Re:Quadrillion-parameter transformers and how to train them
by alembic_fumes on Sunday November 08, 2026 @10:18AM
(#50414012)
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."
Re:Quadrillion-parameter transformers and how to train them
by wernam on Sunday November 08, 2026 @11:04AM
(#50414402)
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 in our DNA.
Re:Quadrillion-parameter transformers and how to train them
by AndrewDucker on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:25AM
(#50423674)
Yes, but there is clearly DNA scaffolding needed. The closest related animals to us cannot speak English, no mater how much training they are given.
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.