this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months 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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not even the Republic, it would appear.

The Confederacy of Independent Systems has far more BattleDroids than your Republic has Clones.

Defeat of the Republic is inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yes but battle droids can't improvise!

[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's unlikely to have ever happened.

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

[–] DaCrazyJamez 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

...i think it's quite a bit more than that

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I made a typo and used 177 b.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

The easiest way would be to say 117 billion is ~2^37 because 2^[7, 10, 20] 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, 2^42/2^37=2^5=32. Pretty close, all mental math. Granted, it does require you to either memorize or compute powers of 2 up to 10.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Also, twins aren't identical copies either. Different fingerprint etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Fingerprints aren't genetically coded, and clones wouldn't have the same fingerprints, either.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Delete your account

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (3 children)

google chromosome crossing over

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Yea the number is way higher than that

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Holy genetic diversity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

You mean googol?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Untrue, chromosomes also get shuffled during crossover

[–] Enkers 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well that's some cursed knowledge right there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Great now I have to change accents in the 3rd panel.