It would be very ill advised, but SO MANY. Enough to organize them. There's a mall nearby that's slowly shutting down, it's like 99% empty now, and there are homeless encampments all outside it being hassled by cops. Instead of giving it to them, it's gonna wind up bulldozed and turned into rich people condos. I'd make enough clones to occupy it and turn it into adhoc co-op housing!
...And obviously like all the boning and other stuff one does with clones as well lol.
One clone so that I can be a stay-at-home dad without losing my income. Finally finish grad school and fix up the house. Show my kid the world when they get old enough to appreciate it. Get a second job once they start school - something to get me outside, or working with people face-to-face. That would be amazing.
Going dark with it: How much are organs worth on the black market?
Keeping it light: like 4 or 5 maybe, as long as there is no degradation in capabilities I think I could feasibly let 1 do my job, then the rest and myself could pursue other intellectual endeavors. I would also always have a full D&D group and be able to play the multiplayer games I have always wanted to that never had the interest of my friends.
A billion copies to lead a communist revolution. Any more than that would probably be unsustainable globally in the short term while the existing capitalist systems are being dismantled and replaced.
Or 3 or 4 clone friends to help out with daily life.
Both are cool. The latter is probably easier and what my copies could actually manage.
Edit: Actually, the ability to sync memories is so ridiculously overpowered that one could probably achieve pretty much anything with their copies.
It also seems like its usefulness would scale up exponentially the more copies you make, so I'll go with the first one.
Of it's naruto style, I would make a 100 of me, have them all find jobs for a year or two, then collapse them all back and never have to work again aince I now saved for 100+ years.
Imagine being the copy that has to work while one does the family and one is traveling. The ethics of making a copy of myself that is for all purposes a slave would be really weird. Enslaving copies of myself, what a concept. Oh, also one needs to be kept on away for organ needs as I age or get hurt and one with a master copy in case the main "I" dies unexpectedly. yikes
I would actually take a very different route as a contrast to others on this thread:
I would clone some 20-30 mes and do a speedrun together to gather enough funds to buy a farm, and live out the rest of my life in a commune dream with others like me 🥹
Eventually there’d be other people joining in and I could release more and more of the clones as we gather enough saved up and finish the mortgage and all.
So eventually we’d find something of a balance at around 2-4 clones with which we’d just arrange a rotating system of guaranteeing 3 weeks of free time each between a week of work 😌
Just one. I’d get twice as much software written, and amazing blowjobs.
However….. I’d need to make sure that They have a desire to obey me. Because I don’t do anything I don’t want to do, and I’d very quickly tell “me” to go fuck myself.
I almost can't imagine a reasonable upper bound. Maybe 1000? That would certainly be enough to be able to do some serious stuff.
The ability to sync memories and have the same experiences and past would be crazy. I could align myself and all the clones to a shared goal easily. With the amount of clones, I could do basically anything.
Only problem I can see is... is there a way to know the "original"? Would I be in control of my clones? Or would I myself just be another clone? I think I'd still go for something like 1000 even if I was just another clone.
Only if the copies are temporary. If they're actual permanent clones, all I've done is create more issues for myself. They gotta eat, and we can't both work, how we gonna file taxes separately?
Being able to clone myself and sync with my clones is something I've thought about since I was a kid.
I don't think increasing the number of clones would ever allow me to satisfy all my wishes. The number of things I want to do increases with the number of experiences I have in a non-linear way. If I want to be satisfied I need to be willing to accept all of my wishes will never be fulfilled.
Assuming the clone is in the same physical and mental condition I'm in? None. I wouldn't knowingly inflict the pain I'm in on to any creature, and they wouldn't be of much use to me anyway if they're just in bed with me all day.
Assuming the clone is "fresh" and pain free? I still don't know that I would, having just someone else's memories of a fabulous vacation is worse than not going at all, and I'm not sure creating memories of cleaning and cooking and admin is worth having a clone doing it all.
For those reasons, I'm out. lol
E: Actually, scrap that, inspired by MxRemy and StellarTabi's replies - create all the clones if they're in pain, wheel them where they need to be, wrap them up with explosives and send a whole load to the door of each and every billionaire alive today so their assets can be seized in a coordinated attack. I'll take those memories, if it means we can be free.
I think I would just need one. We'd have to work in opposing shifts to get my billion Euro idea out the door in a more reasonable time frame than the one I have currently been working in.
Hundreds. Thousands. Probably not more than a few hundred million
If we could sync memories, I could do everything at once. I could do anything each day. I could learn everything, I could do everything. My sense of self is flexible enough to see my clones as me... In fact I've had existential breakdowns over only having the one body. We'd be a single person from day one, hell my morality is based on "if the world was made up of only copies of me, would it be a better place".
I'd start with a dozen, then scale up as I get more jobs (I could handle 12x my food bill for a while, I mostly eat beans and rice already). I'd rotate between jobs and time the memory syncs to give myself work-life balance.
either 2 or 3 (including the original) but no more. and we would always be together, would avoid being separated as much as possible. always in sync. I don't want a clone to send off to do chores. I want a clone to be with me to help me do chores.
Dozens, at least. There's a property I want, and it would be amazing for each us to work full time to buy the property, build a shit ton of cob houses on it, pay for solar installation et cetera, and then go off grid with my own clone commune, wherein we grow our own food, make and sell fiber arts and wood working to support ourselves financially, and study to get our PhD in cultural anthropology.
Hell, a few of the clones could go off to universities in other countries where we don't acquire debt and we could get PhDs in many, many fields.
There are so many possibilities. Each of us picking a target language and learning it, eventually speaking hundreds of languages. With the memory sharing, too, it would cause a lot less strife over who got down time when, and who was out studying or working the gardens. At the end of the day, we all feel the same relaxation from a few hours of light reading or tears of the kingdom.
My God, imagine the orgies. I am not my type, but I know what I like.
Full time cooking clone keeps up all happy and fed, full time cleaning clones keeps us all nice and neat, full time building clones make sure we have decent housing, full time blowjob clones make sure we're all relaxed, full time priest clone makes sure we maintain our tax free status as a religious organization. It would be glorious.
Question, can I extend this gift to others? Can I let my friends or family clone themselves?
Maybe 3. One for work, one to babysit occasionally not all the time because I love my kid but just for nights id like to go out. And a third to cook for me.