Human cloning. Agree, disagree?

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Dammit you vixen i was using those

[macrorufus]

Probably entirely in appropriate of me, but the classic stereotype of asians is that we all look the same to westerners.....

so how would you know if we were cloning ourselves... EVEN AS WE SPEAK.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Eh we hairy folk aren't quite that dumb, that stereotype's been dead since before i was born. Plus if we suspected ya'll did have that tech we'd probly be like queuing up to license it from you.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Intellectual Property laws are, after all, like, the very foundation stones of Western society, or something. haha

[Brome Teks]

Intellectual Property laws are, after all, like, the very foundation stones of Western society, or something. haha

Eh, I think free speech and free dissemination of information are more important ones.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Try telling that to a copyright lawyer.

[SliceOfDog]

Hah, well it's nice to see this debate getting a revival (three cheers for new members!) and I thought I'd chip in. Unfortunately not on the direct topic itself, because my opinion hasn't changed since my last posts, but in response to a couple of the future societies posed by Borg and Kris.

First of all, Borg, I would say we have a population problem, yes. We have the potential not to have one, yes. However, the resources aren't being distributed as they should be, so we get to the perplexing point where the average American throws away (I think) about 40% of the food they buy, while millions of people are starving, and vegetarianism and veganism are still considered abnormal while vast swathes of rainforest are being destroyed to make way for fields to feed animals which are then killed and packaged and taken to another country to feed the population that already has more than enough food.
So yeah. We have more mouths than we can feed with our current system. We can change, but that takes effort and money, and also will require the US to accept one or two 'socialist' values, which ain't happening any time soon.

As for living in giant cities, I'm siding with Borg on this one: not a good idea. The very dynamic of living in a city changes how people act, and you will have heard before that some people like city life and others don't. Well as someone who doesn't I can safely say that if I had to live in Inner City London for a year or more I would most likely go insane. I need greenery, I need life and somewhere away from the crush of crowds, the noise of cars and general city buildings (There's a lot of architecture I find appealing, but not the normal Western city look).
However, I would also argue against moving our interaction to being primarily online. I think that there's a certain difference in how you treat people online compared to how you treat people in real life, and in fact some scientists have suggested (don't know where the study is, nor how factual it was, merely mentioning it for the possibility) that certain hormones are released through physical human contact (and I imagine contact with other intelligent lifeforms, like pets) that are not released with online contact. That may be bs though.
When the internet becomes completely portable, I imagine through some contact-lens style device, then that might be different, because you could interact with the people near you and get exercise while still being in contact with people far away. However, I'm very concerned about where that might take us, such as schooling. When anyone can access the internet remotely, which I'm certain will happen eventually, why will children feel the need to learn maths, or history? They could just look up the answers.
I also think time-zones are a problem. I know for a fact that interacting with people from the US and Canada negatively affects my sleeping patterns, because when they're all online, it's usually about 1 in the morning over here. Contact like that is good because it expands people's horizons and social abilities and awareness, but it should not be primary contact. I feel that if at all possible, your closest friends or family should at least be in the same timezone as you, preferably within travelling distance (You mention walking, but don't forget cycling).
And as for the food-growth thing, I would refer you back to this thread, although your underground housing wouldn't be too bad either, as long as natural light would still be available. It's important to have proper sunlight, because for most people it positively affects their mood and desire to be active or constructive.

[macrorufus]

I have a question actually on the topic. If people are cloned would this mean the clone would be more prone to being similar to the original?

[Wolfgang of Borg]

> If people are cloned would this mean the clone would be more prone to being similar to the original?

Clones are literally just identical twins, so yes (unless it's more of an evil doppelgänger scenario, in which case no, and also run!).

Slice:
Ok i was being narrow minded in my understanding of the phrase "population problem", which conjures up (for me) unhelpful associations with Paul Ehrlich's disasterism (the idea that the world will end some day is very bad imho, obviously yes technically it's true but we must never let ourselves start thinking like that. We *have* to assume that life will go on or else why not just auto-euthanize right now?). In my head population isn't the problem, our lazy short-sighted approach to problem solving is.

> which ain't happening any time soon.

In 1985 no one was expecting the U.S.S.R. be gone within a few years.

(Also, i think veganism *should* be considered abnormal (possibly classed as an eating disorder like anorexia or something) it is *extremely* unnatural and unhealthy, hard to remain well nourished on such diets. I read a tragic news story about some New York hippies who gave their child brain damage by forcing it to eat vegan
edit: NB i am in favour of mostly vegitarianism.
Also that veganism is emphatically not simply "stricter vegitarianism": ethically it may be a small step from "eat no animal muscle tissue" to "eat no animal-derived protein", but nutritionally the implications of the two propositions are miles apart.
Also also priority #1 when DIY garage genomics labs take off is creating a healthy-for-everyone (diabetic, coeliac, lactose intolerant, nut or chicken allergic, . . . ) easily cultivated fast growing foodstuff that is nutritionally complete and tastes (if anything) like bacon and / or chocolate. We should offer something like the Longitude Prize for it's invention.
Then we get started on longevity and drug glands.)

Hah wow i actually tried living in London for a time, had exactly that experience. Gradually it became oppressive that there were *so many* ppl everywhere (but then i grew up in the Fens where it's very empty, probably someone born in a city thinks it normal and would find the countryside lonely and bleak).

However, I would also argue against moving our interaction to being primarily online. I think that there's a certain difference in how you treat people online compared to how you treat people in real life, and in fact some scientists have suggested (don't know where the study is, nor how factual it was, merely mentioning it for the possibility) that certain hormones are released through physical human contact (and I imagine contact with other intelligent lifeforms, like pets) that are not released with online contact. That may be bs though.

Good point, i often get the sense that we think of people we talk to via computer as more like fictional characters than actual people, because we're unable to smell them. Which is why online furrydom makes sense to me, it's more obvious what the nature of the social relationship is.
Pheromone smell-o-vision? (But imagine if advertisers got ahold of that tech)

Honestly my idea was more to eliminate office-working commuters than normal human interaction. There's no reason the vast majority of non-manual-labourers couldn't work from home.

The important thing to remember about the web is that at its heart it's tool to support the formation of geographically distributed subcultures (originally the target subculture was high-energy particle physicists, then geeks in general and porn fans, now there's a subculture or special-interest site for almost everything). I would say enabling unprecedentedly large scale amateur collaborative projects (like wikipedia or GNU/linux) is well worth surrendering the notion that you can always just wander over to your friends' houses.

We haven't even seen all it's capable of yet, my personal hope is that things like Kahn Academy and MIT OCW will revolutionise education by enabling more homeschooling (current schools are bad because they force you to switch topics once an hour like it's a Mad Hatter's tea-party. It's very difficult to learn like that. Fortunately my school was shit and mostly just let me sit in the corner reading textbooks).

That documentary series i was enthusing at you about the other day seems to be about this very topic, tho seems to side with you rather than me.

> When anyone can access the internet remotely, which I'm certain will happen eventually, why will children feel the need to learn maths, or history? They could just look up the answers.

Again good point, i highly recommend Rainbows End (saw a fair chunk of it posted online somewhere but am not feeling like googling it up at the minute). Basically there's three main things children of the future study in school: search strategies, learning techniques, and conceptual frameworks. Being discalculic (hope that's a word already, if not it should be, like "illiterate" but with algebra or geometry) or historically unaware are seen by them like how we today regard illiteracy. Their focus on learning-how-to-learn rather than just learning facts in school also makes autodidactism very common.

> I also think time-zones are a problem.

True, i quite liked the thing from Eastern Standard Tribe where instead of nations the world is split along timezones, just because of the online socialisation thing.
I've been thinking about experimenting with psychopharmacology (think Dr. Venture's "diet pills") + anti-jetlag techniques to try to decouple body clock and sleep cycle from daylight cycle but doubt very much it would be healthy. (From what i've read about sleep research done on shift-workers, forced irregular sleep patterns for more than about six months is extremely damaging.) Also not practical for ppl who *need* to keep regular hours (which i think is far fewer than currently do, but then programmers are notorious for preferring to work at night, when it's quiet and we can concentrate.).

> natural light

I was thinking solar reflector arrays focused down into light wells (which can also be used for heating in some places). Personally i have a magic lightbulb that shines with a solar spectrum (because it's dimmer than the sun it looks more like moonlight than sunlight, very blue, but still it seems to tackle the S.A.D. okay).

[karakris]

@ Borg - Dog

Snap !! - In Reverse

I was born in Pompey ( Potsmouth ) but got moved to South-East London Suburbs when I was Four, the year of the Queen's Coronation.

I grew-up to like Towns and Cities, and mildly aggrophobic.
But - Hey - now I don't like real Crowds any more.

I am living in the Fens now, since 2007 - but I find it a bit too "bleak", and a bit too boring.
Relaxing at first - but I still miss the Sea, and I miss hills and trees.
You can walk miles and miles here ( well I can't with my legs ) - but you only get to places you can already see, and the view is still almost exactly the same.

So - when we can, we are moving down south, and we cannot afford to live in the Country - so it will be just "across the harbour" from Portsmouth - in Gosport.

Given a choice - I would LOVE a Village, or the edge of a SMALL Town - but near the Sea.
West Lulworth is my absolute all-time favourite location.

[SliceOfDog]

(Also, i think veganism *should* be considered abnormal (possibly classed as an eating disorder like anorexia or something) it is *extremely* unnatural and unhealthy, hard to remain well nourished on such a diet. I read a tragic news story about some New York hippies who gave their child brain damage by forcing it to eat vegan)

Hmm, I'm cautious to argue against this, because it will take us very off topic, but if we go on about it for a couple more posts we can always take it to PM or a new topic
Being a vegetarian myself for coming on a year, I would certainly say that it's not unhealthy. Sure, if you simply cut meat out of the average diet then yes, there are problems, but sensible people (... me) replace it with different foods that hold similar properties. One of the biggest problems is protein, which can be gained from nuts, eggs and dairy. As long as you eat enough of those, there's absolutely no problem, and in fact you're probably going to end up healthier than the average meat-eater. I always find it curious that people worry about the vegetarian diet, but never question people who go fill their arteries with McDonalds every other day. Because I look out for what foods contain meat, and am careful to balance my diet, I actually avoid a lot of the unhealthy stuff I used to eat.
As far as the vegan diet goes, that is more risky, although some very dedicated people still manage to pull it off with a balanced diet (don't think I could though. I read the average 'daily regimen', and it's the same few foods every day. Healthy, but really boring). However, I don't think children should be vegans. All mammals need milk when they're growing up, and as I said above eggs are also a good one, and as long as we ensure that the animals aren't harmed then there's not much of a problem with it. However, citing that one example of clear negligence on behalf of the parents doesn't prove anything about other vegans and vegetarians. I could just as easily talk about this town:

and say "Not one of those residents is vegetarian, and they have the highest death rates due to obesity and diabetes in America. Hence eating meat is extremely unhealthy", but it wouldn't necessarily be true. It's the way the diet is approached, not whether or not something dies in it.
And as for unnatural, I find that an interesting (and common) argument. When is the last time you went out to hunt your own food? When's the last time you hid in the bushes, jumped out at a cow and took it down by clawing out its neck, then ate it raw?
Everything about the Western food industry is unnatural. We breed animals, process them in factories, package them, distribute them, cook them and eat them. How many other animals do that? Even when people do hunt for their own food, they still do it with guns and snares. Are they natural? McDonalds, BurgerKing, Subway. Are they natural?
It's at this point that I realise I might be sounding a bit angry or sarcastic, so let me assure you I'm not! I actually love debates like this, and I'm just passionate about what I believe, but please don't let that come off as me looking down on opposing opinions! I just hope I've said something that you might find interesting

[Wolfgang of Borg]

OMG no slice sorry not read your post yet but i am emphatically not anti-vegetarian!! Just i think veganism is really really dangerous, humans are by nature omnivores, yes meat is currently far too large a part of the diet but veganism is going way too far in the other direction, there are amino acids that we literally *cannot* make within ourselves and need to obtain via either animal products (eggs or cheese etc are fine) or relentless unending lentil-based dishes.

Edit: ok i read what you said but not watched the vid, i should have clarified that vegitarianism (possibly with meat on special occasions since, again, our damn primate ancestry dictates our taste perceptions ‡) is i think the most sensible diet. But if you define "eating disorder" as "if you try to keep eating like this, you will probably get ill" then i think veganism counts. Vegitarianism and veganism are very different ideas, the former quite close to our ancestral diet, the latter even further from it than Happy Meals etc.

(Another interesting idea that Freefall introduced me to is insectivorism, the idea being that they're on a newly terraformed world and have not yet built up the ecosystem to the point of supporting higher life, and so mostly eat algae and seaweed and grubs. Meat and veggies are available but fantastically expensive.)

Anyway lets not let this thread be derailed, we were almost starting to have an actual conversation here, maladept though this forum software is to that (do we really have to do this much scrolling? I've had more readable conversations on fucking Reddit).

‡ Somewhat creepily it just occurred to me: what if it's not human meat that tastes like pork, but pork that tastes like human? Is the reason bacon is tasty that we have an innate biological drive to cannibalism? Was that what Warren Ellis was getting at with Spider Jerusalem's taste for cloned-human fast food? Brrr.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

@karakris

The Fens are indeed very flat, i always thought it was quite cool that i lived somewhere that had been literally terraformed (it's all drained marsh and swampland, kept that way by massive pumping efforts because of the excellent farmsoil,.. my home village has a name meaning in part "island" and is only a couple of metres above sea level). Then i went to uni in Bristol (very hilly) and was all like "wtf is this nonsense, where's half the sky gone, why do things keep suddenly appearing out of nowhere?".

Otoh it's very healthy there, Bristolians are apparently among the healthiest of Englanders because they tend to walk everywhere (bikes are no fun when steep hills are about, and it's just not a car sort of place, very old and tangly layout).

Think i may try to move to Brighton next, seems like an interesting place, the English equivalent of San Francisco. Or possibly somewhere in Scotland, they seem quite lefty.

The problem with villages is there's no anonymity there, everyone knows or at least recognises everyone else. One thing i kinda liked about London was the feeling of being lost in a crowd, the problem was that that crowd was inescapable. I should probably have stuck it out tho, one of my big things is that human-neoteny-based neuroplasticity is our biggest strength, so i should be able to just learn to adapt to city life.. plus of course if i ever do try to do a start-up company it'll need to be somewhere crowded so i can find co-workers.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Hmm some extremely interesting comments on this Charles Stross blog post about my hero Buckminster Fuller i just spotted.

Ok i'll shut up now.

[Silverwind]

I was going to comment on this, but everyone on this forum is so much smarter than me xD

[Wolfgang of Borg]

:[

Someone on my LiveJournal once said something similar, which was depressing because i often failed to comment on his entries for precisely the same reason.

SPOILERS

But like don't you want to be smarter? Doesn't everyone? Intelligence is only very slightly innate, it's mostly determined by behaviour. I'm dyslexic and was in Learning Support in school and *years* behind everyone else in ability (my obsession with audiobooks was started by being unable to read and so having to listen to stories) until at some point i discovered the secret to thinking about maths (arithmetic is irrelevant, ignore the notation, it's all about geometry and physical intuition) and suddenly people began thinking i was smart. But it's *all* just mental tricks -- everyone has the same hardware -- mental ability is determined by how many tricks you know about and can use (Feynman used the analogy of a toolbox). One good way to acquire new mental tools is to engage with any ppl who look to be doing something you can't so you can try to work out what they're thinking. (Another is to always always look up and learn about terms you don't understand,.. this is why i think the internet and particularly search engines are going to massively change human cognition for the better.)

This is where my name comes from... "We wish to improve ourselves"

http://xkcd.com/267/

Also: no one knows what the fuck they're doing.

[SliceOfDog]

I'd completely agree with Borg there, Silverwind, please never feel like you aren't good enough to post! Even if you just wanted to express your opinion, without any factual justification, that's interesting enough

[Silverwind]

Thanks guys - and I am naturally curious and hungry to learn things. However, I am intensely and easily frustrated with my own inability to grasp mathematical concepts and ideas on occasion. However, I manage to understand a lot of other stuff besides.

As far as the debate on cloning goes -
I think that, as others have said, human cloned organs are a good idea, and are something I have a great amount of favour for. Such as things like cloned internal organs, skin, etc.
However, that could be achieved through genetic manipulation on animals such as pigs, etc. as has been tried and theorised (I believe) already.
I don't think full human cloning will be a reality due to the moral and social implications of it, and due to the potential for abuse of the technology as well - as others have said, it could lead to situations where less-than-angelic people could clone multiple versions of themselves, or people could create their own unending dynasties for tax, business, and other none-too-seemly purposes.

As far as such things go, I thing genetic therapy and designer genes will become more and more popular in the interest of eliminating genetic diseases and disorders, but full cloning will likely remain an unexplored area, for the most part.
It might fall into some research in countries where laws and regulations are less tightly enforced, but will probably become illegal and immoral, due to attitudes towards it. Perhaps later generations will change that though, as society changes.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Edit: fuck, rereading this it sounds really argumentative, i'll leave it up for now but i totes didn't mean it to come across like that >:[

Don't know how much of this was said when we discussed the cloning thing the first time around (my recent bloviating above was mostly in response to things karakris introduced to the thread, the fact that the topic is nominally cloning is irrelevant imho (i'm used to hanging around sites where conversational drift is way more welcome than it is here)) because i always hate rereading my old ramblings but:

> It might fall into some research in countries where laws and regulations are less tightly enforced

I see this as completely inevitable, if only for stupid social reasons: cheap generic transgenic pig organs for the poor, their own perfectly formed (possibly even genetically optimised -- if born ungenofixed why not just swap out parts with superior versions?) organs for the rich.

> people could clone multiple versions of themselves

Why would anyone even do that? Normal people are normal, and psychopaths aren't all that into kin selection (if anything they'd probly see clones of themselves as potential competition). Today IRL the population of most wealthy European nations would actually be falling if not for immigration, should the whole world ever reach that state (or hopefully something even better) and there is no more poverty anywhere we'll have to make up the shortfall somehow, i see cloning ppl in the current generation who possess traits we'd like more of in the future is as a sensible solution.

> tax

It seems unlikely conventional income tax laws are going to survive the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (since it'll be impossible to tell how much anyone has earned) but even if they are still around it's obvious that each clone should pay their own taxes. I don't see how this is an issue?

> business

How would immortal CEOs change anything? Corporations are already immortal since they're just entities of legal fiction.

> and other none-too-seemly purposes

I'm still trying to figure out the morality of some scifi concepts but clones just seem like a biological commonplace (unlike, say, geno-tweaked Übermenschen) that occur in nature all the time anyway.

Implausible, not-really-cloning-related question / idea: if you could press a magic button and get an instant copy of a person (so perfect that it would be meaningless to talk about which one is the original, they're so perfectly identical that both are the original) would the encounter between them be friendly (since they share so many interests) or rivalrous (they want all the same things as each other).. would they co-operate or compete? And how would this vary from person to person?

[Silverwind]

Mostly when I posted last night, I was writing whatever came into my head first thing, so your points are probably more well-researched than mine - but I'll see if I can make some more clarifying points. Even so, it's a good debate no matter what we go on

I see this as completely inevitable, if only for stupid social reasons: cheap generic transgenic pig organs for the poor, their own perfectly formed (possibly even genetically optimised -- if born ungenofixed why not just swap out parts with superior versions?) organs for the rich.

I was also thinking of it from a business point of view - while most countries in what we call the West or developed world have clear regulations regarding experimentation and procedure, businesses and similar organisations could offer financial kickbacks and incentives to the governments of under-developed countries in return to conduct whatever kind of research they like there, with minimal interference. I read a (fictional) book with this regarding viral research as a background - unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, which is a shame, as it was very good.

> people could clone multiple versions of themselves

Why would anyone even do that? Normal people are normal, and psychopaths aren't all that into kin selection (if anything they'd probly see clones of themselves as potential competition).

Yeah, I probably wasn't thinking that through fully. I suppose I was imagining the idea of someone prolonging their legacy/cult of personality, in the shape of a dictator, but giving themselves multiple chances to be in charge. But, there'd be no point in this unless they could continue their own memories and personality across multiple 'incarnations' of themselves. Also, it's the nature vs. nurture debate - if theye weren't subjected to the same conditions as the 'original', would they react, develop and rule in the same way or not?

The other points I made are probably a bit random and pointless, and not thought through, so not really worth looking into.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Agreed that's a plausible scenario. Another idea i really like is just setting up your own country somewhere where you can make up whatever laws you want -- Greg Egan wrote a novel i loved called Distress about an artificial island (made of gengeneered coral) set up by biotech-hippies for the purpose of ignoring international patent law. There was also an actual proper story featuring furries for once (written by a very interesting guy) where someone used an abandoned oil-rig to do questionable things to a mind-clone (though his claim to being a micronation ultimately fell flat when a megacorp set supersmart AI lawyers on him).

> But, there'd be no point in this unless they could continue their own memories and personality across multiple 'incarnations' of themselves.

In that case i'd argue that the set of memories is the person, not the bodies that house them. (One of my favourites in that list of awesome books i threw at you was The Fifth Head of Cerberus which is about the poor kid who gets to have his father's memories grafted onto him.)

There was a funny gag in Portal 2 where Wheatly goes on about the "nepotism" of a senior AI appointing an exact copy of itself as a subordinate.

> Also, it's the nature vs. nurture debate - if theye weren't subjected to the same conditions as the 'original', would they react, develop and rule in the same way or not?

Studies where they track down identical twins separated at birth often reveal freaky similarities in their lives, but it's hard to tell how much of that is just our tendency to see meaning in randomness.

But this is just more Boys from Brazil (series of unusual murders, turns out Mengele made a bunch of Fuhrer clones, had them adopted, and someone's going around recreating the childhood of the original, which involved the death of his father at age 14 or whatever) nonsense, a much more believeable film is Code 46 where

Spoiler

a guy accidentally has an affair with a (younger than him) clone of his mother (increased solar radiation has led to mass sterility, the rich live in domed cities, cloning has to be used to prevent a population crash, the title of the film refers the law code that prohibits pseudo-incest in that situation)

. Very interesting film i think, kinda got a Gattaca vibe to it but less stylized.

[themnax]

if i haven't said it already, the main reason not to (clone whole humans) is that there's too damd many humans already. now if my next clone could be furry, that would be different. take the pun how you will. but if i could have another however many decades of seeing life and watching the world evolve, by somehow transfurring my soul/awairness into a life form with opposable thumbes and a big brain, but with fur and tail and pointy ears and all, well that would be just fine. there just doesn't need to be more sapients running around on earth then even what there were three or four decades before i was born, some six and nearly a half decades ago.

now supposin you had a world somewhere with the means, that was ACTUALLY UNDER populated, and by underpopulated, the only definician of that which makes sense to me, would be a species in danger of dying out from having too small a gene pool, well then i think that's really the only situation in which cloning whole organisms would make sense.

now cloning meat to eat, without awairness or any sort of nervious system, that i could really really go for. no more having to actually kill anything the knew it was alive to enjoy a good chunk of raw meat.