Field of clones: How horse replicas came to dominate polo
37 points
1 hour ago
| 6 comments
| knowablemagazine.org
| HN
didibus
31 minutes ago
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The thing is, what if there's an even better horse out there? Once you get on the cloning bandwagon, don't you also lock yourself out of looking/evolving an even better horse?
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ethanj8011
26 minutes ago
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Yes, but developing a better horse has a low likelihood of success and a relatively long time horizon. There are some arms race dynamics here in that as long as no one else is trying to develop a better horse, you probably are better off just not trying to either.
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defrost
20 minutes ago
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> what if there's an even better horse out there

Doesn't matter, such things threaten the horse investor lock in economics.

Many years past, and early bit of software from my student days was a side project making an easy to use database system for a horse stud farm, high status stallions being put to mares with the feed, vet visits, results, etc. all logged.

Horse racing is pretty much all about pedigree - without the lineage horses are considered valueless by the industry - super fast back country waler crosses might be acceptable for a four mile charge across open ground onto machine gun nests .. but w/out that pedigree <shrug> no Lord or up and coming billionaire is going to syndicate that horse for racing.

I imagine Polo to be much the same, in the rich set. Probably more open and accepting out on the steppes knocking about the heads of the vanquished.

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foobar1962
13 minutes ago
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Perhaps Polo will end up like competitive sailing with one-design classes based on the clone of horse. "Measurement" would be a blood test for drugs and dna.
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acestus5
11 minutes ago
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cloned horses are good at competitive sailing also?!?
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walrus01
1 hour ago
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For a brief moment I thought this would be about something like robotic polo ponies, and considered the idea that four-legged high agility, high endurance robots had advanced significantly without me noticing.
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fzil
34 minutes ago
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And i thought it was about those polo shirts and replicas of the horse logo on the “fake” t-shirts.
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beau_g
1 hour ago
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Though we are not yet competitive in the Argentinian Polo clone wars, we are making significant progress - https://www.satyress.com/
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walrus01
1 hour ago
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This has to be some kind of kink thing. Not judging, just how it looks from first appearances.
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valiant-comma
1 hour ago
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Me too, I guess I don’t think of “replica” and “clone” as synonymous in the context of animals.
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aussieguy1234
43 minutes ago
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That'd be alot more ethical than the current horse racing industry if it were the case.

Humans riding racing robots id watch, but not horse racing.

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apt-apt-apt-apt
42 minutes ago
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Humans can likely be cloned too.

Imagine 10,000 Albert Einsteins and John von Neumanns working together with modern AI on medical, scientific, and societal issues.

Though there could be an Evil Einstein due to upbringing or something.

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didibus
32 minutes ago
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Don't twin studies mostly show this wouldn't be the case?
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whateveracct
27 minutes ago
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ur replying to an anti-humanist
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thefounder
38 minutes ago
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I am not sure if the Einsteins you clone would do what you want. Maybe they will want to be influencers on short video platforms.
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downrightmike
11 minutes ago
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Nope, that's what relativistic slugs are for
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jofzar
51 minutes ago
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Surprised that the legal drama part of this wasn't discussed, it's how I first heard about this

https://youtu.be/VARJnzhVryc

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connorboyle
1 hour ago
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Another Argentina/cloning-connected story is that President Javier Milei cloned his dog Conan at least four times: https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-04-26/the-myst...

The stories make me wonder if Argentina is a cloning hotspot, though I may be reading too much into two stories.

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allthetime
1 hour ago
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That is where many of the nazi war doctors who escaped prosecution ended up…
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zzzoom
3 minutes ago
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Not as many as the ones that the US snatched in operation paperclip
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wahern
29 minutes ago
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Seems Brazil lost its early lead after cloning Hitler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)
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