From: Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 23:26:24 MDT
On Sat, Aug 18, 2001 at 12:23:04PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> In what ways do twins reduce each other's economic value in a manner
> ordinary sibling's don't? Unless you work in a field where genetics is a
> major determinant of success (sports or modelling?) clones do not reduce
> your value on the work market.
I think it's a matter of scale. Having one or two clones of you may not
noticeably reduce your market value, but having tens of thousands almost
certainly will, since many of them will probably obtain similar skillsets
as yours. Granted this is mostly a worry for celebrities, but it affects
everyone since it creates a disincentive for people to become highly
successful.
> Copying of you with your complete
> skillset might reduce your market value, but that is not what we are
> speaking of here, isn't it?
I wasn't talking about nonconsensual copying of minds, but when that
becomes possible we'll need some way to protect against it as well.
> A simpler possibility would be to add genetic switches expressed in
> somatic cell lines that are activated by the pecularities of nuclear
> transfer (there has to be some re-methylation process there, I guess)
> and then activate a suicide gene.
If the cloner knew about this mechanism, he would disable the suicide gene
prior to nuclear transfer. If he didn't know about it, he would probably
figure it out after the first couple of cloning attempts failed. So I
don't think this will work.
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