This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. His character arc spans the entire five seasons of the series, from the very first episode to the very last. And it is, indeed, profoundly tragicβall the more so because of the contradictions in his character, and of his own awareness of it.
And then the consequences play out faithfully over the next three and a half years. Yesterday I read a post by Gwern on Embryo selection for intelligence. One conclusion was that although it might be worth doing, the effects were small, perhaps a few points of IQ.
Cloning provides a much larger effect, easily tens of points. One problem is that most people would prefer to rear their own biological child, children seem to be better reared by a couple than by a single parent, and a clone is related to only one member of the couple. It occurred to me that there is a solution to this problem, if we are thinking in sf terms about very different cultures. One problem with this solution is that the couples who rear children are normally sexual partners as well as co-parents, and that is probably desirable for pair bonding.
So for this system to work, either you have to separate those roles, with the co-parents having other sexual partners, or have you have to overcome the barriers against sibling incest. But there remains a psychological barrier. The evidence, as I understand it, suggests that a couple brought up together will not be sexually attracted to each other. We can then imagine a society where the co-parents are siblings reared apart, and sexual partners.
Since we are assuming human cloning, we get that result by having my clone marry the clone of a sister other than my co-parent. Genetically speaking they are full siblings, since they are clones of full siblings, but they grew up in different households. The female founders attempted to engineer men more or less out of society, with only partial success. A question. So do full siblings.
