It's Plato's Ideal You, but with a veneer of science (that most of us aren't educated enough in to understand; I include myself in this, I only know the basics of how DNA works)
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Replying to @sophienotemily @vashti and
There's a lot to be said here about how the homunculus theory of human reproduction - the medieval belief that sperm actually contained tiny little miniature humans that just needed to be planted in a womb and grow - never really any away That's still the popular idea of DNA
4 replies 5 retweets 66 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
People really think that if you could flawlessly "read your DNA" it would be like a little photograph of you That the things we actually observe about human beings - what you look like, your personality, your IQ - are "written into your genes" in some objective way
2 replies 11 retweets 74 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
And it's at best an oversimplification and at worst an active and damaging lie The whole thing where pop culture "clones" are exact xerox duplicates When in real life identical twins often don't even really look the same
1 reply 8 retweets 69 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
Like, it's not uncommon to meet twins where one of them is taller than the other, or heavier, or has different hair or skin, especially as they get older (and are no longer living in the same house with the same environment)
4 replies 3 retweets 63 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
And, like, both twins "really" look like that, they're both the way they "really" should be, there's not some Ideal Human "encoded into their genes" that's the way they "should" look under "ideal conditions" That's not a real concept, that's Nazi shit
4 replies 7 retweets 75 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
I find it interesting to note who is talking about 'ideal' humans and what appearance people 'should' have. The relevant term is 'would' have... Moreover, I don't recall saying TW 'shouldn't' transition, merely that underlying biology remains unchanged.
6 replies 0 retweets 27 likes -
Replying to @unwitod @sophienotemily and
"Would" have when? There are millions of different things you can make using one set of DNA, many of them not meaningfully human (look at the HeLa cells and other tumorous growths)
3 replies 1 retweet 24 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @unwitod and
Come on, you know how the word "would" works I look different than the person my DNA "would" have encoded? "Would" under what circumstances? "Natural" circumstances? "Normal" circumstances? "Ideal" circumstances? You can't say it without invoking a value judgment
3 replies 4 retweets 26 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @sophienotemily and
Of course you can use the word without a value judgement. "The patient 'would' have been born with two arms, but a developmental disorder in utero caused a malformation and they only have one" That you can't use words properly says something about you, not me.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
Counterfactuals are, in fact, one of the most annoying things that don't actually make coherent internal sense that people invoke
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Replying to @arthur_affect @unwitod and
Your statement has an invisible value judgment right in it "If this person didn't have this one defective gene, they'd have two arms" Actually no if I took that gene out completely, the whole DNA sequence would fail to resolve and no embryo would grow at all
1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @unwitod and
Oh, but you didn't mean take the gene out completely did you When you said "If they didn't have that defective gene", you meant "If that gene were *replaced*" Replaced with what? With the... "normal" version of that gene
1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes - Show replies
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