Ask HN: A thought experiment about human cloning (warning: a tad macabre)
The wool gathering led me to several thought trains. Robert Heinlein and his Howard Families. About how in poor countries, people had more children because it meant more hands to work in the field. Sometimes because infants died due to illnesses and having more was the only way to ensure you had even more.
And then I remember reading at some point about parents having a child to be a donor for a health compromised older child.
Which got me thinking something macabre. One of the ways to create longer lifespans would be to have an extra set of organs/stem cells/blood. If I were to write science fiction, I would create clones and remove consciousness. Maybe this would mean a body within a head. The clone would exist just to harvest organs.
Theoretically speaking, one would need a non ageing clone. Because what’s the point of bodies and organs that continue to age.
So perhaps now we are looking at skin sacs and transferable consciousness.
Assuming this is possible, why stop with one non ageing skin sac? Why not have different avatars and different ages? It’s like we time travel for our bodies.
If such a tech were available, how many here would sign up for it to download consciousness and to obtain multiple skin sacs.