What DNA are you loyal to? Mitochondrial genes? DNA inserted by a retrovirus in your father’s sperm? Introns? Genes that you inherited with loss-of-function mutations so that they don’t do anything? What if tonight, while you sleep, someone were to inject you with nanomachines that replaced your genome in each cell with a different one? Would you try to advance the interests of the new DNA or the old?
Tim,
What DNA are you loyal to? Mitochondrial genes? DNA inserted by a retrovirus in your father’s sperm? Introns? Genes that you inherited with loss-of-function mutations so that they don’t do anything? What if tonight, while you sleep, someone were to inject you with nanomachines that replaced your genome in each cell with a different one? Would you try to advance the interests of the new DNA or the old?