shokwave comments on Rationality Quotes December 2011 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 December 2011 06:01AM

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Comment author: Grognor 01 December 2011 04:11:53AM 31 points [-]

What is more important in determining an (individual) organism's phenotype, its genes or its environment? Any developmental biologist knows that this is a meaningless question. Every aspect of an organism's phenotype is the joint product of its genes and its environment. To ask which is more important is like asking, Which is more important in determining the area of a rectangle, the length or the width? Which is more important in causing a car to run, the engine or the gasoline? Genes allow the environment to influence the development of phenotypes.

-Tooby and Cosmides, emphasis theirs. It occurred to someone on the Less Wrong IRC channel how good this is an isomorphism of, "You have asked a wrong question."

Comment author: shokwave 01 December 2011 04:19:40AM *  13 points [-]

chelz: shminux: are you more your dna or are you more your personality?

Grognor: chelz: is the area of a rectangle more the length, or the width?

shokwave: grognor: wow. mind if I borrow that?

shokwave: because that is just about the best 'you have asked a wrong question' statement i've ever seen

The conversation in question.

Comment author: CronoDAS 01 December 2011 04:49:01AM *  20 points [-]

Grognor: chelz: is the area of a rectangle more the length, or the width?

The width. Changing the width makes a bigger change in the area than changing the length does. (By convention, the width is defined as the smaller of the two dimensions of the rectangle.)

Comment author: Benquo 02 December 2011 02:48:14PM 5 points [-]

Only if you're augmenting/cutting by a fixed length.

If you're using a proportion (e.g. cut either the length or the width in half) then they're equivalent.

Comment author: wedrifid 01 December 2011 05:24:13AM 12 points [-]

You have resolved the question to the nearest available sane question but that isn't the answer to the question itself and does not make the question valid.

Come to think of it I am somewhat dubious with answering "is the area of this 1km by 1m rectangle more the 1km or the 1m?" with "the 1m". That just doesn't seem right.

Comment author: CronoDAS 01 December 2011 06:02:07AM 4 points [-]

Hmmm...

"is the area of this 1km by 1m rectangle more the 1km or the 1m?"

"No."

Is that better?

Comment author: Kytael 02 December 2011 08:56:08PM 4 points [-]

I could also meaninglessly answer that the length is more important, as it will always be equal or bigger.

the key to finding a wrong question is finding that the answer doesn't help the person who asked it.

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