Miko wrote:
1. Knowing myself intimately - personality traits, abilities, etc., I could provide my clone child with upbringung and education much more conducive to his development and realisation of his potentials and talents - unlike with regular "random" child where it's trial and error process against the active resistance of a child.
The child will have more trust in my judgements since I would have very good idea how he feels about things.
Of course it goes without saying that I am satisfied with my personality traits as well as my physique enough to wish them on my child.
Mm, but changing the conditions means the child will deviate from what you are. if brought up in an affluent family instead of a poor one for example, it might develop into another being, one that you potentially could have been. This might alter his personality so much that you will not know more about what/how he feels than about a natural child.
Find a mate who have physique and mental traits that you're satisfied with. Combine your DNAs and you should have a child that's gonna do well in life. It's the the ultimate form of...what's the English word...being all to happy about oneself, egoistic and generally full of oneself? Well, that word.
2. My IQ is 130+ even now, my wife's, adjusting for narrower sigma of women would translate to similar genetic potentiality. Statistics, specifically the principle of reversal to the mean, suggests that average intelligence of our children would be quite lower than ours. There is a great chance that the clone would be smarter than a natural child who's place he takes - assuming the number of children is held constant.
Mine is 138 (at least last time I took a two day evaluation by a psychiatrist). I'll find an acceptable mate and give my half of the traits to the child. No need for cloning there; there's plenty of smart, attractive women in the world. In addition, there are some worrying mental and physical traits that I'd like to water out, and finding a decent mate is a good way to do so. Genetic diversity is also important and if everyone started cloning themselves and this was how we reproduced, eventually small mutations would cumulate, with a devastating result.
With those two items there is a great chance that I will have a person more capable than myself (due to more fully-realised potentials and somewhat better nutrition) who would most likely adopt the same philosophy and worldview that I ended up adopting.
There's no guarantee for that. Humans are open books in many regards. You'll have the base architecture done, but within those limits, the actual code might be very different. He might have your limitations and capacity *potentially*, but how much he realises of it depends on the conditions. He'll be subjected to much different conditions than you were and this will make his 'code' unique. he might even adopt opposing views. that would be a squeak - disagreeing with what is in a physical respect yourself.
Of course, if you make the assumption that what we are has more to do with nature or nurture your point might be valid. One would have to have lots of evidence to support it, and from what I've read, both camps have extensive evidence supporting their claim, so the truth probably is somewhere in the middle of the two.
Of course there is a benefit of having compatible organs available but they would be expected to go his way, not mine.
That would be an advantage.
