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Comment by mikecane | Hacker News Reader

Life is not like a TV repeat. Whatever made your dog -- experiences, reactions, etc -- was unique. You would expect what your dog ultimately became to be in the clone too. And that's just unfair to the clone. It'd be like expecting identical twins to actually be identical, beneath their appearance. Also, even if the clone did magically repeat your dog, you wouldn't be the same. I've been through this many times. Know when to just let go.

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Thanks for replying. I've thought quite a bit about this, and I agree with you somewhat. I certainly don't have unrealistic expectations of the exact same dog being reborn. However, there is obviously a nature/nuture question here, and I think with a very similar upbringing/training, the dog could certainly be very similar, but I'd feel very lucky just to have a similar dog, and certainly wouldn't put a ton of pressure towards her in her upbringing.

At any rate, I obviously haven't made the final decision to go forward with it - as I mentioned, not until things advance quite a bit - I just want to make sure I have the option.

But the world would not be the same. Let me give you a somewhat silly example. In the TV series UFO, a moon to earth shuttle crashed. Sabotage was suspected. A pilot said he'd fly the same route to see if anything was there to sabotage a flight. Well, that's just impossible. The earth is in a different position in relation the the sun, the moon is in a different spot in relation to both the earth and sun, and the entire solar system has moved in relation to the galaxy and the universe. To paraphrase a saying, it's never the same river twice. The entire environment the clone would be in would be drastically different than the one the original was in, so it'd really be impossible to get a truly identical experience. And a dog's senses are different than a human's. What you would never notice as a significant change the dog probably would -- and that too would have an effect.

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