Dear Imagination: please stop. Really.

[katranna]

I had another one of my oddly-science-fiction-flavored dreams ("oddly" because it's been years since I've actively read sci-fi), and this one was pretty damn traumatic. I can try to blame it on the bit of "Alice in Wonderland" that I saw the other night, and a fairly gruesome Steampunk story from an anthology I am trying to read (more on that later

Comments

[a_priori]

It makes a much better story if it turns out that the test subjects are in fact the originals - kind of inverts a standard clone-story trope.

But it would probably be better still if you had other dreams!

[katranna]

Well, I woke up as I was contemplating the ethics, and part of the mindfuck of the dream (ie, "but why are they punishing the CLONES?")is that the distinction between clone and original is made pretty much irrelevant if the clone has the memory and personality of the original anyway.

[a_priori]

I'm not sure that that's true.

Suppose you are (against your will) about to be used in a cloning experiment. You have no choice about this, but the mad scientists responsible are willing to offer you a less pleasant sort of choice. They say, "it would be really confusing to have two identical Katrines running around, so after the experiment ends we're going to kill one. We'll let you pick - should we kill you, or the clone we're going to create?"

Presumably you wouldn't be indifferent. Even if you heroically offered to be the one to die, presumably you would regard this as an act of self-sacrifice. Either way, this seems to show that there is a meaningful distinction between you and your clone.

(This topic has a surprisingly large literature in philosophy.)

[katranna]

Oh, I wouldn't be indifferent, certainly. There'd be a difference to me. But if the clone were really identical, with identical memories and self-awareness and all that, to an outsider, it would be the same.

(I assume my family might also wish for the "original me" to survive, but I'd say that would be a reflexive emotional rather than rational response, since if they weren't told which was which, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

[bluepixystix]

Are you eating or drinking anything weird before bed when you have these dreams?

[katranna]

Nope! It's just always been like that! It's rare that such a dream honestly disturbs me though, usually they are more entertaining-scary.

[kylecassidy]

wow. that dream is better than any of those Horror AFter Dark movies I got from netflix.

[katranna]

My dreams often have more interesting plots or twists than anything I'd come up with while awake. Also apparently more gruesome.

By the way, I thought it was funny that I knew who had retweeted the jetpack on my twitter feed even without looking at the "Retweeted by" byline. :-)