From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Wed Jan 01 2003 - 09:53:46 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: daviddarling123
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 6:15 AM
To: DarlingsSpace_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: [DarlingsSpace] David Darling's Newsletter #7
DAVID DARLING'S NEWSLETTER
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Issue #7
December 31, 2002
e-mail: darling_at_uslink.net
website: http://www.daviddarling.info
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In this issue:
(1) Meanderings
(2) Attack of the Clones
(3) Bookends
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(1) Meanderings
First, let me wish you a very happy, prosperous, and, above all,
peaceful New Year. I'm afraid the last on this list is perhaps the
least likely given what's happening in the Middle and Far East but
we can only hope that, sooner or later, the human race will come to
its collective senses. Perhaps all politicians, military leaders,
dictators, and so forth, should be compelled to take part in a giant
international exchange program every year so that they're
occasionally reminded of the other guy's point of view! (Hmm, some
chance...)
It just occurred to me again this morning, as I started writing
this, what an astonishing thing the Internet is. Here I am, sat in
my little office -- conveniently located next to my bedroom (it's
presently 3:30 a.m.!) -- in mid-state Minnesota, writing a dispatch
to a group of people, most of whom I've never met and of whose
whereabouts in the world I'm completely in the dark! The
terms "cyber world" and "global village" start to make a lot of
sense when you have situations like this. As a writer, the Internet
has completely revolutionized the way I work and what I can do. It's
like having immediate access to an immense (and very up to date)
library and an open phone line to thousands of like-minded people
all over the planet. On an average day, when colleges and schools
are open, close to a thousand visitors access the
Astrobiology/Spaceflight Central website from several dozen
different countries (split about 50:50 between North America and the
rest of the world). It's a daily thrill knowing that people of so
many different nationalities, backgrounds, and beliefs are, in a
sense, stopping by to see what I'm up to, even when I'm asleep!
And speaking of thrills, I can heartily recommend the second part of
the Peter Jackson/J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings epic. What a
staggering feat to bring a book like this to life on the screen. I
suppose a decade ago it couldn't have been done. The interface
between live action and computer-generated imagery is so seamless
that you simply can't tell where New Zealand ends and Middle Earth
begins, or, in the battle scenes, which are the living, breathing
actors and which are the animated characters.
Which brings me, sort of, to this month's topic. With human cloning
so much in the news at the moment, some interesting thoughts spring
to mind concerning the nature of individuality and what would happen
if you could make an exact copy of someone, right down to the last
cell.
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(2) Attack of the Clones
At the time of writing, it isn't clear if the claim made recently by
Cloneaid (which, as you probably know is a company owned and
operated by a group that believes we've been genetically engineered
by extraterrestrials) will stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Fortunately, a simple DNA test will resolve the issue. We should
know within a couple of weeks. Either way, it seems certain that
human cloning is going to happen in the very near future. Whatever
your ethical stance on this, the fact of the matter is that some
people are willing and able to pay a lot of money to have themselves
cloned, the "technology" exists to make it happen, and there are
doctors and clinics around the world who are not going to wait for
international approval before going ahead. The same applies
to "designer babies," which are also an inevitability -- and a much
more worrying one -- in the coming decade.
What would it be like to be clone? Of course, you could just ask any
identical twin. It's like being anyone else. You're still an
individual. You don't feel as if you're split down the middle or are
living in someone else's body. But identical twins are a product of
nature. Growing up as a bred human clone, and coming to realize that
your parents selected you to be biologically identical to one of
them (or to someone else), might be quite different. Would there be
some resentment? Or the feeling that you'd been created to fulfill
someone else's selfish desire to achieve a (dubious) form of
immortality? I don't know. I suspect that some clones may have these
problems. It's also possible, given their shared type of origin and
unique psychological challenges, that clones will tend to be drawn
to one another and to form separate groups within society. I'm
afraid that the first clones, at least, will also be put under such
a media spotlight (unless their identities are kept secret) that it
will be hard for them, in any event, to lead ordinary lives. One can
also see them being used as specimens in the nature versus nurture
debate.
Cloning brings into focus the whole issue of what it means to be an
individual. This was one of the main themes of my 1996 book "Zen
Physics," which had the slightly presumptive subtitle "The Science
of Death and the Logic of Reincarnation." Actually the book was more
about psychology and philosophy than it was about physics or
Buddhism, but I couldn't resist the title and succumbed to
commercialism! I made the point in ZP -- certainly not original but
nevertheless important -- that we are, to a large extent, the
product of our memories. In other words, we're not so much the
central character in a story as we are the story itself. George
Gamow captured it best when he called his autobiography "My
Worldline." So, I'd argue, if you'd been born in a different place
and grown up under different circumstances, you wouldn't be "you" at
all. You'd have a different worldline -- a different track through
space and time -- but, more importantly, you'd be that different
worldline. Of course, nature has something to do with it. If I'd
been switched with Einstein at birth, I'm pretty darn sure I
wouldn't have come up with the theory of relativity! But neither
would I have been me. I would have been someone who hasn't, as it
turned out, actually existed.
These kind of thoughts get to be even more interesting in some
hypothetical situations, such as those involving Star Trek's famous
transporter. Let's say you stepped into a transporter on Earth and,
an instant later, were rematerialized on Mars. What would it feel
like? There doesn't seem to be a problem. It would surely feel like
just stepping through a door onto a different world. But what if the
transporter went wrong, and as well as sending you to Mars,
rematerialized a copy of you back on Earth. What would that feel
like? Which of the two you's would "you" be? The nature of
individuality is that there's a unified, single stream of
consciousness. And yet here are two absolutely identical yous. It
doesn't seem reasonable that "you" would be one or the other of the
two because there's no difference between them. But it seems even
less reasonable that you would be both or neither of them.
Ah well, something to mull over after your New Year's dinner!
--------------------------------------------
(3) Bookends
I'm not going to remind you that my latest book "The Complete Book
of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity" is now available from
all good, and doubtless some bad, booksellers. And I'm certainly not
going to mention the next two books in the pipeline: "The Universal
Book of Astronomy" (forthcoming in 2003 from Wiley) and an
encyclopedia of recreational maths (including such nifty topics as
labyrinths, infinity, and time travel paradoxes).
Until next time,
Best wishes,
David Darling
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