[Dragaera] Boing!

[Jon Lincicum]

Philip Hart wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Sep 2006 Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote:
>
>   
>> Is a human being with 3 out of 8 Great-Grandparents of African-American
>> heritage not of African-American descent?
>>     
>
> One drop, racism, blah.
>
> But I doubt 3/8th of Aliera's genes are dragon (ignoring the whole
> question of how non-Earth-biology genes function in an Earth-biology
> cell).
>   
Yes, but that was kind of my point. How much of a percentage is enough 
to matter? And is that an arbitrary number, or does it have an objective 
rationale behind it?
>> I'm just trying to understand your reasoning here.
>>     
>
> Maybe the issue is "descended" - it has an echo of "descent with
> modification".  Adding a few genes that barely change a creature's
> phenotype is modification, not descent.  We've got some fly
> wing-making genes iirc, but ..
If so, we have those genes because we share common ancestors with flies. 
And we are their descendants. (The common ancestor, that is, not the 
flies'.)

Jon