"A scientific milestone in cloning technology"

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
41

So the first issue raised, Ms. Jenneth, is more of an issue with with how it is used, and not the process itself, and these are separate things that should be noted as such. Often there is a temptation to decry technologies as evil simply because some people put them to evil uses, and so, instead of stopping the evil use and finding the sometimes immense good possible, the entire idea is thrown out, condemning, ultimately, many to suffer that need not have suffered. Misuse of God’s gifts to us is a grave offense, yes, but so is casual rejection of God’s gifts.

The other problem with your first argument is that it is probably not actually accurate, while it is certainly a very common use of cloning, as far as I am aware, we do not have the statistics publicly available to prove it either way (I’ve looked), but that which we do have does tend to incline one to believe it is probably not true.

Admittedly, there are a lot of variables that we really don’t have enough data easily available, and of course exactly how accurate some of the statistics are is uncertain. Still, by checking how many pod deaths were reported in the last week (slightly over 27k according to the most popular galnet site used to track such things), we can make some rough estimates, taking into account that likely not all are recorded and this doesn’t account for things such as jump clones. Still, I would guess probably not more than 5 million clones a year are used by capsuleers. Even if this figure is low, this is still a very small fraction of the over 100 million clones a year used planetside in figures from some twenty years ago. The figures from about twenty years ago also give a figure of a bit over 40 million a year sold to space captains, which at the time likely included figures for clones meant for baseliner crews as well, since 40 million clones a year for capsuleers alone seems perhaps high (and it lists space captains and not capsuleers, though my understanding is that historically it took some time for the current terminology to become standard). Of course, I’m sure many of the clones used by non-capsuleers are used by militaries for various purposes, but there is certainly still strong civilian use.

It is true that the copying process is not perfect, about twenty years ago, it was listed as 99.99% accurate, which is … well, compared to the normal amount of forgetting and change a human mind goes through, extremely insignificant and probably lost as noise when looking at the greater picture of what impacts the human mind. That said, the science was young back then, they may have overlooked some things. It is true that there are probably people interested in keeping the full truth of such matters from the general public and from capsuleers such as ourselves, however, it is extremely hard to keep such things secret for long, though it has sometimes been managed. But overall, human minds are very changeable things, and while I am sure cloning does affect this change, its impact is very likely ultimately very minor.

On the spiritual question, I would very much tend to agree with Ms. Rhiannon on the matter, while acknowledging that there are people, including to my understanding most Amarr, that have a different view on the matter to an extent and view there are being more of a dualistic model of a separate soul and body, with a variety of different ways that they may interact. So this is an area where individual beliefs may impact one’s view. It is my view, however, that the possibility of using both cloning and bodymodding to help solve many of the misalignments where bodies do not correctly suit the spiritual needs of the person (as was the case for me, as a disabled and transgender individual), should be enthusiastically embraced. Of course, for some people, not all of the details of their body may be important to them in that way, a generic body may indeed be close enough to what is spiritually suitable to them that it causes less problems that other aspects of their life they use it to escape from cause them. So, as long as Upwell is honest about this, I do not see a reason that it cannot be helpful – but of course that requires them to be honest in their advertising, which is not something I am expecting particularly.

42

With respect, ma’am, at least one of your numbers is taken pretty badly out of context. The “99.99% accurate” figure is for a clone of the very, very highest quality, made out of top-quality certified human cadavers. These would have been rather expensive even for many eggers, commanding a price in the tens of millions of ISK.

That’s the period where my own skeleton would have been made out of other people’s skeletons-- I was already an experienced capsuleer at that time, so preserving my infomorph’s integrity was a high priority for me.

Most clones, though, maintained much less fidelity, and transfers into lower-grade ones, constructed from vat-grown tissue and osteoplastic, represented a substantial threat to even functional skills such as ship command.

The technology’s improved since than, of course; clone grades are a thing of the past, and it’s likely that we all now enjoy that 99.99% fidelity. Maybe it’s even better, now. Even so, there are those who look at the loss of one ten-thousandth of their being to entropy, and wonder which ten-thousandth, and whether it’s something they would have lost anyway … or whether it’s something they’ll miss.

I’m unsure of the sources of your other numbers but would point out a few things. Firstly, there are the warclones, whose statistics aren’t tracked but whose every death is a “podding.” That’s the infantry I mentioned. They wouldn’t turn up in egger statistics.

Secondly, that’s 100 million clones used yearly with a cluster-wide population of multiple trillions. Take into account the expense and the uncertain results outside of a controlled environment like a pod or cloning lab, and…

Very few pod captains clone their baseliner crews. I’m uncertain of the mechanism for that outside of backups, and also please keep in mind that every burn-scan, the only method for clone scanning we currently have, irreparably damages or destroys the brain that’s being scanned. Normally this kills the body that contains it. Maybe someone’s figured out an efficient way to work around this-- brain transplants or something-- but mostly even creating backups means a new body is required.

Also, a backup’s existence is, practically, cold comfort for the backed-up. It guarantees resumption of that person’s life from that particular point, but I’m not the person I was even five minutes ago; the bio-electrical spark of mine that I’m primarily concerned with is the one between my ears right now, this very moment.

My backups exist for the benefit of Directrix Phonaga and others. If one is used, it’ll be because I am dead. I’ll be beyond caring.

Technologies don’t strike me as inherently evil or inherently good-- or as “gifts.” They’re tools, ways we’ve figured out for doing X or Y. People will use a knife for all sorts of things, even if it’s dangerous. Even the process of using one to cut into a human body is neither always beneficial nor baneful-- could be surgery, could be murder.

The gift-- or the harm-- will be in what is done with what we’ve learned to do. But to use a tool wisely it’s necessary to understand the risks along with the potential benefits.

That’s all.

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I’ll respond in detail later, but the sources for many of the figures can be found here: https://universe.eveonline.com/scientific-articles/cloning , it is from prior to the existence of warclones, so they would not be included in the statistics.

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Mm. Okay. It’d definitely factor into more recent ones, though actually probably planetary cloning’s become more common as the tech has improved. Another thing to consider: neither reversion to backups nor creation of same, nor use of jump clones, will appear in pod loss statistics.

Anyway, hammering all this out to get a fully accurate picture would probably take quite a bit but it’s really kinda beside the point, ma’am.

Much of the wincing you’re seeing is from old eggers who’ve seen our share of war and are at least a little bit aware of our part in contributing to the death toll. Upwell makes, basically, fortifications; it’s kinda their “thing.” Even their industrial facilities, like the Athanor, tend to be kind of … violent.

Mining by massive orbital barrage, kind of thing.

So we see them up to something like this and we think, “Great, more war.”

45

This is just horrible. Of course it is not about offering disabled Amarrian elderly the opportunity to start life anew as shown in one of their adverts. This is about creating a clone workforce with thousands of copies of that man.

And that is unfair competition for the honest mom-and-pop slave trade!

Patiently trained artisanal slaves can not and should not be replaced by industrially mass produced clones. This has to be outlawed in the Empire, just like we banned that genetically modified wheat from the State since it presented an unfair competition for natural wheat.

46

Theoretically, making cloning technology more available to the public could do a lot of good. Replacing lost crew aboard starships is just one facet of that.

That said, I am deeply skeptical of the intentions of the corporation offering this, especially the way they’re marketing it. It feels like the setup to a system of exploitation through debt. We will be watching very closely, and if it turns out that they are intending to trap people in what amounts to servitude…

Well, to quote the Ushra’Khan, we will come for our people.

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… That … would seem considerably more doable if they weren’t apparently planning to staff what are essentially military fortifications with your people. Probably a lot of people’s people. And clone them if they die.

That could be a kind of servitude it’s hard to rescue people from.

I mean, I’m not unsympathetic. But Upwell being a developer of fortified structures I feel a little like their reaction might be, “Cool, free product testing!”

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That is a problem. But it’s a familiar problem. The Amarr use slaves as crew aboard their warships. We accepted long ago that sometimes, we have to kill some of our own people in order to free the rest. And no fortification is invincible. If we have to send in dreadnoughts, so be it.

Of course, there are other tactics at our disposal. Upwell is, after all, a corporate entity, not a sovereign star nation. If they want to operate in our space, they will have to abide by our laws.

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49

Hm. So-- if I were Upwell and had access to this tech I’m pretty sure I’d link clone survival to structure integrity by any or several of various means. The justification would be compliance with the rule against multiple copies of a single person: if you’re mass-cloning an entire crew all at once it’s more efficient not to have to account for survivors, so it’s probably most efficient just to reduce the survival rate to zero so you can safely assume every clone in the program, died.

If I were being nice about it I might use the period between timers to back everyone up, but depending on costs and other specifics I also might just restart people from stored templates.

Say, do we know whether they’re using clone soldier tech for this? From the looks of the ad the clones aren’t especially expensive or heavily-personalized, so it’s possible they’re using clone soldier implants, all the bodies involved are disposable and largely interchangeable, and anybody who dies will be stepping out of a clone bank a few seconds later with full memory of their last moments.

I guess going up with a station or getting zapped dead by my own onboard cybernetics when the system ordered a shutdown on station destruction would probably be less traumatic than getting shot to death and then having to run out and get shot to death again. Probably. … Well, probably less painful at least.

I wonder if they’re thinking of doing this for/to ship crews, too. … Now I say it I’m nearly sure they are, regardless of whether they’re rolling it out this year or in twenty.

Edit:

Oh-- as for operating in your space … well … I’m not sure what Upwell is selling is going to be something anybody can afford to turn up their nose at, however … ethically difficult … it might be. Put it this way: these are functionally military assets, tools of warfare. (Just about everything to do with eggers is to one degree or another, but Upwell fortifications are really pretty unambiguous.)

So if you ban them and your enemies don’t. . . .

Edit of edit:

Then also even if you just say, “we won’t let our nationals contract with you” I wonder if that’ll really work out.

I’m around 40 years old by now. Admittedly my mind’s been cloned a lot; my current body’s only a few days old. Anyway what I’m getting at is, I don’t feel middle-aged. I just feel like me.

Maybe it’s different if you’re just in one body, feeling yourself growing older. But I suspect while some really elderly people are at peace with their mortality and might not sign on for a new life in a new body (or succession of same), a lot would jump at the chance.

Let’s say the Upwell bargain is something like: “Sign on with us for fifty years. Presuming a positive record, at the end of that time we release you from service and outfit you with a new, fully-customized clone built to your specifications and with an expected future survival of seventy years or longer.”

Probably not a difficult deal for Upwell to uphold, and likely cost-effective. Now, say Grandmother is looking at a choice between Upwell or the spirit world, as everyone will be at some point.

Are you truly going to tell her she can’t?

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If they actually keep to their word? No. People have the right to make those kind of contracts. My fear is that they will have various means of extending the contract indefinitely.

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51

So, sure, but I’m not sure they need to get up to shenanigans like that. They’re going to want to maximize their recruiting pool so they can keep new structures staffed, no matter how many they end up with. That’ll probably remain so for a long time. Even if they’re operating ruthlessly in some ways, reputation helps with that kind of thing.

Then also, somebody who’s been working for you for five decades seems like a very dangerous kind of person to hand a motive for revenge.

Being nice and/or honorable isn’t just about making friends. It’s also about protecting yourself.

52

True. They can probably do just fine by being legitimate. But it wouldn’t be the first time a corporate leader made shortsighted decisions in the name of maximizing profits.

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53

True.

One “dirty trick” I could see them potentially pulling is making the indenture shorter-term, but subjective, so you might owe them five or ten years but the clock’s only running when you’re active. That might mean they can just not-revive you and keep you as an archived infomorph until needed.

It’s an obvious enough trick that I feel like the contract would have to contain some objective limits to keep the horror stories from piling up, though.

Edit:

I don’t feel offhand like Upwell’s the kind of company that’s likely to fall into the “short-term profits” trap. My worry is more that they’ve taken a look at Triglavian society with its apparently total indifference to death and said something like, “Goodness me, doesn’t that look profitable for people licensing and staffing structures and warships!”

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I will weigh in on this particular bit, there’s likely some adjacent technologies, but the presumption that this is just ‘cutdown’ warclone technologies likely doesn’t hold much water. Having worked with and helped develop a number of civilianized warclone technologies directly during the Eugales Projects and ongoing MHC-R3 project alongside the Round Table Assembly, the Upwell technology seems a much more invasive procession because of the stated neural map modifications as standard in the leaked technical overview.

I will largely be steering clear of Upwell’s cloning technologies beyond basic trialing against the civilianized warclone implants and cloning process, and frankly believe that even if the upwell technology is cheaper, the warclone derived civilian technologies will remain the superior option due to less crazed legal pliance by contract requirement

55

I definitely agree that this is a technology that can do a lot of good.

Will corporations such as Upwell use it for good and not for scummy things? Well, that remains to be seen.

And yeah, as long as they are open and honest about the contracts they are making and don’t try to trick people … well, if people feel it’s a deal worth making, that’s their choice and it needs to be respected.

But there also needs to be vigilance to make sure those with the power don’t abuse it.

I’m interested to see where this goes. I have hope, even if it seems that so often we see our hopes dashed and people doing the worst things. But what are we if we give up hope?

56

It sounds like they are meddling with things they couldn’t possibly understand. No good can come of this!

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