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galexcd

Theoretical Question - Cloning? Question 2

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So over the years I've thought of many strange questions related to math, science, and physics, and there are way too many and they all go way too much into depth to all be put into 1 thread so I shall make separate threads for them all when I think of them.

I Actually wasn't planning on posting this one this soon :rolleyes: but seeing as I already have my topic fresh in mind from the last theoretical question I guess I'll talk about it...

 

CLONING- As i discussed previously, humans have become greatly advanced with technology. Lets just say for this example that it is possible to make an "exact duplicate" of a human. By exact duplicate, I mean when you have yourself cloned, your clone will be created the same age, with the same memories, etc, and will not have to "grow" like sheep and other organisms have to when they are cloned with today's technology. Ok so they have the technology to make an exact duplicate of you, and you decide that it would be neat to have a clone. So you to and have yourself cloned and the clone of yourself has the same memories and everything that you have. Now picture for a moment that you are that clone, you "remember" the same experiences that your "host" had up until that point, and you would technically not even know that your the clone. You would think that you are the host and finding out that you are the clone would come as quite a shock to you because you remember every detail up to the cloning that your host experienced. This means that when you clone yourself you have a 50% chance of being the clone and a 50% chance of being the original EVEN THOUGH you would really still be the original, but your clone would suddenly realize that he hasn't existed until 5 minutes ago even though he remembers everything. Do you guys get my (perhaps flawed) logic?

 

Ok so lets say that the technology to make an exact copy of one's self doesn't ever exist but we can clone humans the way we clone sheep today, by being grown. If you believe in God (once again bringing up this point from my last topic), would your clone have a soul?

 

 

So this brings me to my ultimate question for this thread....

What if humans don't discover how to create the exact duplicates of one another(with same output age, memories, etc...), but they are able to clone humans like they clone sheep. Is it moral to "grow" people just to use their organs and other parts to use as replacements when the original host becomes ill and needs a transplant?

(Note question idea from the movie "The Island")

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I Actually wasn't planning on posting this one this soon :rolleyes: but seeing as I already have my topic fresh in mind from the last theoretical question I guess I'll talk about it...

 

CLONING- As i discussed previously, humans have become greatly advanced with technology. Lets just say for this example that it is possible to make an "exact duplicate" of a human. By exact duplicate, I mean when you have yourself cloned, your clone will be created the same age, with the same memories, etc, and will not have to "grow" like sheep and other organisms have to when they are cloned with today's technology. Ok so they have the technology to make an exact duplicate of you, and you decide that it would be neat to have a clone. So you to and have yourself cloned and the clone of yourself has the same memories and everything that you have. Now picture for a moment that you are that clone, you "remember" the same experiences that your "host" had up until that point, and you would technically not even know that your the clone. You would think that you are the host and finding out that you are the clone would come as quite a shock to you because you remember every detail up to the cloning that your host experienced. This means that when you clone yourself you have a 50% chance of being the clone and a 50% chance of being the original EVEN THOUGH you would really still be the original, but your clone would suddenly realize that he hasn't existed until 5 minutes ago even though he remembers everything. Do you guys get my (perhaps flawed) logic?

 

Ok so lets say that the technology to make an exact copy of one's self doesn't ever exist but we can clone humans the way we clone sheep today, by being grown. If you believe in God (once again bringing up this point from my last topic), would your clone have a soul?

So this brings me to my ultimate question for this thread....

What if humans don't discover how to create the exact duplicates of one another(with same output age, memories, etc...), but they are able to clone humans like they clone sheep. Is it moral to "grow" people just to use their organs and other parts to use as replacements when the original host becomes ill and needs a transplant?

(Note question idea from the movie "The Island")


What an extremely unnecessarily long post, with such a small question...

 

Anyway, personally I am not a big fan of cloning in general. There's just something insanely creepy and unnatural about it all. But to answer your question, it is wrong to clone a human (or an animal) just to use their organs. Just because they were not made naturally (sexual reproduction) does not mean they aren't a real human being. Therefore, their organs should not be harvested. Plus who is to say that their organs won't malfunction in the future anyway, granted that most organs are damaged from the life you life, it's possible to be born with bad organs.

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I don't think clones can get the memories of the original person any time soon. Memories can't be simply cloned like the DNA can. Memories are far more (if not impossible) to duplicate. I'm sure it requires super advanced brain knowledge something mankind will not discover for at least another century or so (presuming of course we will survive that long). And if we are to live to discover the secrets of the brain that means we must be morally clean.It's not hard to clone a person (and I'm sure it has been done... not officially of course!) and even if it has some problems they will be tweaked over time. Cloning memories... that is a very big if. Considering that cloning a person raises huge moral and ethical questions, cloning one persons memories is even larger then that. It is after all a way to achieve total immortally, but that means cheating death (in the short run) and evolution on the long run (the only true source of biological progress). Why are the moral problems so important? Because it is what makes us humans, just as death does. It's hard for many to admit, but death is the only thing that motivates our existence. If it weren't for death there would be no biological and technological progress. An immortal society doesn't have any dreams or hopes and does not fear the end. Death is after all the only thing that makes us all equal. Bill Gates will eventually just as people from Africa die everyday of hunger or war. Guess looking from that perspective death is somewhat a blessing... But that's another discusssion.Living forever would certainly be extremely boring over time. And if I think better I'm sure mother nature has designed some safety feature in our DNA that doesn't allow continues cloning. Everything in the universe dies sooner or later, there is no way we can outlive the universe itself.A society like that in The Island can't (does not deserve) to live. Once they have crossed that thin line of morality there is no turning back. Just like with nuclear power. I am sure there must be some sort of universal equation that makes sure that only the species that deserve to live get to enjoy life. Greedy as we are humans are destroying their planet and themselves. Greedy as we are, we do not deserve to live! We shall die or we shall have to change. Cloning will be the same thing. A line that once passed with take us to our doom.

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Cloning can only be done on the biological aspect of human beings (if we ever get to the point of cloning humans). With further studies (and years of successes and failures), the clone could have consciousness. It's may also be possible for the clone to have the same memory of the parent (original being). But the memory will be limited to that of the day the samples from the parent was taken. Well, that's possible. Clone, could have the memory and consciousness of human beings but how far will it go? The original is the original. No matter how close we get to getting the perfect clone, it will still be just a copy. And the soul will never be copied. I think it can't be copied.

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It will obviously be very hard to copy memory. We can't even clone most dead objects in the world given enough elements to reconstruct it.And the brain is always changing. New memories are added, "logs" about the body are "written" even when you are sleeping, and the body still gets controlled even in sleep. And those cells are growing every time. Duplicating such a dynamic structure is superbly hard. Even duplicating a big database when it is used at the same time is hard and requires a lot of coordination (at least from the database point of view), the memory in the brain is much more complicated than that.

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your clone would suddenly realize that he hasn't existed until 5 minutes ago even though he remembers everything. Do you guys get my (perhaps flawed) logic?

If the clone shares all of the memories of the host, then how is it possible for the clone to think that it was created 5 minutes ago as you say? It would seem like it was just sleeping or something, unless it was somehow "awake" in its own "creation" and able to realize that it's a clone.

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