From: haradon@acsu.buffalo.edu
Date: Fri Dec 18 1998 - 00:27:07 MST
I don't think cloning has any special use seperate from the use of
reproduction in general. If you dumped 200 Einsteins into the world, very
few if any of them would grow up in situations similar to those that
Einstein grew up in. I read some article about geniuses once, some study
someone did of their lives.. this was several years ago and I *think* it was
in newsweek. I remember they studied Einstein, Freud, Picasso, Hemingway,
and some other people who were recognized geniuses in their feild. They
found a lot of unusual similarities.. they were all oldest or only children,
they were all a member of some minority religion or ethnicity in their area,
they all did poorly early on in school and were considered very dull, and
they were all born to very young parents. I think these social circumstances
have a lot more to do with genius then genetics (obviously genetics does
*something*, otherwise there should be some chimpanzee geniuses).
Incidentally, Einstein had 3 children.. one died in a mental hospital with
schizophrenia. Another one was set up for adoption at a very young age and
nobody knows what happened to her.
I remember reading someplace that Thomas Edison's son was a severe social
fuck-up too.
--On Thursday, December 17, 1998, 8:55 PM -0600 "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky"
<sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> The interesting one for me would be dumping 200 Einsteins into the
> populace and seeing what happened. The massive necessity of this logic
> must have somehow been lost on the rest of the human race, insofar as
> women haven't flocked to that sperm bank for geniuses someone started.
> I mean, I know that genius isn't heritable, but the kids aren't likely
> to be dumb either. Geez, give your kid a minimum IQ of 130, is that so
> much to ask? In retrospect, wouldn't you rather have had those
> Nobel-winning genes? So nobody will take advantage of the powers of
> cloning, either.
>
> I'd better stop before I depress myself.
> --
> sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
> http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
> Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
> everything I think I know.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Zeb Haradon
my web page:
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~haradon
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