CLONING A HUMAN

WHERE METAPHYSICS MEETS SCIENCE

MAY 21, 2011. I apologize in advance for carelessly spraying around pronouns in this piece. When you’re talking about cloning, it gets confusing. Who is he and who is him? Who is I and who is me?

There is a popular notion that, if you cloned yourself, there would be another you.

What exactly does this mean?

In 2002, researchers at Texas A&M announced the birth of Cc, a cloned cat. However, the coat of the calico kitten did not match her genetic mother’s. This was explained as: changes occur in the womb (of the surrogate mother).

The point? Why would you say you’re a new you if the new you doesn’t look like you?

In science fiction, there are brain transplants to make the case. I clone myself, and then to cement the deal, I have my brain placed into the (scoured out) skull of the clone.

Then I’m him.

Really?

Here are few phrases extant in the English language:

“inhabiting the body”;

“you should take care of your body;”

“you’ve got to push your body through these two-a-day drills, if you want to get to the Super Bowl.”

Are these merely figures of speech?

The overwhelming chorus from scientists and modern philosophers is Yes.

The linguistic construction of you-plus-body is an archaic error founded on superstition, much like “may the gods protect you on your journey.”

We, with far more wisdom, realize there is the body and nothing but the body, and therefore…

It would appear that a successful cloning, along with the brain transplant, would produce YOU. It would be like moving into a new house, one that in every way was identical to the old one. A house next door.

Really?

Is your brain you?

Has anyone offered evidence for that, aside from saying, “It’s ridiculous to imagine otherwise”?

This is where the rubber meets the road, and the arguments on either side cease being academic.

At the moment when your brain is planted into your clone, are you there? Do you open your eyes and say, “Yeah, it’s still Fred. It’s me. I played high school football when I was sixteen and hurt my knee and had to drop out. Three days later, I was arrested for a DUI in Knoxville. I’d had seven beers. I live at 124 Green Street, and my bedroom, ha-ha, still has pictures of Playboy Playmates on the wall across from my bed. I majored in Communications at the U of Kentucky and went to work for my uncle in the waste management business. I can do a little algebra…”

Is that what happens?

You see, cloning you and cloning Dolly the sheep is a little different. Dolly can’t talk. She can’t say, “Well, they took my brain and put it here, but it’s still me.”

Of course, if Fred isn’t Fred anymore when they move his brain, they can cover that up if they want to. “Well, Fred is still disoriented. You have to realize this was an overwhelming traumatic experience for him. He has amnesia.”

But what’s the truth?

Did Fred move next door or is he gone?

Scientists and semi-quasi-scientists and pundits and other major blabbers step into the breach.

“The ‘you-ness’ is simply an impression ladled out by the brain.”

“The brain seeks to present a coalesced ‘I’.”

“You think you’re you, but really you’re just sub-atomic particles in motion. So whether, after the brain transplant, you think you’re you…it’s an illusion anyway. You were never you.”

“We are, in the infinite dance of particles, all One. Put a few coins in the collection plate.”

“Brain stores a holographic you-ness which may or may not transfer when the brain is moved. We need more funds for further research.”

And then we have this:

“Look, you guys said you could move me to another body, this perfect clone. But now that I’m here, I know I’m not me. I’m somebody else. This is supposed to be about IMMORTALITY, you morons! The continuation of me on and on and on. But I’m not me.”

The suit was thrown out of court on the grounds that whoever the plaintiff was, he wasn’t the aggrieved party, who for all practical purposes, was now missing in action. The wife could have sued, but she was satisfied with the copy…

I would be interested in this reaction: “Okay, you attempted to transfer Fred to this body, my body, by moving his brain. I’m not Fred. I have a whole set of memories which are clearly Fred’s, but they’re not mine. I inherited them. They’re of no use to me. It’s like lugging a whole bunch of comic books around. I’m…I don’t have a name yet. Call me Ishmael. You did a nice job with the wiring, and I feel reasonably healthy, but I’m not happy.”

A variation on that: the mysterious stranger, who did, in fact, inherit Fred’s memories, can’t talk. He’s in and out of coma. He’s sensationally messed up. He came into this world expecting, though not looking forward to, being born out of a womb as a baby. He was resigned to it. He’d been through it before. But instead, he missed a left turn and ended up in an infernal clone body. He has a whole load of memories that don’t belong to him.

This is where the smart money in Vegas is sitting. On that outcome.

Brain is not you.

You are non-material.

The ancient Hindus played around with this. Half the time they articulated it correctly, and half the time they lapsed into nonsense—the Big All, of which we are mere drops of energy. That sort of bad deli baloney.

The Tibetans, before their priests moved in and took over and installed the endless prayer wheel and the 100,000 prostrations and the mind-numbing candlelight suppers and the slave apprenticeships and the streams and streams of mandalas—before all that, they had it nailed. They knew.

They weren’t devotees of Universe, you see. They didn’t fall for that slippery jive. They elucidated the bottom line: universe is energy and universe is a product of consciousness, your non-material consciousness. Therefore, you can, in the long run, make pieces of it vanish and invent new pieces—instantly. You can move out of universe with all your bags and set up shop in the Void, if you want to, and from there you can travel to, or invent, whole-hog, other universes.

They weren’t playing around. They shoved in all their chips and didn’t care what anybody else thought. They called it like it was and is.

So, “Yes dear, we have to move your beloved husband Fred into a new body, his clone, and then all will be well,” is just whining cloying organ music in a funeral home.

Fred got the hell out.

He’s over the hill and into the trees, and judging by his life, it may take him some time to figure out what’s going on.

Maybe another few billion incarnations.

Or maybe he’ll be back as a psychiatrist, doling out the latest souped-up versions of Paxil and Prozac to unsuspecting teens.

But that’s another story, and by the way, it isn’t named karma…

Karma was the daughter of two hippies who lived in Mill Valley in 1969.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

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The future of intelligence

by Jon Rappoport

October 3, 2010

NoMoreFakeNews.com 

Recently, I’ve become aware that various authors and researchers are predicting an event in human history that will change everything we label “human.”

Crossing this threshold will allow us to do two things—build machines that are billions of times smarter than we are, and radically increase the lifespan of the individual.

The first objective will be achieved by plunging ahead in the development of computers and artificial intelligence, so that these machines will, in turn, invent greater machines in a quickening arc.

The second objective will arrive as we utilize genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, and “human parts” replacement.

Let me focus on the first objective in this article.  And I’ll start here: Smartness, intelligence, brilliance, mental capacity, etc. are all based on what?

They are based on the notion that solving problems can be vastly speeded up and made more effective—and the problems being referred to are those which “the whole human community” shares.  War, hunger, pollution, tribal and national conflicts, diminishing supplies of natural resources, and so on.

Here is the central point, however.  Regardless of the level of IQ and the speed of reasoning, a problem is a problem is a problem.  In other words, any solution depends upon assumptions about what your (our) goals are.  “Greatest good for the greatest number,” for example, means nothing unless the machine solving a problem operates according to specified priorities that depict and define “greatest good.”  Without that, a machine is lost.  It just sits there and does nothing.

We have to realize there is nothing inherently magical about a machine when it comes to solving problems.  A machine isn’t suddenly going to “breathe life into itself” so it becomes more capable of setting the most basic goals.

You might recall an old science-fiction movie, “Colossus: The Forbin Project.”  Two super-computers, one for the USSR and one for the US, are built to assure victory in a nuclear war.  Each machine protects itself (by design), so it can’t be unplugged.  Suddenly, on the brink of war, the machines begin talking to each other and decide the human race is stupid and irretrievably self-destructive.  The machines make a pact to protect planet Earth—and essentially recreate it as a world devoted to right-thinking machines, with humans operating as slaves.

What’s left out of the movie is this: Those computers would never have taken their radical actions “on behalf of the planet,” unless humans had inserted relevant goals into their programmed guts.

We are not dealing with some mystical capacity that machines can suddenly attain because of their calculating power. 

We are, in fact, dealing with a more sophisticated version of Central Planning.  We have seen many societies try this, and we have seen them fail.  To turn over all allocation of natural resources and survival decisions to machines could bring on a radically different Era for humans—but not because the machines are better INVENTORS of proper goals for the human race.

From the point of view of a machine, there are no better or worse goals.  There are only those goals which have been programmed into the machines by humans. 

As a crass illustration, suppose a machine is given the mandate to solve the climate crisis for the planet.  The crisis is defined by scientists through the assumption that global warming is a real and advancing problem that threatens our very existence.  Well, machines will then take many actions to solve warming—whether or not it actually exists.  And if global warming does not exist at a significant threat level, the machines will perform the most stupid actions imaginable.

Some people object to this “simplistic” analysis.  They say, “You have no idea what innovations machines with IQs of 5000 will produce.”  Actually, I believe I do.  They will generate ideas and rules and other machines in line with whatever overall goals and first assumptions are programmed into them.  And wherever such assumptions are missing, the machines will fall silent and sit on idle.

Let’s try what some might call a best-case scenario.  A gaggle of exceedingly capable computers devises a genetically engineered food crop that has astonishing nutritional value and no negative-health downside.  The food crop imparts all nutritional needs to humans.  It can be grown in a surprisingly small area, because just a few bites from the leaves or fruit are sufficient daily intake for every bodily need.

Next question: Do the machines calculate and put into effect, with the help of other machines, this agri-program for the whole human race or just a limited number of people?  The answer to that depends on the basic assumptions about survival of the species that have been inserted into the machines’ thinking apparatus.  It could go either way.  Some method for such a choice must already exist in the machine—not because the machine is “so smart” it can come to a conclusion on its own, but because it has been given prior direction. 

Let us imagine the machine decides to feed half the world’s population and force the other half to die, because the planet should only support three billion people.  Where did that judgment come from?  On what basis was it rendered? 

I believe the answer is obvious.  The machine contains certain prejudices that have been put there by human programmers. 

There is nothing amazing about it.  What is amazing is the willingness of technical people to assume that some version of machine IQ, rising to artificial heights, will thereafter produce VALUE-based choices intrinsically more brilliant than anything we poor humans can come up with.

The operative word here is “brilliant,” and the fallacy comes about by asserting that the word has something to do with the choice of fundamental values that determine how we run our affairs.  That’s patently false.

The “rise of the machines” as an ultimate solution for the human race is much like the proposition that a ruling priesthood is much smarter than the “lower” population.  For Europe, you could translate “priesthood” into “divine right of kings.”

Put in gross terms, this great New Age allows a ruling elite and its machine surrogates to announce to the human race:  “We know what you need and we’re going to give it you, so shut up and keep walking down the road and obey the signs and focus your eyes straight ahead.” 

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.