Yes, even regardless of other examples you have provided, that's just basically bad poor logic in the article? Why would anyone assume that the number of connections of neurons would need to linearly relate to the number of genes describing them? What if a couple of genes describe a process that is then repeated for a billion times during development?
Isn't even the famous moth that changed color in the early days of the industrial evolution an example? I think it carries both genes (for black and white expression), and they get triggered depending on the environment during development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
I could be wrong about the moth, but certainly, genes that are only expressed depending on environment are common knowledge.
(Aside: what's the currently accepted pronoun there? I was always taught "they" is incorrect grammar, but without devolving this discussion, that seems to be accepted now?)
My son is 13 months old now, and crawls like a maniac, ever since he was roughly 5 months old. Very social, talkative, active, all those good things. Pulls up and stands all the time, can climb in and out of toy vehicles, climbs stairs, all of that. When I hold him while he stands, he is barely putting any weight on me. Even if he's not walking, he should be able to stand on his own. But he doesn't, and he absolutely refuses to do so. He sees cousins and other big kids walking, and isn't afraid to crawl to them and play, but it doesn't inspire him to walk.
We know a lot of other kids that are younger than him, his age, or a few months older, and they are walking. He's stronger and more capable than them, but they're walking and he isn't.
My wife and I comment on this fact all the time, about how it seems that walking has nothing to do with strength, and it's more about readiness. I doubt that my son isn't walking because he's not strong enough, nor is it because he doesn't have a good environment, save for the fact that I'm not pushing him to walk (i.e. I'm enjoying the calm before the storm.)
Readiness for walking is definitely dependent on a number of factors, but I'm willing to bet that genetics is a big part of it too. Apparently I didn't really walk until I was 2 years old.
Babies and walking is a very interesting phenomenon that really lets you see into the working of genetics and environment.
From Merriam-Webster: "they has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular they mirrors the development of the singular you from the plural you... and that regardless of what detractors say, nearly everyone uses the singular they in casual conversation and often in formal writing."[1]
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...
IE: "is Pat coming to lunch with us?"
"Yes, they're coming in a moment."
Leaves me wondering if 'they' is perhaps referring to some implied group of which Pat is a part, like a SO or team at work (meaning we might need to take two vehicles and get another table at the restaurant) or just Pat.
I wish there was an acceptable non-gendered singular pronoun we could all agree on.
So the unambiguous (but weird sounding to those unused to it) version:
"Is Pat coming to lunch with us?"
"Yes, they is coming in a moment."
Perhaps one of:
"Yes, they will be here soon / joining us shortly / along later."
would be better.
None of these clarify singular vs plural of 'they.' All of them work whether 'they' refers to one person or multiple.
Singular they are? they is? Both seem pretty offputting to me.
Also if you're in the US, the use of singular "they" can be intertwined with certain politics and legislature, but that only matters for legal documents and government publications.
For casual speech, though, singular "they" is certainly correct and widely used.
* An exaggeration, of course. We got a few hours of sleep in a row as recently as last week.
I think some people interpret this as babies just becoming strong enough to do things they innately know how to do, but with my 4 children, it's always struck me as learning through trial and error, like the neurons and muscle fibers gradually form in a way that is something like the average of all the ways they tried to achieve a goal. That's just my perception, of course. But then I also agree that babies seem to come pre-programmed with a desire to attempt a whole bunch of things. Like I said, I think it's very difficult to separate these things out!
You could imagine a hierarchy that goes something like this:
- Reward neurons that successfully transmit signal from brain to muscle fiber
- Reward neuron groups that get co-located muscle fibers to fire together.
Now the next levels can operate on muscles as a group (calf/hamstring) rather than individual fibers:
- Reward neuron groups that sense balance
- Reward neuron groups that move a muscle in response to balance output.
Believing that genes have to operate at the level of individual neuron connections to shape behavior just doesn't make sense.
A bodily and neurological structure capable of walking must emerge in the horse's phenotype as a result of development in the horse's environment guided by its genes.
It sounds like the same thing, but it's not. Genes do not encode anything explicit except RNA and protein sequences. Everything else is emergent. They are not a blueprint. Birth a horse on the Moon and I'm not sure if it would be able to walk as quickly.
How much of that comes from seeing everyone around them walking?
It seems hard to argue that horses don't have a genetic component, but I don't think Occam's Razor applies as well for humans when it takes 1-2 years of observing the world in order to start walking unsteadily.
So I'm going by what is generally well known and accepted about visually impaired development (the time line and stages). Here are a couple of references below which might be helpful. Infant development is a pretty noisy process though which makes definitive statements difficult.
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dmcn.12860 [1] https://www.tsbvi.edu/curriculum-a-publications/1053-early-d...
To me, the clearest argument against this position is that horses can walk within a couple hours after being born. That doesn't seem like anywhere near enough trials to learn how to walk from first principles. The method to walk must be encoded in the horse's DNA.
Humans can't walk at birth, obviously. But Occam's Razor suggests that if the ability to walk can be encoded within a horse's DNA, it can also be encoded within a human's DNA.
Anecdotally, when I watch a baby learn to walk, it doesn't really seem like they are trying a zillion things and picking the one that works. It seems much more like their instincts are telling them to move a certain way, and once they grow strong enough, it succeeds and they are walking.