But I think this obsession with DNA is 100% philosophical - the idea that there's a blueprint somewhere for what you "should" be and that deviating from it is bad
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Replying to @sophienotemily @arthur_affect and
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)
3 replies 1 retweet 55 likes -
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
What the absolute fuck are you talking about?
1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes -
Replying to @Shatterface @sophienotemily and
There is no single real person "encoded" by a set of DNA There are an infinite possible number of people (and non-people, like tumors) that DNA could "encode"
2 replies 2 retweets 16 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Shatterface and
Part of the problem is the necessity of teaching by analogy, and the fact that we very frequently choose bad analogies to teach. I suspect that in grade school every time DNA was mentioned in one of my classes it was called a blueprint where recipe would be inaccurate but better
1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
If more people knew coding it would provide a much better analogy DNA "code" is only code, it isn't assets
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