But even if you did get to pick your parents there would still be a huge element of luck in that your genome is a random combination of those of your parents.

You (the child) do not get to pick the outcome. Hence it is a lottery.

Who is the "you"? Nothing more than the result of this process... unless you believe people exist metaphysically before having a corporeal presence? In which case you essentially believe in a soul, which is not a very secular belief at all.

Nothing about the parent's comment assumed a metaphysical identity.

It's unambiguously true that no one chose their genes or their childhood environment. That statement doesn't require a metaphysical chooser who might have made the choice.

No one chooses their genes because to a very important extent you are your genes. There is no meaningful "you" that could have done the choosing.

The fact that it could not be otherwise doesn't make it incoherent to say that you didn't choose your genes.

What's the underlying point you're trying to get across? It doesn't seem like a productive thing to go on about.

That is not true. People may share genes but may not share identity

As I said, to a very important extent it is true. Identical twins have a lot more in common than any other two people, even close siblings, often even when they are separated at birth. This gets us into semantics about what "identity" is, but that is indeed the issue that I'm trying to raise anyway.

> Modern twin studies have concluded that almost all traits are partly influenced by genetic differences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study

The child is the outcome, not the winner/loser. The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery. Closest participant to that would be the parents who are getting a "lottery" child... as they (currently) have no deliberate control over the genetic expressions.

> The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery.

You seem to be missing the point that we are stuck with who we are. Our mental and physical faculties are handed down to us. We receive them, even though they define us. We experience ourselves.

We don't "receive them", we are them. Unless you, as another poster pointed out, believe in the Guf or similar.

Eh, we completely receive them and as technology improves our makers will have increased options on which ones we receive, especially if we're wealthy.

[Eugenics has entered the chat]

So you think souls exist before people are born and so can be lucky. Got it.

Man, I must have missed the spot on the form I could fill in to choose my parents pre-birth.

But seriously though, something that happens randomly to you (you don't get to choose your parents) seems similar-enough to a lottery to be used as a metaphor.

You also missed the fact that there was no you pre-birth. You can't be lucky about who you are... as there is no one to be lucky about that. You are who you are.

The lottery part is the fact that you have no way to influence what you got, not that it is uniformly random.

To begin with, genes that I inherit are a product of chromosomal crossingover, which is a random process. What, do you think that a child is a deterministic average of his/hers parents' diploid genomes? How do you explain the existence of non-identical siblings then?

You have no understanding of basic genetics, why do you think you're in a position to speculate on silliness of metaphors for genetic outcomes?