From: jeff davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Mar 02 2002 - 13:04:01 MST
Friends,
--- Richard Steven Hack <richardhack@pcmagic.net>
wrote:
> Again, we're looking at nine months plus 18 years to
> realize the
> profits. This brings us to 2020 - not very far from
> the Singularity
> (perhaps another twenty years, IMO). Who's going to
> wait that long?
For someone thinking from the extropian context,
you're right, of course. From a more conventional
point of view, however, we're dealing with the same
old same old of the controlling parent, which goes
something like this: "I'll raise a Michael Jordan.
I'll train him to play basketball. He'll be famous
and make a ton of money, and, loving me as his father,
he'll reward me generously. (And if he doesn't, I'll
tan his little butt, and send him to bed without his
supper!)"
> Secondly, who says the clone wants to play
> basketball? Do we assume Jordan
> brainwashes the kid to be an NBA fanatic just
> because he has the
> musculature and coordination?
Yes. But the term "brainwashing" suggests that it is
both abusive and somewhat difficult. On the contrary,
it's almost a given that kids--humans of all ages
actually-- dream of being rich and famous. A kid with
a basketball in his hands wants to be Michael Jordan.
It's memetic inevitability.
> >Persons of demonstrated intellectual talent might
> be
> >cloned either for the value of their exceptional
> >contribution to society, or for the profit
> potential
> >(more likely, for both). Einstein, Von Neuman,
> Gauss,
> >Euler, Newton, Da Vinci, Bobby Fisher, etc.
> >(Hmmm,...Do you think traces of Euler, Newton, Da
> >Vinci DNA might still be found?)
>
> And how do you insure that when they grow up, they
> don't take jobs - like
> Einstein - as a clerk somewhere
By the sort of deliberate parenting set in motion by
the very act of choosing to clone a world-class
intellect.
(or the janitor in
> Good Will
> Hunting)?
The storyline of this fictional event preordained that
the protagonist with his unique genius was born into a
situation which would challenge the fulfillment of his
talent and his humanity. It made great drama, but is
a completely different situation from the totality of
foresight presumably involved in planning, cloning,
nuturing, and training a world class intellect.
> Again, cloning does NOT guarantee a
> duplicate of the person -
> only a GENETIC duplicate (leaving out pre-natal
> factors as well). It is
> NOT proven that intelligence is clonable.
Not so. Intelligence is genetic. It can be destroyed,
stifled, poisoned, perverted, corrupted, overlooked,
ignored, or neglected,...in utero or afterwards, but
it IS in the genes.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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