[gus_massa]

It's inheritable so it's more than a liver transplant.

I agree that DNA in mitochondria is much smaller than DNA in the nucleus. But in each person there are many mitochondria and they nay have slightly different DNA. And the DNA in mitochondria has a different variation than the DNA in the nucleus. So it's difficult to weight both.

Can we say 2.1 parents? A long time ago I read that most binary classifications are not completely binaries, it's just that 2 options cover almost all the cases. (Are virus alive?) I guess integer classifications also have hidden corner cases.

I also remember from a biology book that in a lab they mixed two blastula(?) of small lizards(?) or something like that. They had different skin color and the baby had patches of both colors. Does that count as 2 or 4 parents?

[tialaramex]

Certainly Mother Nature is not obliged to have simple easy to understand binaries where it would be convenient for us and so if we think we see such a binary we should keep in mind that maybe we hallucinated it into existence because it was convenient and that's all.

[opello]

I agree wholeheartedly. This strikes me as the way science works. Theories are useful because of their predictive value. If we think of biological sciences as different than physical or mathematical, it seems we have set ourselves up for failure. Yet that seems like exactly the kind of perspective missing and trying to be pointed out by the earlier comment's attempted splitting of the difference to "2.1 parents" to me.

[SJC_Hacker]

It’s a binary that works in 99% of cases. Doesnt seem like a hallucination to me