Cloning memory?

https://futurism.com/cloned-pets-memories-china-cat

Here are my thoughts.

I don't see how this is immortality.

If we could make an exact copy of you, including what was currently going on in your brain, and the original you were terminated, to your friends and family, you would continue to live. But the original you would be gone, so, for you it's not immortality.

If the original you were not terminated, you would have an identical twin, and the two of you would gradually become more different as you had different experiences. I don't believe your "mind" would be in two different bodies.

This has always bothered me about Captain Kirk getting beamed down to a planet. I think he dies each time, and a perfect clone of him is created.

Immortality or not, it opens up some interesting sci-fi speculations. Suppose all of the memory and learning of a mature adult could be downloaded to an infant clone of that adult, then when that infant grew to maturity, all of his or her memory and learning were downloaded to another infant clone, and so on... The result would be a super-human with an accumulated memory and learning that could potentially encompass hundreds, even thousands of years.

Like The Alien,that remembered everything from it's ancestors.

If the process were not patented but instead remained a closely guarded corporate secret with only a select group chosen to participate, would the emergent super-humans become devils or angels? Would they be power mad overlords or gentle Buddhas?

I would expect that at the moment of natural death,a clone could be implanted with your memories and you would experience perhaps a momentary blip,like blinking your eyes.

The clone would have a blank slate,so to speak before the transfer.

Yea,I know,I should write a sci fi story about this.

There is loads of stuff on the teletransportation paradox.

I read a sci fi story about a guy transporting from the East coast to the West coast of the US. There was a fault; the copy arrived safely and went to meet his fiance; the original spent 6 months in hospital, but recovered fully and then went to meet his fiance......

I can't find it now: maybe another copy of me would remember the title or the author.

Just because something might be possible does not mean that is practical or probable...

https://massivesci.com/articles/pet-cloning-dogs-personality/

On the other hand, child care would forever be changed.....

There have been a number of movies dealing with the subject of human cloning...none of them seem to end well...except maybe Multiplicity...

...and that was producing fully grown clones, not really possible I would think...

Well first of all you would need to inject the memory at an appropriate age say 20 years old, then you need to consider the relative time thing, as you get older time speeds up because each day becomes a smaller part of the larger experience contained in the memory, so each time you regenerated the time would be relatively shorter....So there's also the loss of support from friends and relatives that would pass, and they would get harder and harder to replace....then we must consider mental stability, this I think would become an issue due to the changing world around you and the constant pressure to adapt, let's face it it's already a pain in the arse...then the ethical question which I believe blows this idea right out of the water, what society would allow you to impregnate several women, and take your choice of which of the offspring you would commandeer mentally...and what about the rest of your offspring, what is their status if not free individuals that might not like the idea, already the cost is in the millions and the status in permanent legal limbo...no this is not something that will happen in the foreseeable future and morally speaking never...cling to the past and be trampled by the future, best to just move on...

Remember,I said China is working on this idea of cloning memory.

Moral,ethical and expense are no hindrance there.

Perhaps they will find a way of totally erasing a being's previous memory and replacing it with a cloned memory?

I am sure that the leaders there would like their memories cloned into younger replacement bodies.

And if they succeeded,it could be considered a military threat,and so other countries would have to respond in like measure..and "Round and round it goes,and where it stops nobody knows.."

Memories of how to do something in the past doesn't mean you know how to do it in the future....or that the knowledge is even useful...

Memories are only useful if they are truthful and accurate...subjective memories are not likely to be either....

Relevance is performance art...

A good point. The clone of a concert pianist who has received the memory of having that expertise in the old body will not necessarily be able to play the piano (unless motor skills are also somehow part of the memory transfer).

I admit it seems a long way off.They cannot even clone the fur pattern in a cloned cat even though the DNA is identical.

There are lots of external unknown factors that have effects on the embryo.

However,persistent research over long periods of time will eventually yield results.

I am not sure that we do not posses some memories from past generations,we just cannot consciously retrieve them

For instance.,the person that awakes from a coma after a head injury that speaks and understands a foreign language,or posses a skill,such as playing a piano expertly without any previous training.

Mother nature is not wasteful.The 90% of our brain is not useless,it is there for a reason.Perhaps it holds the untapped channels of our ancestors?

The Buddhists believe that when you are born you know virtually everything,and as you learn to speak,you ultimately settle down to one channel and stay there for the rest of your life.

I tend to agree with them to some extent.

These guys must be disciples of Lamarck and Lysenko.

There is evidence to support that the idea that the health of your grandchidlren are influenced by your experiences in puberty.

If your grandfather experienced periods of famine as an adolescent,you will have a high resistance to disease. If on the other hand,your grandmother experienced the same famine-like condition during puberty,the grandaughteres will experience more health problems.

There is a positive feedback effect on the DNA of external forces.

Some skills are "hard wired" into animals;For example nest building in basket weaver birds,just to name one,but there are many others.

Why should humans be different from the rest of the animal kingdom?(No difference except our ego)

There are chemicals that can alter the DNA for future generations;epigenetic changes.

I fear the eventual outcome. Imagine if you only needed to train one soldier REALLY well, then imprint that into all others without the risk, time or expenses.

A little like "MATRIX", if I want to fly a helicopter, simply download the skill. Years of learning in an instant.

No need for skill development, no need for iterative schooling.

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." The Borg

A desire to <...live forever...> suggests both a pinnacle of selfishness and an end to evolution by natural selection.

I personally have no desire to live forever.It would be a sad and long existence, I am sure,unless all of your friends and family could also have that ability.

Like some very old people I have known,when all of their same generation relatives and friends have passed away,they welcome and await their demise;The long nap;The dreamless sleep;The great mystery.

They will willingly go quietly into that dark night.

A clone of yourself into which all of your memories and learning are transferred - is that immortality? Not sure. The clone would be a new entity.

To ensure memory and learning is transferred to a blank slate, the optimum time to make the transfer would be when the clone is still in the womb. Would be interesting. The fetus clone would then have all the memory and learning of an adult and therefore would understand what was happening when the birth contractions begin, and would remember the experience of birth. When the clone pops out he/she could tell everyone about it (and then continue with his/her studies and interests).

Wouldn't this make Chronovisor useless?

Tardigrades are pretty close to immortal.

They have been around for millions of years,preceding the dinosaurs.

Yeah , but they probably don't remember much...

Partigrade...

I remember from elementary school an experiment where Planarian worms were trained to avoid eating when a red light was turned on.After training,they were fed to untrained Planarian worms,and the untrained worms avoided the red light without any training.This seemed to indicate that memory is a chemical process that can be passed down to others.DNA is a chemical compound ,so why not?

"This seemed to indicate that memory is a chemical process that can be passed down to others.DNA is a chemical compound ,so why not?"

Digestion...food particles are broken down by the digestive system, which as we know is acids and bacteria in the human...

Y'all need to read Heinlein's novels with the character Lazarus Long.

I believe we have already done this in a way, with the internet and all the knowledge that exists online, this is basically all the memories of mankind....Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, all available on demand....If we could add smell-o-vision and an environmental control pod, tactile stimulation control, well we would have the full experience and much more vivid and accurate than memory....and more importantly relevance as to the timely nature of information provided when needed....

Brain experiences are subjective in nature, everybody perceives reality differently, so someone else's experience would have to be translated into your brains' specific language to be understood...

"Brain experiences are subjective in nature, everybody perceives reality differently, so someone else's experience would have to be translated into your brains' specific language to be understood..."

But we are talking about clones here, so it would be "your" brain in the clone. The memory/learning transfer should therefore go smoothly.

No, even if you look at identical twins, they are individual in nature, each experiences life differently and interprets what their senses tell them of the world in a unique way...

..."It is true that identical twins share their DNA code with each other. This is because identical twins were formed from the exact same sperm and egg from their father and mother. ... While the two babies share the same DNA code, there is more to our genetics than just that. During development in the womb and after birth, our surroundings, exposures, and nutrition influence how our genes are expressed and how our bodies and minds develop."...

http://gap.med.miami.edu/learn-about-genetics/have-questions-about-genetics/are-identical-twins-100-genetically-identical

Sure. It is well known that identical twins are not identical in personality. That is why, in an earlier post, I suggested that to ensure an (almost) blank slate for the memory/learning transfer from mature adult to clone, do the transfer while the clone is still in the womb.

What is really strange is that some twins,when separated at birth,when reunited many years later find that they like the same colors,cars and type women,their wives have the same name and they have similar professions.

"Curious-er and curious-er" said Alice.

And some twins can't bear to be separated - ever. In our high school (mid-sixties) there were two guys who were identical twins. If you knew them you could tell them apart by the slightly different expressions on their faces when relaxed. Recently in a whatever-happened-to inquiry, a friend sent me a photo of the two of them, now seventy + years old, living together in a beautiful log house in British Columbia. Inseparable for their entire lives.

A woman with 4 sets of twins was asked:

"Do you get twins every time?"

"NO" she replied."Most times we get nothing".

I hear they married identical twins,and divorced them because the women were swapping partners and it took a while to get caught.

Has anyone else noticed that one of a pair of twins (even identical twins) is invariably left handed.

I don't think you could transfer memories into a still developing brain, and even if you could somehow, the experience would be overly traumatic to anybody, you couldn't breathe, or eat, or see, or talk....you'd freak out...and if you survived somehow, you would still be a freak, could you imagine going through childhood again knowing what you know now, you would be in constant conflict, and you would be weaker than a kitten...no it would be a total nightmare that would never end....

You make a good point. However, in your objection to the idea of transferring memories/learning into a still developing brain, you have already accepted that such a memory/learning transfer is a possibility. It brings to mind an old saying, "You have already swallowed a bale, and now you are choking on a straw."

It's possible you could suddenly grow to a great height and sprout antlers, but I don't see that happening either...

HEY! HOW DID YOU GET MY PHOTO FROM MY FAMILY ALBUM?

I went to a shrink and complained of my dreams..the same two dreams kept occurring,night after night.

One night I dreamed about Tee Pees,the next night I dreamed about Wigwams,and it kept repeating,over and over and over.

He listened,made notes and finally said:"I know your problem.You are too tense."

Grooooan !!!!

A friend of mine is a shrink(He hates that nickname) said that a good dog was as good as any doctor.Everyone knows what their problems are,they just want a non-judgemental person to talk to.

I asked what a psychiatrist is writing down in their notes when a patient is talking.

He said I really did not want to know.I insisted and he said the following:

Boat payment

Mortgage payment on 3 houses

Ferrari payment

Greens fees

Alimony to 3 wives

Child support...etc,etc.....

Therapist is a two part word:The and rapist..they rape your wallet.

"I knew I was crazy when I read that you are what you eat." said the squirrel.

Douglas Trumbull's 1983 movie "Brainstorm" explores this idea. A headset has been invented that when worn, records all of the wearer's experiences in every detail (sight, sound, feel, smell...), and then when worn by someone else the recording can be played back and the second person will genuinely experience everything the first person did. An employee of the company, working after hours with the headset on in recording mode, had a heart attack and died. It took little time for the other employees' grief to be supplanted by excitement - since he had died while the device was recording, then if worn by another person in playback mode that person should be able to experience death, but remain alive! It was an intriguing concept, but there the movie stumbles - Trumbull doesn't know where to go with the idea and resorts to unsatisfying unoriginal amorphous heavenly images.

For a fictional treatment of this idea, see Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series. It is enjoyable fantasy reading, but perhaps not related to reality.

The main idea was about "the memories" that Ayla's son Durk still had, but that Ayla did not experience. This type of memory (if it exists at all) has been called "racial memory."

There might be some rudiments of this that do exist, as in your planaria example, but I have doubts. One of the doubts is that this would never show up in elementary school, though it might be propounded in secondary-school biology.

Our teacher(6th Grade) taught far ahead of our class level.He did not believe in limiting one's learning to any certain level.
He believed it would benefit us later on,and he was right.He had a photographic memory and if you asked a question,he would tell you the page and paragraph to find the answer,in a 10th grade biology book.

We had already covered all of the school required subjects before Thanksgiving,and the rest of the year was high school level.The subject was covered later in high school biology class,and our class was way ahead due to prior exposure to teaching above our level.

Basically high school was just a review,except for some of the math.

Here is a link about the Planarian worm memory experiment,and more.

http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v2p366y1974-76.pdf

I think we are straddling the line between memory, which is learned, and instincts which are inherited in the DNA...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/instinct.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190606150247.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191017125235.htm

"Instinct" is a form of memory,is it not?

Instinct is similar to muscle memory.A person throws a ball to you,and you instinctively catch it,or you reflexively duck a punch;No active thought process going on,all "instinct" or "Subconscious".

Is there a limit to the amount of memory that can be stored in DNA?

Do we have many memories and skills stored in our subconscious that we do not/can not access unless "Shaken" out by a traumatic injury?Unless our needle jumps a track, so to speak?

No, I think it's more part of the program than part of the memory.....

Now there's an interesting question, Is there a limit to the amount of memory that can be stored in DNA?, Indeed this would be the place to store memory by making it part of the program to begin with...

Instinctively knowing things would bypass a lot of learning time but would have to be basic as how to do certain things changes over time, but some things don't change, this seems like a primary target area, but with this concept comes a huge can of worms...

I don't know about skills, but certainly bad memories can be suppressed in the conscious mind, relegated to the dark tunnels of the subconscious, only to surface at some relevant time...

Check out this link for a near immortal species:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/planarian-worms-immortal-asexual_n_1304934

If you haven't watched it yet, I would recommend the Netflix series Altered Carbon. Basically aliens give humans the technology to load "themselves" onto a device that is inserted in the brainstem. It can be moved from one body (aka sleeve) to another. It's a very interesting show and deals with all the questions that go along with the subject.