Can DNA analysis accurately predict a person’s personality, abilities, and future?

DNA contains important information that shapes our bodies and personalities, and advances in technology have made it possible to analyze it. However, evaluating people based on their DNA can lead to ethical issues and uncertainty, and is better used for educational purposes.

 

We are made from DNA. Cells read the information in DNA and make proteins accordingly. The proteins made by cells combine to form parts of cells, hormones, neurotransmitters, and other parts of our bodies. The cells in your arm and leg muscles, nerves, and bones make up your physical characteristics, such as height and weight, while secreted substances like hormones contribute to your personality. In short, the information in your DNA contains most of the information about your body and mind.
As technology has improved, we’ve been able to analyze its vast content to some extent. DNA is made up of four bases, A, G, C, and T, which form a cipher, and your DNA is made up of 3 billion bases. Three billion is a lot of data to organize by hand, but in modern times, supercomputers have made it possible to process human DNA. The Human Genome Project, which ran from 1990 to 2003, succeeded in sequencing 99% of all human genes with 99.99% accuracy, and is now actively researching how to interpret the data using the sequences.
Now that the future of identifying a person’s personality and characteristics through DNA is in sight, ethical, legal, and social issues are beginning to emerge. One such issue is that various organizations may act as if an event never happened. For example, if a person’s DNA is analyzed and it is found that they have a criminal personality, they can be prepared to be followed by the police, or they can be rejected from a youth basketball team because they have a gene for short stature. The first person’s freedom was taken away, and the second person was picked regardless of his or her skills. From a defense standpoint, it’s easy to see how this would be unfair.
However, I’m going to argue that there is no benefit to evaluating people based on their genes, ethical issues aside. The reasons for this are as follows
First, the commonalities that result from analyzing DNA are probabilistic and therefore absolutely unreliable. Psychological theories have analyzed the factors that determine a person’s personality and found that they are 50% congenital, 40-50% acquired from peers, and 0-10% from parents. In addition, a person who is genetically predisposed to commit a crime may not commit a crime if he or she is not motivated to commit a crime or lives in a clean family, and conversely, a person who is poor in a crime-ridden neighborhood may be genetically predisposed to commit a crime even if he or she is clean. The same applies to many traits, such as height, weight, personality, and disease. We can’t tell who a person will be in the future by analyzing their genes, only their tendencies.
A classic example of this is identical twins who are separated at birth. Identical twins are twins that were created by splitting a fertilized egg in two during fertilization, and both twins have the same genetic makeup. Identical twins who have been raised in different environments do not grow up identical, and in fact, there are very few cases where they turn out exactly the same.
Second, it’s not practical to identify all of the genes that contribute to a person’s performance. Here”s a list of traits that might be involved in a basketball player”s performance. Physically, there”s height, jumping ability, muscular endurance, and judgment. Psychologically, there”s the competitive spirit, focus, and persistence that allows them to practice a lot. But these are the traits that seem to have a clear cause-and-effect relationship, and even seemingly unrelated genetic factors, such as dexterity, can influence outcomes through multiple links. Furthermore, each trait can be broken down into smaller domains. In the case of judgment, different situations will measure differently. It’s not practical to synthesize all this genetic information and translate it into a score to evaluate a person.
The following arguments can be made against the above arguments. Genetic information can also be a specification, and it can be part of the evaluation. Consider a hypothetical interview situation: we are interviewing to become a speed racer. The interviewer has all of our genetic information and knows what we’re good at. Despite the ethical issues with judging people based on their genetics, the interviewer may want to include it in the score because they want to make an accurate assessment with as much data as possible. They may also want to assess factors that cannot be scored using simple measures such as potential for advancement.
This argument can be made, provided that genes are only used for evaluation. Here I propose to use genes for educational purposes. Unlike evaluation, genes can be used for educational purposes without risk because there is not much damage caused by incorrectly analyzed genetic information. In addition, if genetic information is used for education, the performance will be similar to the analysis result of genetic information. This means that the correlation between skill and capital will decrease, and everyone will start on an equal footing.
First, the results of genetic analysis are based on skill. Because genetic information is so vast, the only way to link it to skill is to analyze it using data mining techniques. Only by collecting the genetic information and corresponding skills of a large number of people into a data set and analyzing it using various statistical methods can we find a link between genetic information and skills. If genetic information is used for educational purposes, the results of the analysis will already be shown as skills, and as a result, the skills will include the results of the genetic information analysis.
Second, the amount of time and resources needed to discover talent would be reduced or eliminated, putting everyone on the same starting line. It’s a given that talented people will excel in their field. Star Wars director George Lucas had this to say about talent “There’s no one in this world who doesn’t have talent. The question is, can you act on it until you find it?” In the absence of genetic information, finding talent becomes a life goal. However, if talent can be identified through genetic analysis, Lucas’s words could shorten the path to finding talent.
One of the most important reasons why people go to piano schools, drawing schools, English schools, and many others at a young age is to find out what they excel at, and to develop their skills so that they can lead a successful life. Finding out what you can excel at with a single genetic test is a time and resource saver. Another way of saying this is that people without money will be able to find their talents quickly.
It’s worth considering the counterargument of whether using genetic information for educational purposes is ethically problematic, and my argument is that it doesn’t create more ethical problems than it did before. First, the evaluation process is the same in both cases. Also, with the current number of academies, there is enough space to accommodate the entire population of talented and hobbyists, so there are no cases of talent not being utilized because there are no spots available. Therefore, it can be seen that using genetics as an excuse for not accepting students in order to improve the performance of a cram school will actually reduce the number of customers and decrease the profit of the cram school.
Using genetic information to evaluate people can cause ethical, legal, and social problems, and the evaluation itself is a very unreliable and inaccurate method, like looking at a person through tinted glasses. Therefore, using genetic information to evaluate people is a very bad idea with only downsides. It is better to use genetic information for educational purposes to find talents. Discovering talents is so difficult and valuable that it is now a goal in life. If you can find it with a single genetic test, you’ve already achieved your goal, and you can live a better, happier life with your talent.