[an0n]

an0n's opinions on the subject

Cloning doesn't work. It's lengthy, complicated and expensive. Not to mention the defects, the chances of miscarriage by the surrogate mother, stagnation of the gene pool. Sex is quite simply the best way to reproduce. It's slow enough to allow prepartaion for the child as well as maintain manageable population levels (in theory) and is easy enough so that if all but a few hundred people were wiped out, the world could be repopulated.

Human Race: This is put out by the church and is quite frankly racist. They say that tampering with the genome to improve people is immoral and the result is not a true human but a perversion of science. Bull****. Culture, ideology and fundamental ways of life are what make up the human race. Making people faster, stronger, smarter and more resistant to disease may be interfering with nature but it's no more interfering than spray crops and the results are far more beneficial to the survival of the human race. For it is not our genes that make us human but our beliefs and history, the church and activist groups either don't seem the picture, see inciting public outrage as a way to gain power or are simply so stupid that they do not understand a simple fact. The human genome changes naturally. You can wipe out all the genetically altered people and have a 'pure' human race but if that alteration is in our dna then eventually it will surface again. Eg, If there were super-smart chimp and you killed them, eventually more would be born and the smart ones would survive, but if you kill the normal chimps then the smart ones  survive anyway. What I'm trying to say is that everything evolves, no matter how hard you fight it and the human race will not always be the same as we are now so speeding up nature is not wrong. But still, cloning is inefficient.

I seem to have lost my point somewhere along the way. Meh.

[CP5670]

Sure, it is currently expensive and risky, but that is always the case with new technology. Given the potential benefits (like I said, you can have a customized human designed to be far more efficient than we are), the demand will go up over time while the costs descend due to better manufacturing processes, and so like I said, it will replace sex over the centuries.

And the church opinion is indeed a bunch of BS; actually, if you think about it, we cannot do anything unnatural by definition because we are a part of nature (that is, the universe) and thus everything we do will be equally natural. (computers, war, cloning, whatever) This is how the holistic system of thought works.

[an0n]

Personally I think they should engineer some Storm Troopers and attack Vatican City. It'd be somewhat ironic.

And you can't mass produce people otherwise you'd end up ****ing the gene-pool. Eventually you'd have millions of people with similar DNA and they would be incapable or reproducing naturally. And I think having just about every single land dwelling mammal using the sperm and womb method is a pretty good endorsement for getting it on. You simply cannot beat nature. You may be able to improve on it marginally but generally, nature knows best. After all, things have reached a nice balance over the last 12 billion years.

[CP5670]

But we are nature, so anything we do is also nature. This "nature knows best" thing is fine, but that is because nothing else exists in the absolute universe, so there is not much to choose from. You would still have people reproducing "naturally" (or rather a society reproducing itself, since reproduction has moved from the individual scale to a group scale; same will happen with cognition over time), but in a different from, since everything is natural; there is no fundamental distinction between "natural" and "artificial."

Personally I think they should engineer some Storm Troopers and attack Vatican City. It'd be somewhat ironic.

hehe that would be cool...

[an0n]

Okay, think of it this way. We start expanding beyond the Earth and manufacture million and millions of people to fill our conquered planets and fight our intergalactic wars. They wouldn't be human, they'd be drones. But anyway, everntually there'd come a time when people were forced to do without technology (probably due to some lack of resources). What then?

You must maintain your natural abilities so that you've got something to fall back on should playing God fail.

[CP5670]

Yes, but the end of the universe would come before we run out of resources. If we remain like the other species, we will evolve into something else, far, far before the resources become a problem.

[Thorn]

Sex is integral to evolution...

[an0n]

Why does everyone seem to think transcendence is a real possibillty? I think the nearest we'll ever achieve is putting our brain patterns into a computer and running all our **** by remote.

[CP5670]

Sex is integral to evolution...

While that is not necessarily true, if we assume it is, then that is all the more reason to drop it.

Why does everyone seem to think transcendence is a real possibillty? I think the nearest we'll ever achieve is putting our brain patterns into a computer and running all our **** by remote.

This is precisely what everyone in the world said about flying in the air about 150 years ago. There is more evidence to suggest that it is possible rather than the alternative.

[Thorn]

Originally posted by CP5670
While that is not necessarily true, if we assume it is, then that is all the more reason to drop it.

Find a better, more.. pleasing way of doing it, and I'm sure everyone will drop it...
It ensures variety, no two offspring will be alike, even with twins, there are always differences...

[an0n]

Originally posted by CP5670
This is precisely what everyone in the world said about flying in the air about 150 years ago. There is more evidence to suggest that it is possible rather than the alternative.

Yeah. Right.

Presuming that this is true, what makes you think we'll even survive long enough to visit Mars, let alone transcend to a higher plane. And also, what then? We just drift around for all eternity? That'd suck.

[CP5670]

Find a better, more.. pleasing way of doing it, and I'm sure everyone will drop it...
It ensures variety, no two offspring will be alike, even with twins, there are always differences...

The human brains can be engineered such that they find cloning much more pleasing than sex. (pleasure is one of the most variable things in human affairs) As for the variety bit, the exact same thing can be done with the proper kind of cloning, but the only thing that we really need differences in is modes of thought; all else is unimportant.

Yeah. Right.

Presuming that this is true, what makes you think we'll even survive long enough to visit Mars, let alone transcend to a higher plane. And also, what then? We just drift around for all eternity? That'd suck.

Because we have survived up to this point. On the flip side, what makes you think that we will not? It is certainly a possibility that we will all die out shortly, but keeping this sex crap is not going to do anything to shift the probabilities. And what then? We seek knowledge, what else? Anyway, let's stay on topic.

[an0n]

Pfff. I'm all for genetic engineering but cloning is just plain stupid. Why spend money on lab equipment when you can just show Jessica Alba stripping and immediately double the worlds conception rates.

Having a world full of super-men would be great, but having a world full of Rock bodies and Hawkins brains would suck ass.

[an0n]

Originally posted by CP5670
Because we have survived up to this point. On the flip side, what makes you think that we will not? It is certainly a possibility that we will all die out shortly, but keeping this sex crap is not going to do anything to shift the probabilities. Let's stay on topic.

Personally I'd prefer straight out, oblivion welcoming death than transcendence.

Sex is more efficient than cloning and is far easier.

[CP5670]

Pfff. I'm all for genetic engineering but cloning is just plain stupid. Why spend money on lab equipment when you can just show Jessica Alba stripping and immediately double the worlds conception rates.

Bah, you are thinking like the US military did before war planes became mainstream. The answer to the why part is that the new type can be much more advanced for productive output. And who is this Alba?

Having a world full of super-men would be great, but having a world full of Rock bodies and Hawkins brains would suck ass.

I'm not sure what you mean by "rock bodies;" we would be able to move around fine utilizing the current system for some time. There will be a time when that changes around as well, but that will come much later.

Personally I'd prefer straight out, oblivion welcoming death than transcendence.

Ah, so you are a nihilist then. Nihilism does have some merits, but there are a few contradictions that arise from that system of thought. Still, next to this "scientific rationalism," I would rank it second-best.

Sex is more efficient than cloning and is far easier.

Yes, at the moment. Just as doing a complicated math calculation was more efficient and easier on paper than on a computer 50 years ago.

[Thorn]

Have you ever taken biology at school? Studied genetics of any sort? Even the basics?
I suggest you do if you havent yet..

[CP5670]

Of course I have (had to for school; crappy subject), but how does that support your argument?

[an0n]

Originally posted by CP5670


Bah, you are thinking like the US military did before war planes became mainstream. The answer to the why part is that the new type can be much more advanced for productive output. And who is this Alba?

~-=™! Jessica Alba. Dark Angel. Check the LW/WS hottie thread. !™=-~

I'm not sure what you mean by "rock bodies;" we would be able to move around fine utilizing the current system for some time. There will be a time when that changes around as well, but that will come much later.

~-=™! The Rock. As in the WWF guy. I was saying that supermen=good, but million of people who are just as clever and strong as each other is stupid. !™=-~

Ah, so you are a nihilist then. Nihilism does have some merits, but there are a few contradictions that arise from that system of thought.

~-=™! I am aware of the contradictions but they are inconsequential !™=-~

Yes, at the moment. Just as doing a complicated math calculation was more efficient and easier on paper than on a computer 50 years ago.

~-=™! So you're telling me that you can clone someone while drunk and stoned off your ass at 2am while eating a kebab in the back seat of your car? Yeah, right. !™=-~

[CP5670]

Jessica Alba. Dark Angel. Check the LW/WS hottie thread.

I see. another one of those idiots.

The Rock. As in the WWF guy. I was saying that supermen=good, but million of people who are just as clever and strong as each other is stupid.

How is it stupid? What we are headed for though is more in the way of specialization, where all the billions are equally smart but at different subjects.

I am aware of the contradictions but they are inconsequential.

ha! Contradictions are exactly what destroy a system. If you don't mind them, what is wrong with Al Qaeda Islam?

So you're telling me that you can clone someone while drunk and stoned off your ass at 2am while eating a kebab in the back seat of your car? Yeah, right.

Are you on crack or something? That made no sense at all. What I was saying is that there is no simple way to determine for sure what system is best for a purpose in an infinite pool; only whether one is better or not than another.

[an0n]

an0n's interpretation:
Paper was good until computers came along
IE
Cloning is easier/more efficient than sex

an0n's response:
You can knock someones up pretty damn easy.