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by paxy 2819 days ago
In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out. If you instead framed it as birthing a child who was exactly like you, I'm sure the perception would be a lot different.
2 comments

> In people's minds, cloning = a person walks into a machine and two exact copies walk out.

I highly doubt this is even close to true. Most people are smart enough to know that cloning has something to do with "modifying the egg and sperm and growing the baby". That's literally all they have to know to not think the absurd thing you mentioned. What you've described is "teleportation gone wrong" which is complete and utter science-fiction, and most people know that. I would even go further and say that most people are familiar with Dolly and already know cloning to be possible.

Plus, they are already familiar with twins (about two pairs per high-school) which is natural cloning. You'd have to be living under a rock to think twins share the same mind.

At the very most, I think people expect clones to look like identical twins (correcting for age difference), and perhaps share that same level of average personality similarity. That's still an overestimate, since identical twins get very similar epigenetic and usually environmental pressures. But it's a pretty reasonable thought, and very different from "cloning is what they showed in Star Wars".
Yes. The word "clone" has been so abused by popular media that people have wild misconceptions and objections. We should call them "elective identical twins."
They won't be twins as they won't necessarily be carried by the same mother/womb and won't have the same age. (In the "cloning an adult" scenario).