Thread: cloning

If I clone myself, and all of my memories go to that clone, so essentially I am two people exactly the same. What would come of this?

also this would mean you would indeed be invincible. and would also solve teleportation problems, travelling faster than the speed of light etc, so long as you could transfer the relevant data, to another point.

Originally Posted by rjc79

If I clone myself, and all of my memories go to that clone, so essentially I am two people exactly the same. What would come of this?

also this would mean you would indeed be invincible. and would also solve teleportation problems, travelling faster than the speed of light etc, so long as you could transfer the relevant data, to another point.

For what it's worth cloning does not, except in sci-fi, involve memory transfer. (To assume it does would be to fall into a version of the Lamarckian fallacy.)

If you wish to explore sci-fi notions, we have a great pseudo-science forum below where you will find lots of others to chat with.

Originally Posted by rjc79

also this would mean you would indeed be invincible. and would also solve teleportation problems, travelling faster than the speed of light etc, so long as you could transfer the relevant data, to another point.

i don't see how that would follow from cloning - you seem to have a cartoon understanding of what cloning is, which is simply to grow a new animal from a body cell rather than a fertilised egg

however, it is still a totally new animal, a bit like identical twins are still totally different entities

how you go from cloning (even if of the cartoon variety) to teleportation and FTL travel is beyond me

I'll bet his clone knows how.

ok, I'm no scientist, obviously but I think my point was that if you "replicated" yourself memories and all.

ok, in that case your replication is not the same as what we currently understand as cloning

The talking tiger is more plausible.

rjc, at this point in time we have absolutely no way of transferring memories from one brain to another, and I think it will be a very long time before we get anywhere close to being able to do that.

You also have to understand that a clone, being only a copy of your genes, will probably still be very different from you. The environment plays a huge role in much of our development, and unless the environment conditions you experienced in your life are replicated EXACTLY in the process of creating your clone, it will probably be different from you in a number of ways. And especially considering the huge role the environment plays in brain development, this in itself is a large barrier to transferring memories from one brain to another.

Originally Posted by rjc79

ok, I'm no scientist, obviously but I think my point was that if you "replicated" yourself memories and all.

We have no real idea how this could possibly be achieved, so how can we imagine the implications of such a process?

Even if millions of Korean women practically are, those questions are philosophical.

Alteration of your physical appearance isn't cloning, even if all the participants are aiming for the same standard of beauty.

"practically"


I wonder when cosmetic gene therapy enters? I assume for structural changes surgery is still more effective..?

Considering how sensitive developing bone is to physical stresses, gene therapy may not be sufficient by itself to achieve the complete look some people may want. Some physical surgery may still be required.

I'm kinda hazy here: If we can transplant fat, move meat, or tuck a pile of skin, and it stays that way, why don't our natural genes shift it back? How could artificially promoted genes be any more effective in sculpting a face than our natural genes are in repairing the misconfiguration of cosmetic surgery?

Maybe gene treatments will only work for stuff like skin texture and hair colour.

I'd pay anything for the physique of Hobbes!

Many genes involved in development are only expressed at very specific times during growth; correct development requires a specific sequence of action of many intricately interacting processes. Physical alteration of the finished structures will not necessarily trigger those processes to begin again except perhaps in the sense of healing injuries.

Some aspects of our bodies are also intended to be plastic, to change during our lifetime as according to our needs and constraints; bone mass, muscle mass, fat storage, etc.

Hmm.....I was just thinking........in a way to explain myself more......

Its the future, we can do so much more!!!

I have myself replicated atom by atom, to the last one. I then Kill myself, shouldn't I then still realize I am alive, so thus shouldn't I at the time of replication, be knowledgable of life from the point of two people?

the beauty of the future is that you can fill it with any kind of predictions, some of them may even turn out to be true

however, predictions from the past compared with what actually happened highlight one big flaw in predicting the future : it's extraordinarily hard to predict the breakthroughs that will shake up society

Originally Posted by rjc79

Hmm.....I was just thinking........in a way to explain myself more......

Its the future, we can do so much more!!!

I have myself replicated atom by atom, to the last one. I then Kill myself, shouldn't I then still realize I am alive, so thus shouldn't I at the time of replication, be knowledgable of life from the point of two people?

Here you're definitely in philosophy territory (apologies for calling it pseudoscience earlier) and this discussion is probably best off on that forum.

Many philosophers have already considered the sort of scenario you speak of, though usually in the context of a thought experiement regarding teleportation:

If, in order to teleport myself from here (say Brisbane) to there (say Vladivostok) I step into a machine in Brisbane that 'reads' the quantum state of every single particle in my body and then transfers the information regarding those states to a machine in Vladivostok, then the teleportation mechanism could be said to destroy the Brisbane body, and create a body in Vladivostok.

Since the quantum states of all the particles involved are dientical from one to the other (currently considered a physical impossibility thanks to Uncertainty) then the person emerging in Vladivostok would still be me. The memories would be the same and so on.

The interesting philosophical niggle occurs when (as you have pointed out) the Brisbane machine fails to destroy the body that enters it. Suddenly there are two Sunshine Warriors. But which one of them is married to my wife?

The Seventh Day (??) and Arnie film, explores some of these issues (probably based on a Philip K Dick story!). Daniel Dennett, in Kinds of Minds, also plays an interesting thought experiment on this one.

But these are not scientific questions and are limited to the realms of philosophy. Should there be the prospect of their ever becoming physical reality, then they will also enter the world of jurisprudence. But they are not matters for scientists to adjudicate upon.

Happy to discuss this further on the philosophy forum...

Originally Posted by sunshinewarrior

Originally Posted by rjc79

Hmm.....I was just thinking........in a way to explain myself more......

Its the future, we can do so much more!!!

I have myself replicated atom by atom, to the last one. I then Kill myself, shouldn't I then still realize I am alive, so thus shouldn't I at the time of replication, be knowledgable of life from the point of two people?

Here you're definitely in philosophy territory (apologies for calling it pseudoscience earlier) and this discussion is probably best off on that forum.

Many philosophers have already considered the sort of scenario you speak of, though usually in the context of a thought experiement regarding teleportation:

If, in order to teleport myself from here (say Brisbane) to there (say Vladivostok) I step into a machine in Brisbane that 'reads' the quantum state of every single particle in my body and then transfers the information regarding those states to a machine in Vladivostok, then the teleportation mechanism could be said to destroy the Brisbane body, and create a body in Vladivostok.

Since the quantum states of all the particles involved are dientical from one to the other (currently considered a physical impossibility thanks to Uncertainty) then the person emerging in Vladivostok would still be me. The memories would be the same and so on.

The interesting philosophical niggle occurs when (as you have pointed out) the Brisbane machine fails to destroy the body that enters it. Suddenly there are two Sunshine Warriors. But which one of them is married to my wife?

The Seventh Day (??) and Arnie film, explores some of these issues (probably based on a Philip K Dick story!). Daniel Dennett, in Kinds of Minds, also plays an interesting thought experiment on this one.

But these are not scientific questions and are limited to the realms of philosophy. Should there be the prospect of their ever becoming physical reality, then they will also enter the world of jurisprudence. But they are not matters for scientists to adjudicate upon.

Happy to discuss this further on the philosophy forum...

Cool I'm glad you understand what I was trying to explain. Can we move the thread?

Thread moved to Philosophy per request of the OP.
Paralith

Originally Posted by paralith

Thread moved to Philosophy per request of the OP.
Paralith

Ta. Rjc, the field is yours...

Philosophy is the precursor to sciences... for one to create, one must first envision... then materialize.


ohh, with regards to your initial query, the science of teleportation is real - some years back, scientists successfully transported a photon from one location to another. That is a step in the right direction... if you want to be facetious, you can argue in computer terms that transporting data from it's orginal form to a series of scrambled information while in transit till it's reaches it's final destination for re-organization back to it's original form based on a unique set of rules is exactly what science will be doing with molecules in some years to come. FM transmission, wireless surfing... all grandfathers to tommorrow's 'beam me up, scottie!'

Finding the right transfer medium, perhaps?!