Re: Discrimination?

If they do pick on them, they have got some other problem that does not involve cloning.

People who pick on others are always going to find some reason and excuse to pick on people. If it's not cloning, then believe me, it will be something else. They will set people up and FIND excuses to pick on others. And if it can't be one thing, it will be another.

2) Clones are not necessarily going to be smarter than everyone else. Smart people as well as not-so-smart-people can reproduce their genes through either cloning or natural reproduction (such as one-night stands with someone one hardly knows). (Also lead levels have a great deal to do with lowering I.Q. points.)

In fact I would be concerned that not-so-smart people would be preferred by some, since it can often be easier to pull the wool over their eyes and manipulate them.

But again, this sort of thing can be accomplished either through cloning OR natural reproduction --- IF these things can somehow or other be manipulated by those who desire to manipulate these sorts of things.

This is why it is important that the parents be the ones choosing the genes of the child, rather than a dictator of any sort.

Another thing to consider is that intelligence is a very broad "umbrella" word which can mean many different things. To say that someone is "intelligent" does not indicate much in itself: It could mean that someone is a mathematical genuis, and it could also mean that someone is a musical genuis. You have to get to know a person to know what sort of intelligence they have.

Again this is why it is so important that the parents who will raise the child also decide upon its genetic make-up (as they do when they choose marriage partners).

It is easy for us in our limited human perspectives to put more value and worth on one type of "intelligence" and have blind-spots to other forms of it.* No dictator should be manipulating the entire gene pool, in any way --- natural conception or through cloning.

If the dictator has a misconception or some sort of farcical thinking about "the" definition of "intelligence," he can affect too much of the gene pool. But when the parents maintain their God-given (or otherwise inherent) automony about these decisions, then if they have a foolish idea about intelligence (such as how fast one drives their car, or how much make-up they wear, etc.) --- then that stupidity is only going to affect a small part of the gene pool, and eventually this "stupidity" will become quickly recognized as that, and a lesson will be learned, rather than an entire population being damaged by such an imbalance as that.

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*For instance, the word "slow" is sometimes used to describe people who are mentally deficient. But people sometimes can ALSO be "slow" simply because they have other things on their minds or focus, and so this is not necessarily a sign that they are not able to grasp something at all.

It is perhaps a bit like the tortoise and the hare. It is not that the hare COULD not get there, but he got distracted along the way (and perhaps impatient).

Western society has come to think of ability to make "fast" decisions as some sort of virtue, and sometimes this is partly true, but only because it is convenient for certain types of business decisions.

I once read somewhere that Middle Eastern societies, on the other hand, value and have more respect for decisions which are NOT made quickly.