Random...

Having read this comic, I was struck with a question. If you go to an alternate universe, and find yourself as a female, and proceed to've sex with yourself, does the baby that's produced count as in-bred, or what?

 

Well, probaly. '
But I think there is a big chance you end up with a (possibly defect) kid that are very much like yourself, in every way.

 

worse than regular inbred, because that would imply that there are at least some genetic differences. there would be even less with yourself! so, a person from a normal, non-twisted family tree would probably make kids with themselves that are as genetically undiverse as those produced by unions between people whose families have been intermarrying for centuries (some ancient European royal families come to mind).

more importantly though, the kind would be fucked up more than just genetically or have physical disabilities. I mean, considering the circumstances, how could you not be...?

 

It's a moot point to begin with. Even if this is an alternate universe, it would not be an alternate you. Any version of "YOU" MUST have the exact same genome, otherwise it's simply not you. A female version of "YOU" cannot exist if you are male because the female has chromosomes XX and males have chromosomes XY. Right there it is plain as day that that is not an identicle genome and so that alternate universe person is NOT an alternate you.

I think the closest we can get is having a FEMALE with an alternate version of herself bearing a child between the two. You can take the nucleus of a stem cell from the original female and inject it into the hollow cytoplasm of an oocyte from the alternate version female and inject that spliced egg back into the alternate female's uterus. She carries the kid to term and gives birth to a child that is from the same genomes of original and alternate female. But why bother with this since, as we established above, both females can only be alternate versions of themselves if their genomes are already identicle. Therefore, as DE suggested, we've done nothing more than CLONE the female.

 

If the internet has taught me anything, it's that there has *GOT* to be some identical twin porn out there. For every combination of sexes possible.

 

You've missed the Philosophy of Alternate Universes. To dumb that down: each possiblity produces it's own universe. Meaning that while, here, now, I'm male and straight. In an alternate universe I was born female, and in a different one I'm male and gay. Therefore, it theoretically is possible to've sex with yourself. So while having sex with a female version of yourself counts as sex, if your reproducing with yourself, it's asexual. So it's Asexual sex, as I see it. That kid would be all kinds of fucked up.

 

if you follow that line of reasoning, then it makes sense that the genome would be the same, although it would not be you in an existential sense, because if it was, it wouldn't be an alternate universe. Of course, since alternate universes are merely hypothetical and there can be no interaction, it hardly matters, I guess.

If you fertilized your own egg, I'm not sure that could be considered cloning. For example, your unexpressed genes could be expressed under the right circumstances, right? and doing this in the lab does not necessarily reflect normal conditions, as there are varied combinations of dna from sexual reproduction (which is the whole point) but not if you simply chose the dna from an adult cell of one member

 

I see this subject quickly transforming into another "Soul" argument like the one we had a couple months ago. Anyway:

DarkFool:
You referenced Philosophy of Alternate Universes which basically says:

That's an entertaining concept at most, but while it is a theory, my side of the argument is based in cold, hard fact. That is, that no two beings are the same (read: NOT alternate versions of themselves for the sake of the argument) if their genomes are not identical as the result of sexual reproduction. One person with an XY choromosome pair is not the same as another person with an XX chromosome pair. Aside from the obvious penis vs. vagina situation, other genetic differences arise to further prove this; such as color blindness, which the result of the defect of a gene found on the Y chromosome in males.

You are correct that the male, gay you would be an alternate you. In that situation, you're still of the same genetic makeup as this you is. But once you add in the genetic diversity that makes the alternate you a female, it ceases to be an alternate you. But even if I'm to believe in alternate universes, I'm not really sure that logic of yours follows the theory you're trying to defend because you're not taking into account ALL the possible occurances that happen in a given universe that make that universe, by definition of the theory you referenced above, an alternate universe. I don't know if you have any brothers or sisters, but let's use your parents in a hypotheical situation. Let's say you have 1 younger sister, DarkFoolette. She's the female offspring of your parents, you're the male offspring of your parents in Universe A (UA). In Universe B (UB), the possibility exists and plays out that your parent's first child is female. This is the female offspring of your parents in UB. Then the parents of UB have a second child that is male, making this the male offspring of these parents. So we still have a brother/sister connection here. What I'm trying to say is: Just because you, as the genetically male offspring of your parents, could have sex with the genetically female offspring of these alternate version parents of yours (if they could even really be that), then you're basically just having sex with your sister, not a female version of yourself. Because the random events that played out in THAT universe (UB) resulted in your sister being born BEFORE you were. Do you think that just because you were born first in UA, that the first born in UB is automatically the alternate you? Then where does the possibility exist that your sister was born before you? If you say it's impossible, then wouldn't that destroy the very logic that the Alternate Universe theory is built on?

Now go and make the argument that you're an only child in UA and the UB parents have a girl. I don't see that as being you're alternate female version. I see it as the sister you never had who just happened to be born as the result of one of the possibilities that makes this universe an alternate one from yours.

Asexual reproduction by definition is form of reproduction which does not involve meiosis, ploidy reduction, or fertilization. Asexual reproduction only takes one parent. -Wikipedia entry. Therefore your claim that having sex with an alternate version of yourself as being asexual is false since you are involving two separate, physical organisms.

team a:

Yes. Basically what I said before....it's a moot point.

You're refering to sexual reproduction, which I argued above could not exist since an alternate version of yourself cannot be of a different sex. Males cannot sexually reproduce with males; females cannot sexually reproduce with females. The cells involved in sexual reproduction are called gametes. These cells have only ONE copy of a chromosome (for a total of 23), not two copies like somatic cells have (for a total of 46).

As I said before:

A stem cell is an undifferentiated somatic cell with both copies of each chromosome. Therefore, NO genetic diversity can occur since the genome is kept in tact down to the last nitrogenous base pair when the nucleus is injected into the uterus of your alternate you (if you're a female of cours). Therefore, the random pairing of single copies of gametes during sexual reproduction that determines genetic diversity doesn't even come into play.

 

If I remember correctly, you won't clone yourself - you'd still have dominant and recessive genes, and your sperm and eggs would be a mixture of all of these. There would be a more 'refined' you, because only the dominant genes will go through. Most of the time. Possibly.

Anyway, isn't there a study out there that the most attractive person is someone with exactly the same features as you, only if you clearly see them as the sexual opposite to you? (This applies if you're homosexual too, because one can be masculine or feminine, and it's extremely rare if you're truly adrogenous sexually. Behaviourly, on the other hand...)

So, if DE comes across a girl equally sexy eyebrows, he'd fall resolutely for her.

Edit: Oh, and by the way: Eeewwww..... *reference to Futurama movie*

 

You mean hypothesis?

(Yeah, that's all of it I bothered to read.)

 

No. Once again you're refering to the random diversity that results from sexual reproduction. That random pairing only occurs when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg (in vitro or in vivo). But that's not our case here. My argument is that your alternate you can only be you if he/she shares the same genome as you. A female (XX) is not the same as a male (XY) so therefore, your alternate you cannot be of a different sex as you. Therefore, it is impossible to be able to sexually reproduce with your alternate you. However, as I stated before (and now for the 3rd time):

That is cloning. The nucleus from the somatic cell already has all 46 chromosomes. It is not a gamete, which has only 23. Therefore, no more random pairing will EVER occur in any of the cells in any of the generations that originate from this first cell. Therefore (and I'm excluding the possibility of mutation for the sake of argument), no more genetic diversity can occur in these cells. Keep in mind, that what we are doing here is removing the nucleus (the part of the cell that contains the chromosomes and, thus, the DNA) from one somatic cell (which already has its genome determined with 46 chromosomes) and injecting it into a hollow egg cell (a gamete who's nucleus originally had only 23 chromosomes, but which has been removed to make way for the somatic cells nucleus containing all 46 chromosomes) to act like an already-fertilized egg, but with a predictable, permanent genome already established.

I don't. Believe me I WANT to work at a brewer. I would love to. But right now I'm stuck working in a research lab as a flow cytometry technician. Boring as all fucking get-out.

EDIT:
Ok. Since there most likely is no way of observing alternate universes (if any even exist), I suppose this should be a hypothesis and not a theory. Congratulations, you've passed Hair-Splitting 101. Care to read on?

 

Ok... But the article 'Fool linked to said:

Are you sure you read it? Also, a thing to remember:

edit: crap you edited... hold on...

edit 2:

You thought you had a monopoly on that?

 

Well, think about this; it wouldn't NECESSARILY be cloning.

Imagine I have a mixed gene for hair lets say, one brown and one blonde gene. I could give either one to my offspring, so there's a chance that my offspring with chick-blinky would be fully brown haired, blonde, or a hybrid in that regard.

The similarities would be so uncanny it'd actually be really fucking weird, but there would be slight differences over those between identical twins.

 

The fact that you're involving a "chick-blinky" already says that this is a matter of sexual reproduction, not the cloning example I gave above. And this all goes back to the argument I'm trying to make that negates the possiblility of sexual reproduction with an alternate you since an alternate you, by biological definition, cannot be of an opposite sex as you.

In sexual reproduction, a sperm cell (a gamete with ONE copy of each chromosome, not TWO) fuzes with an egg cell (also a gamete with ONE copy) and two single copies of chromosomes from each cell give the resulting single-celled, future human being the dual-pair, 46 chromosome genome that it will carry for the rest of its life in its somatic cells, which are basically EVERY other cell in your body that is not a gamete (aka, the sex cells).

Now let's use Vyenna since she's a female. Referencing my later example regarding the existing possiblity of producing a child based off of two separate, but still identical, genomes, Vyenna "A" from this universe and Vyenna "B" from the alternate universe, we take the nucleus of a somatic cell (a skin cell for example) from Vyenna A. Vyenna has already genetically committed to what she is when her parents had sex and her father's sperm fertilized her mother's egg. We know that. She's a woman, she has whatever hair color she has (I don't know I've never seen a picture of her), etc. This is all in accordance to the which ever sperm cell carrying which ever SINGLE copy of chromosomes from her father fertilized the egg carrying which ever SINGLE copy of chromosomes from her mother. THAT is where the genetic diversity occurs. Everything after that is set in stone barring outside interference (ie: mutation, human-based experimenting, etc..) Now, we remove the nucleus from an egg cell from Vyenna B so all we have is the hollow cytoplasm of that egg cell. There is NO genetic characterization in this cell now. We take the nucleus we isolated from the somatic cell from Vyenna A and inject it into the hollow cell from Vyenna B. Now we have a complete egg cell that we inject into Vyenna B's uterus that will "act" as a fertilized egg. BUT, this is not the same as the process of fertilization that occurs from sexual reproduction. That is because this new egg still has the same nucleus as Vyenna A's somatic cells. Therefore, NO MORE GENETIC DIVERSITY CAN OCCUR FROM RANDOMLY PAIRING GAMETES. In other words, the child that Vyenna B will give birth to is genetically a CLONE.

Sorry I should've put my EDIT warning in there but I didn't expect anyone to read the post in the 30 seconds it took me to make the change. In that same article, though, it does refer to MWI as "aka the theoryof universal wavefunction." I actually did wonder if it was a theory or hypothesis and used that as my info. But after reading more, I realized, as you suggested, that it sounded more like a hypothesis.

But scientific theories are still subject to disproval. A scientific theory attempts to explain an observation and the scientific law is the observation. Could you provide a source to your quote so I could try to understand it a little more?

Yes I'm quite the indecisive poster. Sorry about that.

I figured I'd entertain the thought until someone came along to prove me wrong. Good job on that.

 

Grimm, the posited argument seems to be that even though it's sexual reproduction, it's still 'like' asexual reproduction, since it's all the same genes (we're assuming the only difference is in the x and y chromosomes). My argument is that since sexual reproduction doesn't work like that, it would in fact only be a near clone, with room for 'juggling' of those genes already in the original.

 

Do you mean my example regarding cloning or DarkFool's example about having sex with your alternate self being like Asexual reproduction? In regards to what you said, if it's in reference to DarkFool's post, I agree with you that it would be "like" asexual reproduction, though not the exact thing. And if I thought that even sexual reproduction between alternate versions of yourself was possible (in theory), I would absolutely agree with your example of hair color and even gender diversity. But, my whole argument from the begining is that sexual reproduction isn't even possible between alternate versions of yourself, since an alternate you cannot be another you if it is of the opposite sex as you. I don't believe there can be an alternate, female Blinky for you just like don't think there can be an alternate, male Vyenna for her. And since the true alternate, male Blinky can't reproduce with the real one, and same for the Vyenna's, I don't think any form of sexual reproduction has a place in the argument. But I guess that pretty much was the basis for the argument to being with....so I've just gone around in a complete circle. Fuck now I'm stuck in a loop.

 

Well, the assumption is that in an alternate dimension I could have been born a female, but otherwise be identical, so we're not talking about carbon-copy sexual reproduction, we're talking about nigh-carbon-copy reproduction. So if, like dimensional travel, we assume it's possible, then it would be theoretically possible to breed with an alternate version of yourself if that version was the opposite sex.

 

Blinky, refering back to our discussion on the soul and religion a while ago, what would your take be regarding alternate universes and thus, alternate you's and their possession of a soul. I remember you talking about something called Atman (I think?) and the surrounding life force. As someone with little to no knowledge on that, I'm curious what your opinion is about your own soul and whether it carries over to alternate universes or not. I think this is where we can flesh out whether one can actually have sex with an alternate self as a member of the opposite sex. Even if our physical bodies can't have alternate realities on a biological scale, perhaps our souls could.

EDIT: Souls are considered homogenous (sexless), right?