Shaving Clones

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 24 Jun 2005, 15:10 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Fri Jun 24 15:10:39 2005
Subject: (urth) Shaving Clones
In-Reply-To: <BAY102-F39998BF7572DA52B314C0686ED0 at phx.gbl>
References: <97fae70a9880dd35ac2526b868a0d3ff at ou.edu>
	<BAY102-F39998BF7572DA52B314C0686ED0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <1f76173705062415104bec77ff at mail.gmail.com>

Chris --

The very best part of this theory is that it resolves the Problem
of the Spanish Barber.

"In a certain village in Spain, there is a barber, who shaves
everybody in the village who does not shave himself. Who
shaves the barber?"

Well, since everybody in the village is himself, he doesn't
shave anyone. QED.

On 6/24/05, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I was about to playfully suggest as a universal rule that one should not
> postulate clones beyond necessity. (And it still seems like something of a
> good idea, I must admit).
> 
> But then it occurred to me that maybe a proliferation of clones actually
> *reduces* the number of entities (by making some people the same as others),
> so maybe Occam would approve. On that note I devised the following theory:
> everyone on Urth is genetically Severian, including Typhon.
> 
> We know that Severian, as Conciliator, weaves back and forth through time
> and leads a number of lives (Apu Punchau, etc), sometimes going quite a ways
> back in history. This being the case, all things being equal his genes would
> so dominate the gene pool that it would lead to hopelessly inbred children
> and the degeneration of the human race. To prevent this the Hierogrammates
> implemented a plan which replaced natural reproduction with technology
> similar to that used to resurrect Severian, but with a twist: it creates an
> *embryonic Severian* already in place in the womb. The embryo (and
> subsequent human) is then manipulated through hormones to generate a variety
> of appearances as necessary, including development of male or female
> reproductive organs as needed. And this, by the way, is the capping point
> that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this theory is correct: people
> on Urth *have* to be clones because they are *incapable* of reproducing
> naturally - despite appearances they are all genetically male!
> 
> This also explains how there's always a new Severian-body around for the
> Conciliator to pop into when he dies, no matter what place and time it
> happens to be.
> 
> This explains trivially why there are so many clones on the Whorl. All of
> the original passengers were clones of Severian. It's not that we have
> identified too many clones, it is that we have noticed too few.
> 
> 
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