• Gork@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    ·
    1 year ago

    People tend to shit on clones, but who else can come up with a large enough army to defend the Republic?

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      At 1/2^42 odds, you’re unlikely to have a large enough army to man a V Wing, much less defend the Republic

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    47
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s unlikely to have ever happened.

    2^42 is 25 times the total number of people ever born in all of history.

      • AeroLemming@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        I got 38x with 117 billion total people. Not sure where OC got their number, but it’s kind of in the ballpark, so maybe it was just shitty mental math.

        • Match!!@pawb.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          getting correct within a factor of 2 after a 42-fold exponentiation would be amazingly good mental math

          • AeroLemming@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            The easiest way would be to say 117 billion is ~2^37 because 2[1] are 128, 1024, and about a million (1024*1024), so multiplying those all together gives a little over 128 billion, which is pretty close to 117 billion. So, 242/237=2^5=32. Pretty close, all mental math. Granted, it does require you to either memorize or compute powers of 2 up to 10.


            1. 7, 10, 20 ↩︎

      • MadLegoChemist@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I had to check the math and I was surprised that 2^42 is “only” 4.4 trillion. Thought it would be a lot greater like there are less atoms in the universe similar to the uniqueness of a shuffled deck of cards.

        • 30p87@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I typically associate “clone” with “an exact copy”, with the same exact molecular layout and even thoughts. So a literal exact copy. Clones on a DNA basis, so something possible for years, would indeed be different in some details.

          • PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES@lib.lgbtOP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            The definition of “clone” you believe in is science fiction nonsense. Why believe in nonsense when the scientific definition of clone is different?

  • Signtist@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    42
    ·
    1 year ago

    You didn’t factor recombination. Nobody ever receives any of their parents’ exact chromosomes, except the sex chromosomes from dad - each pair shuffles up the equivalent DNA between the 2 chromosomes, resulting in 2 chromosomes that are each a mix of both of that parent’s chromosomes of that pair, one of which is passed on to the child for each pair for each parent.

    • PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES@lib.lgbtOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I figured this out while thinking about Red Dwarf. Canonically, Lister is his own father. How can his DNA remain stable across all the time loops if he’s saturated his own ancestry with himself? This is the answer. It was a 1 in 2^42 chance the first time, but after that, the time loop preserves the coincidence and Lister ends up his own clone every time. He gets all his own DNA from himself every time, and then he just has to get the same DNA from his mum every time. The science is sound. It’s tremendously unlikely, but in the infinity of the universe it had to happen eventually, assuming an infinite supply of time travellers banging their own mums.

      You can also apply this logic to Futurama, Star Trek, and any other science fiction show with a grandfather paradox.