“If the human species was going to stay biological for another century, it would be a good idea to start cloning Gandhi.”
I would bet against that being a good idea. It’s not at all obvious to me that Gandhi was either instrumentally beneficial for either mankind or India, or that he took actions that could reasonably have been expected to be beneficial, but even assuming that he did it’s not at all obvious that “great men”, especially political “great men” on average make the world a better rather than a worse place. If they on average make the world worse, then you are betting on genetic variation specifying not only “be a politically great man” but also “be one of the rare exceptions within that category who actually do good things”. A bunch of clones of Gandhi might have effects similar to a bunch of clones of Washington, Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander, Lincoln, Caesar, etc, which probably leaves us worse off.
“If the human species was going to stay biological for another century, it would be a good idea to start cloning Gandhi.”
I would bet against that being a good idea. It’s not at all obvious to me that Gandhi was either instrumentally beneficial for either mankind or India, or that he took actions that could reasonably have been expected to be beneficial, but even assuming that he did it’s not at all obvious that “great men”, especially political “great men” on average make the world a better rather than a worse place. If they on average make the world worse, then you are betting on genetic variation specifying not only “be a politically great man” but also “be one of the rare exceptions within that category who actually do good things”. A bunch of clones of Gandhi might have effects similar to a bunch of clones of Washington, Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander, Lincoln, Caesar, etc, which probably leaves us worse off.