Clone consciousness using fake childhoods. Is it plausible?
I am working on a sci-fi story and need a way to clone a person, body and mind. I also want it to be done without "far future technology" where anything goes. I want it to be simple and crude, but also believable. And I might have found it...
Background:
It's the near future. A interstellar spacecraft is sent to colonise a new solar system, a great feat, done on a budget. A generation ship is unfeasible so instead they send a small craft with the ability to recreate the crew upon arrival (or whenever maintenance is needed).
So, this is how it is done:
Upon birth a sensory device is implanted in the brain of some babies. This device is connected to all of the nerves leading into the brain, it reads and registers all of these nerves firing. 759
This means all of the signals sent to the child's brain is logged. (At the time this was marketed as a "backup", sold to overprotective parents.)
All of the data is stored in a harddrive somewhere. The children grow up and are around the age of 25 when this project asks for volunteers, some of them volunteer.
When the cloning initiates a cell is placed in a artificial womb and grows into a fetus (simple enough). As the fetus develops a system of wires is inserted into their brain and locked on to the same nerves as earlier.
When they are due for birth the system kicks on and starts stimulating the same nerves that registered stimuli in the original, to create a false input for the brain. The child stays in the womb and is being feed the experiences the original lived, all in real time. The womb also function as a sensory deprivation tank, to prevent any real input.
When all the data have been transferred (the clone is around 25 years old at this time) the clone is born for real. He or she are now free of artificial input, a perfect copy of the original crewman, and can go on to confidently fix the leaking cooling system. (Sorry still 800 years to destination, maybe next time)
From the clones point of view they are growing up on earth, learns and loves, volunteer, hand over their "backup" harddrive and BAM... suddenly they are covered in goo, lightyears away from earth and hundreds of years in the future.
So the question is: How believable is it that this mind cloning method could work? 335