An Unfrequently Voiced Concern About Cloning

[Souper]

Let's say you step into a cloning chamber. You push the button, and out you walk with your new clone!

 

Wait a minute... i came out of the wrong pod?!?!

 

If you go into a cloning chamber (you know, the cheesy soft scifi ones that instantly make a perfect copy of yourself with no loss of information or anything to build you out of), how do you know it's you that's going to walk out and not your clone? Will you be the original, or the clone? If you have the exact memories, exact appearance, exact mind, how could you tell if you were always the original you or if you're just a clone with you creator's memories?

[linuxgurugamer]

Does it matter?

 

[Racescort666]

There was a movie about this.

Spoiler

The Prestige (2006)

 

[Tex_NL]

3 minutes ago, Souper said:

If you have the exact memories, exact appearance, exact mind,

With a perfectly identical copy there is no difference. The one asking the question is at that very moment the original. It's all relative.

[Skylon]

1 minute ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Does it matter?

 

Exactly, if you are the same, does it matter? But I suppose this is still a problem. People will pay less for an exact copy of a famous painting, just because it isn't the 'real thing'. If they thought it was the 'real thing', they would pay much more, even if it is actually fake. 

People may have the same issue with a clone/non-clone

Edited July 3, 2017 by Skylon

[tater]

You know that a clone would be an embryo, right? It still has to develop. If you are not talking about real cloning, perhaps this belongs in another forum like the Lounge.

[Shpaget]

38 minutes ago, Racescort666 said:

There was a movie about this.

  Hide contents

The Prestige (2006)

 

And The 6th Day (2000) with our favorite Terminator.

[Steel]

Since this sort of cloning is physically impossible it's a philosophical question at best - and to even call it philosophy is a bit of a push!

[Starman4308]

All I know is, in five minutes, there will be only one, because there can be only one.

Alternately, we play rock-paper-scissors; the winner gets the identity as me, the loser gets the rights to sell the story to the media.

[Green Baron]

This is as old and frequent as (sci)fi. A perfect copy is a perfect copy is a perfect copy. Only a few scifi tv series of the last 50 years missed out on that one, a lot of authors have uttered their thoughts more or less profound. I'd kill both and resurrect one. Otherwise you had to clone the wives families a swell :-)

 

@Steel has a good point, i like this one: modern philosophy and cognitive science indeed follows similar rules as natural science. Leading philosophers (am thinking of Sir Karl Popper) demanded the postulate of empirical falsification. That's a bit against the trend in the times of cosmology and exoplanets, but it's at least good to have it in mind.

Peace :-)

Edited July 3, 2017 by Green Baron

[_Augustus_]

1 hour ago, Racescort666 said:

There was a movie about this.

  Reveal hidden contents

The Prestige (2006)

 

Awesome movie. You HAVE to watch it.

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, Racescort666 said:

There was a movie about this.

  Reveal hidden contents

The Prestige (2006)

 

There are many movies about this. It's actually a common idea. My favorite is Moon, cause it involves space.

OP: That's not, by definition, a clone. Or at least not a real clone. Real cloning involves pregnancy, birth, and all the normal stuff,and while the future may bring artificial mechanisms capable of that, your clone will be a baby. Maybe you can speed up their growth, but I wouldn't suggest it. So, legally, your clone wouldn't be you. It has a different date of birth, a different age, and everything. In all respects save DNA, your clone is a different person entirely. Different experiences, ideas, thoughts, and so on and so on.

[cratercracker]

You at a different position in space and time, is already not you.

[Spaceception]

5 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Does it matter?

 

Yes, because that would mean *you* would eventually die, and the clone lives on.

There's a similar problem with transferring our consciousness with robotic bodies if we copy out brain over to a robotic computer (There was a youtube video about that by Joe Scott, where he listed a plausible theory about how it'd work) and die, our robot would live on, and *you* would cease to exist.

In the video (I haven't seen it for a few weeks, and this is horribly simplistic), he proposed that we slowly replace our neurons with artificial ones, which would make the transition easier, before filing *our* consciousness to our clone or robot or virtual heaven or whatever.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Spaceception

[Mitchz95]

If you walk out of the same pod you entered (or the same place you were standing), you're the original. If you didn't, you're the duplicate. Simple.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Mitchz95

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Does it matter?

 

No.

[YNM]

Is exact copy allowable on quatum system without destroying the old ? If no, then that'd mean "teleportation" is viable yet cloning is a complete no-no...

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Does it matter?

For the survived/appeared one - no.
For its twin who disappeared in a bright flash - well... no, too. At least, he didn't suffer.

What's the difference, do you own your home, cars, personal things, memories, and live with your family, or a doppelganger which is an exact copy of yours.

Suppose, the another you survived. Who of you's will sleep together with your (both of you's) wife? Identical twins usually don't share such things, and you two are like identical twins, but from opposite sides of the bed.
Oops, "we are the same" fails.

Both of your survived copies have separated minds and different memories from the split moment. At least because a human can't look at one bed from the left and the right at once.
This idea about clonoportation is just an euphemism for "and let's kill the odd _{though, in fact, the even} character and forget about him".

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Is exact copy allowable on quatum system without destroying the old ? If no, then that'd mean "teleportation" is viable yet cloning is a complete no-no...

Not in multiverse. Let's live there and gain teleports!

[Sigma88]

21 hours ago, Souper said:

how do you know it's you that's going to walk out and not your clone?

you look at the inside of your eyelid in a mirror, you'll have a small pointy thing if you are the clone

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, YNM said:

Is exact copy allowable on quatum system without destroying the old ? If no, then that'd mean "teleportation" is viable yet cloning is a complete no-no...

Don't think you need quantum level accuracy, molecule level is good enough, yes you will get a few errors because of quantum effects. 
However this is the smallest of your problem. Scanning and rebuilding an living human will be somewhat challenging.
In short its so high level of fantasy we can ignore how it work. 

Theoretically you could freeze an living object, scan and rebuild it using molecular assemblers. This let you take your time. Yes the cryogenic part is trivial here  
Manned interstellar missions is probably simpler. But this is at least hard scifi 

Think pretty much any method two destroy original require you to store data before rebuilding so you could copies. In Star Trek you could simply restore crew who died during an ground mission They would remember anything up to the teleport. You could also use it to copy anything crew members would be the most complex. 

[YNM]

17 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Don't think you need quantum level accuracy, molecule level is good enough, yes you will get a few errors because of quantum effects. 
However this is the smallest of your problem. Scanning and rebuilding an living human will be somewhat challenging.
In short its so high level of fantasy we can ignore how it work. 

Theoretically you could freeze an living object, scan and rebuild it using molecular assemblers. This let you take your time. Yes the cryogenic part is trivial here  
Manned interstellar missions is probably simpler. But this is at least hard scifi 

Think pretty much any method two destroy original require you to store data before rebuilding so you could copies. In Star Trek you could simply restore crew who died during an ground mission They would remember anything up to the teleport. You could also use it to copy anything crew members would be the most complex. 

The problem is that a hunk of fresh organs doesn't really makes a living being. We'd need more research into what does really makes one alive (barring believes here, I do believe in something but curiosities never stop I guess) if we want to do it the "slow" way. If some very fine things turns out to do it then it might very well be that the slow way is almost impossible. The "advantage" of quantum process cloning is that almost all the states are supposed to be moved at once with the information and subsequent entanglement; but it allows no retaining of past states at past site. It's why I asked it up first.

Edited July 4, 2017 by YNM

[FleshJeb]

20 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

My favorite is Moon, cause it involves space.

Very loosely-based on Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

[kerbiloid]

17 hours ago, magnemoe said:

In Star Trek you could simply restore crew who died during an ground mission They would remember anything up to the teleport. You could also use it to copy anything crew members would be the most complex. 

Unless they tell this to space cadets to make them happily sit into the one-way train.

And actually their space sergeants make a hundred of brainwashed replicants from a hundred of random applicants, then freeze them and keep in a huge storage inside Enterprise, taking as many as required.
Everyone of them indeed "remembers anything up to the teleport", thanks to Total Recall technologies tested on Mars.

Edited July 5, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Urses]

Realy intersting book about cloning and pros and contras is:

War of Clones by J. Scalci

I hope i get it right, did read it in german.

Spoiler

A small Summary is a second life as warmachine for humanity.

If you will be pleasantly surprised dont spoil the fun for you self!

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

Edited July 5, 2017 by Urses

[YNM]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Unless they tell this to space cadets to make them happily sit into the one-way train.

And actually their space sergeants make a hundred of brainwashed replicants from a hundred of random applicants, then freeze them and keep in a huge storage inside Enterprise, taking as many as required.
Everyone of them indeed "remembers anything up to the teleport", thanks to Total Recall technologies tested on Mars.

I bet a lot of LA studios must be under one single company at that point...