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Comment by valiant-comma | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t “noise” in this context just another form of “nurture” (i.e., environmental factors at a molecular level)?

In these debates, “nurture” is typically taken to mean factors you as a parent or a society can control, whereas “nature” is heritable genetic information. “Noise“ is neither of those things, and so needs a new word.

> “nurture” is typically taken to mean factors you as a parent or a society can control, whereas “nature” is heritable genetic information.

??? If so, then the typical debate is very poor. Nature vs. nurture may be the common words used, but anyone with even a meager understanding of it realizes that it's actually a genes vs. environment issue, and that environment includes much, much more than "factors you as a parent or a society can control."

In fact, the linked article even acknowledges that: "Everything not chalked up to genetic control tends to get attributed to diverse environmental factors, ranging from nutrition to stress to idiosyncratic social interactions. It’s a line of thought that 'suggests that it must be something outside the organism,. . . "

The article seems to want to posit random noise as a third factor (beyond genes and environment), but I think the same point would be made by positing that recent studies suggest "developmental noise" may occupy an especially privileged role among environmental factors. Noise clearly falls into broad penumbra of "environment", which also includes many other random factors.

> Noise clearly falls into broad penumbra of "environment", which also includes many other random factors.

Why? Noise is an unpredictable development. There's no reason to expect it to be exogenous; it's very easy for the genotype to specify that an outcome should be more or less unpredictable.

Since what you wrote is true (you could have a gene where one allele increases observed phenotypic variance and another decreases it; in fact I'm pretty sure such genes exists), I suspect the people downvoted you did so because they'd rather not think clearly about these matters.

It's not quite at the level of a single allele, but e.g. I understand that the same mutation related to eye-color results in a lot more color variance in females than it does in males.

And male vs female variance in general would appear to be strong evidence that something is going on.

The terms do not need to be redefined or made more complex.

"Nature" is genotype.

"Nuture" is everything not encoded by genotype or that environmentally changes expression. It doesn't matter if it's parenting, culture, or random noise. It's the universe the genotype is exposed to.

We benefit from having different levels of granularity in our terminology for different purposes. Noise and non-noise nurture (as you use the term) are sometimes, but only sometimes, worth differentiating between.

Those who see a benefit from making this distinction may also see a benefit in having different terms.

When an egg and sperm fuse, the resulting cell contains more than just the genotype for the new organism. It has all of its inter-cellular contents and organization. I think a more reasonalbe usage would be that nature is this cell and nurture would be what influences this cell and decendents throughout its lifetime.

Both terms are meaningless in our current understanding of systems biology.

I think there are at least two discourse communities with opinions on the correct usage, and what is "typically" done depends on which you are interacting with.

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