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December 31, 2002
Contents
1.
Meanderings
2.
Attack of the clones
3.
Bookends
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. . .)
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).
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 web site 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.
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!
Until next time,
Best wishes,
David Darling