being the best president of the last 50+ years economically)