More feasible yes, but not nearly as interesting a technology. What will cloning do? If we clone to make new organs then it is a helpful medical technique, one among many. If we are talking about reproductive cloning, then that individual has no closer identity to me than an identical twin (indeed a bit less since the clone won’t share the same environment growing up). The other major advantage of cloning is that we could potentially use it to deliberately clone copies of smart people. But that’s a pretty minor use, and fraught with its own ethical problems. And that would still take a long time to be useful. Let’s say we get practical cloning tomorrow. Even if some smart person agreed to be cloned, we’d still need to wait around 12 years at very minimum before they can be that useful.
Cryonics is a much larger game changer than cloning.
More feasible yes, but not nearly as interesting a technology. What will cloning do? If we clone to make new organs then it is a helpful medical technique, one among many. If we are talking about reproductive cloning, then that individual has no closer identity to me than an identical twin (indeed a bit less since the clone won’t share the same environment growing up). The other major advantage of cloning is that we could potentially use it to deliberately clone copies of smart people. But that’s a pretty minor use, and fraught with its own ethical problems. And that would still take a long time to be useful. Let’s say we get practical cloning tomorrow. Even if some smart person agreed to be cloned, we’d still need to wait around 12 years at very minimum before they can be that useful.
Cryonics is a much larger game changer than cloning.