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Judaism

0 (0%)

Christianity

17 (23.3%)

Islam

1 (1.4%)

Hinduism

0 (0%)

Taoism

0 (0%)

Buddhism

0 (0%)

Scientology

2 (2.7%)

Other (please tell)

7 (9.6%)

Athiest

35 (47.9%)

Undecided

1 (1.4%)

Agnostic

10 (13.7%)

Total Members Voted: 70

[ChairmanPoo]

Maybe not so much.

I mean you dont even need cloning, proper. Maybe shedding enough blood might be enough to make people suspect you met a grisly end.

[Starver]

Clone yourself, decapitate clone, mail clone head to police station, assume new identity and don't go to prison.

The clone's you, you know. If the duplication process isn't of the "you get to look down upon the cloning chamber as the nanomolecular machinery knits Other!You together, the spark of life happening at the end" type, then there's a very real risk that the clone, fully aware of his intended fate, will try to leap out of his build-chamber quicker than you can jump out of your scan-chamber and end up sending your head to the police, assuming the intended new identity and heading off to live the life of a fugitive (or just plead self-defence).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I meant real cloning, not a duplicate.

[Starver]

I meant real cloning, not a duplicate.

The only way I understand that distinction is if you are doing a Dolly The Sheep on yourself, with a willing volunteer surrogate mother (or oneself, if suitably equipped?), wait nine months, then wait at least a couple more decades (plus cosmetically-guided procedures) before enacting the coup de tete ...

[wierd]

That's assuming a natural scaffold material.

If you are just wanting a head, to simulate a death, you dont need a whole body-- just enough tissue to support the head's metabolic function, and an "at mature conformation" scaffolding, impregnated with adult stem cells, sustained on the minimalist tissue support system.

So, basically, a disgusting bag of organs in floppy skin, with a head and a few spinal vertebrae grafted on top, both of which were created from 3D printed digestible scaffolding substrate, impregnated with tissue culture.

When ready, hack off the head and mail it to the police and dispose of the "refuse."

[Starver]

Sounds like duplication, not real cloning. But in the "get to look at the knitting together process" sense, so...  Oh, I'm sure there was a point somewhere.

[wierd]

It is the barest, shittiest of scans needed to convince the cops. No actual consciousness in the end product. Mostly computer generated bare essentials for the "body." Costs of replication kept low by not creating unessential parts. (arms, legs..) Still technically cloning, in the same respect that vegetative reproduction is cloning. It is not "transporter perfect duplicate" either though.

[Grim Portent]

Aren't there still physical distinctions between a scaffold grown bodypart and the genuine article that any good autopsy would pick up on?

[wierd]

Currently, hell yes.  This is FutureTECH! though-- also, just let it putrefy a little before sending in the mail. Organic decomposition makes finding subtle molecular hints like that harder.

[Grim Portent]

Even with futuretech I think it'd still be easier to just flee to a place with no extradition than use any variant of cloning to try and fake your death.


Though to return to the duplication cloning stuff from earlier, it would be potentially revolutionary to be able to replicate a person with valuable skills or physical qualities quickly. With star trek style teleporter clones you could make anything from a horde of surgeons, to a horde of SAS elite soldiers in fairly short order. Normal humans would be semi-obsolete really, at least in fields where the knowledge needed doesn't change much over time.

[wierd]

Ethically horrible though. Disposable people. When no longer needed, just broken down and recycled. Keep replicator templates on hand, mass produce, and retire as needed.

I think TNG got at this sideways in the episode where they had the legal battle over Data's sentience, and right to refuse invasive experimentation, since the goals of the researcher was to create armies of specialists without rights, in exactly that same kind of mode of thinking-- just further substantiated by being wholly artificial, and inorganic.

[Grim Portent]

Depends on how you treat a no longer needed duplicate. If you treated it as a person, with all the rights and entitlements that includes, there would be no real moral issue, though there would be logistical ones. It would even be a more moral way to build an army than something like conscription is because each duplicant essentially volunteered when the original let themself be scanned for the purpose rather than being drafted against their will.

The major issue is housing, feeding and caring for whatever arbitrary number of people you make once their original job is done. Some will have marketable skills and can enter a normal workforce, but a high skill combat unit would be much harder to reintegrate.

EDIT: Come to think of it, depending on the energy expenditure and material wastage involved, a duplicator could be a better way to produce meat and some plants than the traditional method is. Scan a prime beef cow at the prime of it's life and just replicate it when you need meat, or just scan the bits you want. The natural process of growing is full of inefficiency, both in energy and in material, a duplication process might be able to cut that down. Also saves on space and time, which are both very valuable.

[wierd]

Hence the evolution of the molecular pattern replicator from StarTrek.

From humble origins as a protein re-sequencer, to a data-card driven "food slot", to full blown omni-manufacturing, making everything from shoes to fois-gras.

Does not solve the ethical quandry of the series though-- Does the transporter cause mass murder with oblivious clone replacements at the destination?  And-- if that is the case, what does the StarTrek afterlife look like? (This *IS* the religion thread, after all.)

[Grim Portent]

Hence the evolution of the molecular pattern replicator from StarTrek.

From humble origins as a protein re-sequencer, to a data-card driven "food slot", to full blown omni-manufacturing, making everything from shoes to fois-gras.

Does not solve the ethical quandry of the series though-- Does the transporter cause mass murder with oblivious clone replacements at the destination?  And-- if that is the case, what does the StarTrek afterlife look like? (This *IS* the religion thread, after all.)

Didn't Star Trek replicators require some kind of handwavium element though? I'm pretty sure they needed some special material to make stuff from rather than just using any old matter. Something like that without such a limit would be insanely more useful.

The ethical quandry really depends on the existence or not of a soul in Star Trek. Some of the psychic space wizardry type stuff implies there might be, but only in the sense that there is something enabling psychic space wizardry. The ability for Data, being a manufactured being, to become a full person in every meaningful way implies to me that there is no soul, there is merely different degrees of sapience and independant thought.

So the afterlife would be oblivion, the void and the end of all that is and was of the dead. Though their funeral casket is probably a lot cheaper than it would be without replicators, so that's something.

Course even if there is a soul, that just raises more questions about clones and androids and non-corporeal life and all the other weird junk in Star Trek.

[wierd]

Nope. The starfleeet tech manuals (gag) dont mention any special handwavium, just energy expenditure issues related to complexity and the breakdown of complex molecules.

Specifically, some things are hard for the reclamation system to break down. Instead, long chain organic molecules are instead sequestered in their full length configurations, then linked together more efficiently and cheaply with the replicator's emitter subsystem to create complex organic composites. (like clothing. The manual outright mentions complex organics and organic fiber in feces, and the synthesis of uniforms. Dwell on that.)

The limiting factor is computer resource complexity for the pattern, (why replicated food often does not taste quite like the real thing) and energy of synthesis costs.

If you wanted to invest in the infrastructure, there is NOTHING in the starfleet universe that would prevent you from mass-replicating ENTIRE starships at a go, other than procuring the needed energy and raw materials for the assembly.