4 ms·

Identical twins, sharing the same DNA, look rather identical but not truly identical. Even when raised apart. I am skeptical of reconstructing faces from DNA

Identical twins, sharing the same DNA, look rather identical but not truly identical. Even when raised apart. I am skeptical of reconstructing faces from DNA using current knowledge and technology though. It seems theoretically feasible, but I wouldn't bet on this company being able to do it well.

ponker 6y ago
Developmental noise will be dominated by fetal development, not life after birth.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Which probably isn’t directly encoded into your dna, but rather epigenetic markers which may or may not be easily collected and quantified.
- liability 6y ago
  Maybe so, but fathers can look a great deal like sons and they only share something like half their code and don't share a womb at all. Identical twins share their code and look even more alike. I think later life matters like obesity probably make a bigger difference. Being fat or gaunt can dramatically change somebody's appearance. Grooming habits as well. Spies deliberately adopting disguises can make themselves look quite different by modifying these sort of things.
- asdff 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Fitness, sun, sleep, alcohol, drugs, diet, smoking, and stress are some examples of environmental factors that can influence your appearance including your face after birth.
bpodgursky 6y ago
If you were looking for a suspect and the only identification you had was a photo of their identical twin, would you use it? Obviously it's not a perfect match, but it's going to be wildly better than a sketch artist's attempt at a usable drawing.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  This assumes that the company is able to produce an accurate image that's on par with a photo of the subject's twin, when it's entirely possible that the images the company produces are no more accurate than noise.
- liability 6y ago
  Oh for sure, I fully agree. However, is this company's tech actually that good? It would be interesting to see how well it does with the DNA of real twins; how close can they actually get compared to two people with the same DNA? Could it make a face that really looks like their triplet? Unfortunately the article doesn't have any comparison images of any sort, so it's hard to evaluate. But the skeptical/cynical part of me suspects the article would contain such comparisons if it worked well.
  - zwily 6y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457194 for examples.
    - liability 6y ago
      Huh. Not great... but credit where credit is due, some of those are much better than I expected.
krick 6y ago
Yeah. In fact, the least I would expect from this article are some samples of "real/reconstructed", but as normally expected from journalists it is just a lot of words talking about some "controversy" and non-descriptive anecdotal poorly written detective stories instead of something of value.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  It's pretty much a rule that if you're writing an article about something visual, you don't include any images.

ponker 6y ago

Developmental noise will be dominated by fetal development, not life after birth.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Which probably isn’t directly encoded into your dna, but rather epigenetic markers which may or may not be easily collected and quantified.
liability 6y ago
Maybe so, but fathers can look a great deal like sons and they only share something like half their code and don't share a womb at all. Identical twins share their code and look even more alike. I think later life matters like obesity probably make a bigger difference. Being fat or gaunt can dramatically change somebody's appearance. Grooming habits as well. Spies deliberately adopting disguises can make themselves look quite different by modifying these sort of things.
asdff 6y ago
Not necessarily. Fitness, sun, sleep, alcohol, drugs, diet, smoking, and stress are some examples of environmental factors that can influence your appearance including your face after birth.

bpodgursky 6y ago

If you were looking for a suspect and the only identification you had was a photo of their identical twin, would you use it? Obviously it's not a perfect match, but it's going to be wildly better than a sketch artist's attempt at a usable drawing.

heavyset_go 6y ago
This assumes that the company is able to produce an accurate image that's on par with a photo of the subject's twin, when it's entirely possible that the images the company produces are no more accurate than noise.
liability 6y ago
Oh for sure, I fully agree. However, is this company's tech actually that good? It would be interesting to see how well it does with the DNA of real twins; how close can they actually get compared to two people with the same DNA? Could it make a face that really looks like their triplet? Unfortunately the article doesn't have any comparison images of any sort, so it's hard to evaluate. But the skeptical/cynical part of me suspects the article would contain such comparisons if it worked well.
- zwily 6y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457194 for examples.
  - liability 6y ago
    Huh. Not great... but credit where credit is due, some of those are much better than I expected.

krick 6y ago

Yeah. In fact, the least I would expect from this article are some samples of "real/reconstructed", but as normally expected from journalists it is just a lot of words talking about some "controversy" and non-descriptive anecdotal poorly written detective stories instead of something of value.

IshKebab 6y ago
It's pretty much a rule that if you're writing an article about something visual, you don't include any images.