Space – the Final Human Arrogance

This mocks “the final frontier”.

Most humans, scientists and layman alike, have lots and lots of ideas about space. There’s aliens, some theories even say *how many* worlds there are with alien life. Science fiction tells us what the aliens look like, how they act, their motivations (which are, bizarrely, similar to humanity)… its like we know as much about what’s out there as we do about Earth.

Its part of the disease of Western thought in general… too much emphasis is placed upon what is known and what is speculated and not enough about what is *not* known… not enough on the limitations.

Who’s there to talk about the fact that we have zero contact with aliens, despite that there are supposedly millions or billions or more alien races? But, but… the *large distances involved* they say… who are WE to say what is a large distance to a creature we know nothing about?

No human has lived on another planet. We’ve never been outside our solar system. We see quite a bit of vague details, from far away.

We pretend to know so much about the universe from the development of a *single* planet. I’m told we know how life develops, and that it develops similarly on other worlds, despite us never having verified life on any other world.

Technology that enables increased knowledge of space has only developed recently. It seems likely barring some catastrophe (like nuclear exchange) it will continue to increase, making it easier for us to explore space which raises more and more the question of why our planet isn’t already part of some intergalactic empire. The easier it becomes for us, the easier it becomes for a “highly intelligent species” which supposedly is found commonly throughout the universe.

In the end, our perception is crippled from knowledge of only *one* planet with life, of knowledge of only *one* highly intelligent species. The only thing that’s likely to improve that perception is physical exploration of space.

We know what life is. We speculate what aliens are like. We make theories on how many other highly intelligent species are in the universe. *None* of that, however, is verified. We know some about what EARTH life is… its idle extrapolation to suppose other planets have similar properties with respect to life. Life as “in and of itself” cannot be known using only earth as the basis.

Sometimes I think that humans don’t even want to explore space. Why bother, when we can just pretend we know everything about it from the comfort of our own living rooms? We can just “know” that there are millions of alien races… no need to check!

Project Iraqi Freedom! – its not just propaganda to some

Lum writes…

“At some point we need to realize that far too many Americans have died for the cause of Iraqi democracy, and it’s not a battle we can win if the Iraqis themselves don’t want it.”

Wow, what a gem of a comment. Lets review, shall we?

In 1991, at the low point of Saddam Hussein’s popularity with the Iraqi people, the US imposed severe economic sanctions on the country, leading to economic tragedy and boosting Saddam Hussein’s power considerably.

In 2003, the sanctions were over. What replaced them were the selling off of Iraq’s oil assets to foreign companies (courtesy of Paul Bremer for which he would receive multiple awards). Bremer would later receive an assassination attempt. Perhaps according to Lum, this is just more complaints about America “bringing democracy to Iraq”.

The following year, John Negroponte is named US Ambassador to Iraq, where he leads the colonial administration there. It takes 4,000 members to “ambassadorize” to a broken country… that’s a lot of ambassadorizing!

But to be fair to Lum, the US doesn’t mind Iraqi democracy at all, in fact it *prefers* it to dictatorship, under one very big condition. It controls that democracy. That’s why Garner was fired (who wanted elections in 90 days) and Bremer prevented Iraqi elections until the US could exert political control in the country.

The only true form of democracy coincides with self-sovereignty, as America itself well understands through its own history. America has been actively preventing Iraqi democracy since 1991 (and hindering it since 1983 with arms sales to Hussein), and it has made no efforts at all to change its ways.

Perhaps Lum would like to consider that in 1972 Hussein oversaw the seizure of foreign control of Iraqi’s oil, following the Nasser model of self-sovereignty, the economic result of which massively benefitted the Iraqi people, turning it into a rich and modern secular Arab nation. That is, until the Iran/Iraq war led slowly to the country’s downfall, ironically coinciding with American “assistance” to the nation. In fact, it seems the more America is involved with the country the worse it gets! Perhaps Lum thinks that’s coincidental.

After the Iran/Iraq war Hussein was defeated. It was a crushing blow, and after the next one with the failed takeover of Kuwait the atrocities he committed against his people made him very unpopular, likely enough to topple him soon after but the opportunity was lost with the economic sanctions. Why didn’t the US stop the 1991 atrocities and support the popular opposition to remove Hussein from power? If they’d done that and then left Iraq in control THAT would have been “dying for the cause of Iraqi democracy”… some day Lum may learn the difference.

But without people like Lum, how would people like the Neocons be elected? How would the American people be able to swallow lies and the media be able to ignore truth? Lum is merely making the world a much simpler, much safer, much more ignorant place for all of us. Thank you, Lum.

The Neocon Conscience

The Neocons are very useful to their enemies and horribly embarrassing to their allies. I love talking about them while Daniel Morris wishes they would shut the fuck up while he looks for a rock to hide under.

To be fair to them though, they wanted it this way. You don’t do such obvious deception of the American public, such over-the-top PR stunts, etc. unless you *want* to be the villain. Its right to say that part of it is total contempt for the American public and the media, but certainly not all.

The Neocons ultimately want to change the American populace. They want to defeat America, to make Americans learn their place, which is to obey the Neocons. But they also want America to accept their vision, and in their own cute misguided way they really do want to “make America great again”.

Take a look at George Bush’s recent direct admission that he lied about Rumsfeld’s resignation a week before the election as a political move. These guys aren’t even TRYING to hide the deception at this point. Its important to ask *why*.

Hiding deception is normally one of the key skills for politicians. The practice of the opposite tendency is unheard of in politics as far as I am aware. Since these guys aren’t incompetent at deception (they did well enough in the Reagan years) there must be other things going on.

One is that they aren’t as confident as they like to appear. Its a tough road to have no respect for an intelligent and admirable people, and it puts a lot of strain on them when they are both contemptuous and considerate at the same time. This blustering belligerent approach is a way of masking their own strife.

While they have fascist tendencies, they aren’t hardcore committed fascists. So on the one hand they want to give you an authoritarian beatdown and on the other hand they want to convince you of their position.

Also, they have the sense of wanting to do a lot in a little amount of time, that they are revolutionaries against a giant horrible almost insurmountable tide called Liberalism or Pacifism or Progress or Sovereignty. They are the underdogs and they know it. If you like the bombs and the world wants to take them away from you, you bomb as much as you can while you still can.

As time has gone by, the Neocons believe less and less in themselves. Inertia carries them forward instead of ideology. They’ve created a machine and the machine now gives them purpose instead of the creative impulse. To a growing extent they’d just like to be put out of their misery, but their pride doesn’t allow the admission.

Here’s to putting them out of their (and more importantly, our) misery for good in 2008.

Saving the World, One Corpse at a Time – the novella

That’s the current title anyway – I suspect it will hold up.

This has been a lot of fun to write, especially any part with Big Rod (he occurs in every fourth section at the moment). One difficulty I’m running into is maintaining the tone I want while introducing changes to keep developing the story and characters. Another issue is that the novella’s setting is the CRPG genre as a whole (and even a bit of other RPGs)… which introduces some chaos into the environment since several different games with different mechanics and gameplay are present. Its been fairly smooth sailing so far through the early simple stages of the novella. Its broken up into Levels which correspond to the main character’s (and Big Rod’s) level. Amazingly, Big Rod may be the hero of the story, although he’s not the main character and as a parody himself hardly seems appropriate. Perhaps that’s just more commentary on the genre.

“Oh my god, they killed Arneson!” “You bastards!”

On Fandom

Fandom is a type of specialization. Such as the guy who’s seen the Star Wars movies 3000 times. It could be called “division of labor”, opposed to a liberal view of experiencing the world. Another example is someone who waits for an event to occur, maybe for years, anticipating, living for, and finally receiving.

Lost within the joy of love and obsession is the lack of other experiences. This lack is like a tree falling in the woods with noone around… did it really happen? The fan would say its irrelevant… he was too enthralled in his fandom to notice.

Its a type of control, order, purpose, and meaning. Its also a differentiator, a means of uniqueness. Lots of people can say they “experience the world”, how many can say they’ve seen Star Wars 3000 times?

In a fractured land of sound bites and first impressions, which is better? The more you see the better your perspective, but can that perspective be expressed in a flash, in the amount of time it takes to say “I’ve seen Star Wars 3000 times”?

Instead of talking about what we’ve seen we should talk about what we *haven’t* seen. Fandom’s weaknesses would be put on display. Fans would realize what they’ve been missing. Each of us might find the next thing we’re looking for.

Microwages

Players are generating content for developers for free. This happens whenever a player adds content that is used by players. Developers are incorporating this more and more into gameplay. Spore takes it a step further, having the game automatically upload player creations which they generate during necessary gameplay to a server which then analyzes and puts those creations into the games of other players.

In this piece I consider microwages – fair payment to players for the value of the creations they put into the game. One part of this is determining the wage amount. Spore is the example throughout.

This can be determined as other wages are determined – by supply, demand, and economic value. These laborers dynamically fill work opportunities. A highly skilled microlaborer in Spore is one who creates a very effective creature – one that can provide a challenge for expert players around the world. This is the laborer in low supply… any game player can make a mediocre creature. Another rare microlaborer is he who makes a very cool looking/behaving creature, creating delight among the other players.

One way to set the top end of the microwage pay scale is to assume the same payment as if the player was at the high end of the developer pay scale with respect to his creation. So if a top artist takes X time to make an equivalently valued creature, the amount of pay for that period of time would go to the microlaborer. If the microlaborer produces a better product than what the artist can produce, he gets a higher wage. Wages would then increasingly fall down the quality line.

As more and more creatures are made, less and less money would be paid out due to less value being added to the game.

For this to be implemented a late Beta of each game would be sent to a third party designated by law for the purpose of setting the microwage structure for games.

Reviewing a genre or sub-genre

This entry is responding to “that a game INTENTIONALLY uses the D&D rules shouldn’t be used to score it.”

If using the D&D rules is an inherent negative or inherent positive then it should.

An an example: Will Wright’s Spore. This game has 6 phases, with different gameplay in each. If you like variety of gameplay, this design element becomes an inherent positive.

Games are judged based on what they try to do, not just on how well they execute what they try to do. You see this in reviews all the time… the reviewer says something like “despite the problems, I’m giving the game a 80 because of its ambitious and innovative design”.

Reviewers would give a zero score to Pong if it was re-released today. Copied, boring gameplay.

Genres *themselves* are elements of gameplay and design that can be reviewed just like the other aspects.

As Adventure games faded for example, players enjoyed them less and less relative to other games. If reviewers wanted to be accurate, they would have given Adventure games lower and lower scores, as they enjoyed them less.

Genres don’t get points just for existing. If something’s not fun, not worthwhile, it doesn’t really matter what its trying to do. It failed.

There’s still differentiation within sub-genres. A crappy sub-genre can still have a great game that gets a 7 and a bad game that gets a 2.

Unless the game is horribly plagued by bugs, Spore is *guaranteed* a solid score, because of design innovation. That is to say, its design is highly favored. Its not treated like every other game, nor should it be. Even if it wildly doesn’t do what it sets out to do it will get a decent score.

On Goths, Cheerleaders, and Normals

Goths complain about pain.

Cheerleaders conceal pain.

Normals deal with it.

Hmm

From http://www.igxe.com/Cheap-Gold-WorldofWarcraft-Stonemaul_Alliance.htm

“Price Slashed again! unbeatable price from the direct sale. You are buying the gold from the game developers directly, not from the resellers, no hacking , no cheating , guarantee work !”

“No Waiting, No Bidding. IGXE.com – Direct Sale Service offers you the best and fastest way to buy world of warcraft WOW Gold from game developers directly. You will have the best buy , lowest and unbeatable price.”

Is it true that Blizzard is selling gold?

House and Senate go Democratic!

The house is a blowout… around a 40-seat gap.

The senate looks to end 49-49-2, but both independents (Lieberman and Sanders) are on the Democratic side of the divide.

Accepting Pain

Its important to accept pain sometimes. If you reject pain you reject what goes along with it.

How much human suffering derives from the inability to accept pain?

A Reason for a Horror Movie – The Ability to Deny

In these fictitious, deceitful, advertised, propagandaed times where we are bombarded by manipulation and lies, the ability to deny, to ignore, to reject, to prevent from effect, becomes crucial.

*Therefore*, the more offensive, the more reprehensible, the more odious, the more realistic the *face* of that deception, the better. If the primary point of a horror movie, as I argue, is to test our ability to *deny* any effects of that movie on oneself, then the more terrible it is the better. *Extremity* becomes the true test… extremity of pain.

The ascetic, and these are more ascetic times than any other I’ve experienced, wants the most extreme test so that he knows no fiction can affect him.

Those who say its about masochism have the problem that masochists are rare. The point is to have NO pain… to deny all pain. The point of horror movies is to LACK (or subvert) emotion… to take a horrible experience blasting away in front of you and reduce it to nothing. The test is of your ability to remove yourself from the experience you see on screen. The horror movie is the opposite procedure of most films, where the viewer *wants* to engage himself, *wants* to become involved in the experience. The best horror movies test your ability to disengage. You win when you watch the entirety of the film, appreciate the film, and when the film has no negative effect on you whatsoever.

I’m about to watch Hostel… my Test of Asceticism is upon me!

This is funny

The Reason for Obsession

The usefulness of obsession is that it blocks the consciousness from the pain of seperation from the loved. It thus allows continuation of approach to the loved which otherwise the pain would prevent (by self-preservation from pain which results in cessation of concern (cessation of love)).

Two things end obsession: arrival at the loved (removes obsession) or allowance of pain (replaces obsession). The time when pain is allowed is determined by the effect of that pain on the individual.

Neocon emergence and definitive beginning

I was going to write about the Neocons being racist, and moving to the right after the ’60s out of fear of the growing political expression of Blackie… Chomsky made required a change.

The social movements of the ’60s… civil rights, women’s rights, environmental protection, etc. in total frightened non-radical leftists. Thus they turned to the right and also gained a profound fear of individualism, conflict, and resistance of authority. This manifested itself once they gained political power into totalitarian policies.

A New Understanding – Hopefully the Final Destruction of Myself

One of the great mysteries of my life has been my parents’ reaction to me. Its been the *definitive* mystery of my life. I’ve been pieceing it together, made all the more frustrating the more pieces I have without a picture showing.

Their reaction to me has been one of abject terror. Hence the oppression and abuse. My constant question was why.

The problem is that such a fundamental question for the identity MUST be answered even before such an answer can be rational. So my operational answer, while I worked toward a real answer, was that I was a free man, outside the scope of systemic indoctrination, AND I was highly intelligent and strong-willed which combined to make me a threat to society. As time goes by and no real answer is found, the operational answer carries more and more weight… a weight that slowly began to strangle me. What I need is the truth.

The truth is more complex. My parents are Neocons, although they do not call themselves that (maybe they do now). They became disaffected (especially my mother) with liberalism. They turned against freedom in a sense, certainly against free radicalism. They saw in me the very thing they themselves turned away from because it to them represented a failed methodology. Their solution was to turn me away from the “dark side” through various unpleasant ways. Yet other undercurrents were in play. They support youth culture, including MY youth culture, in its overthrow of older culture. This resulted in a schizoid repressing while wishing for me to revolt against them. I was disgusted by this whole process, agreeing with not a single element of them or their approach.

In addition, they see society and by extension themselves as deeply corrupt… I was supposed to be the salvation. At the same time as the other crap they were also working the whole self-esteem angle… really elevating me, worshipping me in a way. Unfortunately, THAT worked. Maybe I clung to that because I had nothing else to cling to, maybe I was just being weak. In any case, I worshipped intelligence and I worshipped myself for being of very high intelligence. GRATZ ME!

This also had many related effects, however. I needed to build an identity that took advantage of my beliefs. So I would create things, create hierarchical games with me at the top, self-suppose my correctness on issues, self-suppose that my identity as a free spirit was a *result* of very high intelligence, etc… what confuses (or corrupts) the issue further is that I was *using* intelligence, using my own mind through this corrupt process… it became difficult to distinguish legitimate intellect from a sort of false identity management. During this, everything had the highest possible stakes, with me as the saving messiah.

So gratz, parents… they tried every possible angle to find weaknesses in me and they succeeded in one. I wonder what normal parents are like?

The good news is that day by day I’m learning more and more about myself… if I haven’t already destroyed myself that will happen soon. FUCK ME… I’m going to become something greater.

Democracy – brought to you by Noam Chomsky

I don’t have any words to do him justice, so I’ll just post a bunch of links. The Buckley/Chomsky debates are much greater than anything we see today… it really shows the pathetic state of political debate on TV. I’m surprised these interviewers hold it together so well… Chomsky has brought me to tears on a few occasions.

One criticism of Chomsky: he’s intentionally deceptive when he says he’s not a great speaker. He is a great speaker, in sentence construction, persuasion, clarity, and moral force. I don’t know how to improve him as a speaker.

On Media Corruption

An excellent piece here on the media. It will be interesting to see what effect a Democratically-controlled Congress will have on law and the government.

Here’s some necessary Chomsky. This is so good you can almost watch it instead of reading his books…

On the Destruction of Jahalia

“The fundamental sickness of western culture – that being a sickness of “ignorant barbarism”.

One of the frightening truths of modern America is that Americans themselves believe in Jahalia much more now than ever before. Much of present American culture in an attempt to *move away from* “ignorant barbarism”.

What makes Jahalia intellectually powerful is that it contains substantial truth: American individualism, if pursued excessively, can create the results that Jahalia fears.

But it jumps the gun: American individualism has NEVER been pursued excessively.

The case that the proponents of Jahalia point to are the race riots and aggressive political demonstrations of the 1960s. While ugly and unfortunate incidents in some cases, those never threatened America. In fact, this display of emotional honesty helped America (or should have helped America) see itself more clearly.

*Overreaction* to them, however, did, and *does*, threaten America. The Neocons rose to power, in ideological unison with radical Islam in opposition to “corrupt Western (liberal) society”.

Now what we hear is “Americans are ignorant”. “Americans are immoral”. “Americans believe themselves to be #1”. We hear those things now much more than ever.

But worse yet: the Neocons are promoting their own belief! Since 2001 Americans have, under the guidance of the Neocon White House, BECOME more ignorant, more immoral, more intolerant… the Neocons are shaping America to *their* vision of it and shaping world opinion of America to their vision of it!

The Neocons have forced America to react to this. So Anti-Neocon forces have emerged who have to pursue or promote such an agenda… so now they, like Borat, have to encourage Americans to become *less* ignorant, less immoral, more tolerant.

But it all derives from an error! It all derives from such a concern that liberalism will go *too far* that it was never even given a chance to go too far!

Such a concern is fine… such a concern is healthy. What some people DID with that concern is not healthy.

Liberalism needs to be reinstated in America. Excessive fear of Liberalism needs to end.

Introducing the Id to Conscious Society

This has been a project undertaken by several people. The past half-century has seen an acceleration in effect, the equivalent of moving from 1 MPH to 3 MPH. This is considered a radical and for the most part undesired project (not popular) which accounts for its dominance among comics (Bruce, Kaufman, Cohen) who are given a lot more tolerance than otherwise is issued.

Its much much more popular among the youth, and to a very small extent among leftists… otherwise its nearly entirely rejected by society except for non-public venues like comedy clubs (or movies).
I’m curious about why the Id is rejected by society. It seems likely that its primarily due to the Id being seen as primitive, pre-civilized… this is how Freud treated it. Expressions of the Id actually *offend* people… are they insults to their sophistication, to their civilization? With respect to the Borat movie… if Borat wasn’t hiding behind a cloak of “different culture” he would be thought insane, mentally ill, or retarded. But lets say Cohen couldn’t make a movie about Borat… would he be willing to be Borat within society? How would he defend himself against charges of mental illness… would he eventually begin to believe them? How could he say… I’m trying to help you…

The Borat character’s primary purpose is conscious Id promotion. The reception among Americans is shall we say… not a positive one.

Is it wise, is it psychologically healthy, to seperate the Id… to remove it from society? Movie critics seem to focus on Cohen’s treatment of bigotry… but it goes well beyond that. Cohen is lambasting the Super-ego. We are reaching a point of debate on Id vs. Super-ego expression in society.

Cohen’s Id pursuit in many ways has a much more disastrous result than the Id pursuit of Winston in 1984. At least in 1984 they had the good manners to repress him. In Borat they shun, while calling it “freedom”.

Go Go Super-Ego! Long live the American Empire!

Borat!!!!!!

I had seen almost none of Borat on TV. What surprised me most about the movie was that it made me depressed, even though I laughed at times. Oh well… the solution is surely Prozac.

Cohen has some sad, sad eyes.

Postmodernists are afraid of Reality

This post explains and offers a path to a solution.
Lets say, for the moment, that a person believes he has the power to shape his own mind. Lets furthermore say, that this person believes the contents of his mind are more important than the contents of objective reality.

What sort of life does he lead… how does he go about shaping his own mind?

What are his goals for his mind? To receive pleasure? Knowledge? Comfort?

All of these things are much more easily obtained if you take into account objective reality only to the extent that you get what you want from it. You can funnel entertainment to yourself, funnel learning, funnel peace of mind.

The goal of this person is to serve *himself*. He is the end-state, the master of his reality.

Objective reality, to the extent it exists at all, is merely a means to an end. A land of the exploited. It doesn’t matter what it contains, only what it provides for him. Great suffering can exist alongside his pleasure… as long as he can ignore the suffering and funnel the pleasure all is well. If he sees the suffering that merely means the funnel is not narrow enough… which his mind remedies or if it can’t remedy it demands a solution from the economy.

The funnel *devices* we call… technology. Radio, TV, computer, cell phone, PDA.

This sort of person becomes funneled even when he’s not using a device. When he has the misfortune of having to use his eyes on the world, they see what they want to see.  The world becomes subject to him, not the other way around as has been true throughout the previous human societies.

This is highly problematic at the moment, and will only become more so until the issue becomes accepted and dealt with.

If its not accepted and dealt with, we will see a breakdown of society, or I should say a *further* breakdown of society.

If the world becomes Americanized, this issue will spread.

The way to deal with the problem is to increase the importance of him acting in support of objective reality relative to him acting in support of his subjective reality. This is much more difficult than it sounds: Communism for example was supposed to achieve this, but it made a fatal error: the *collective* is not the *objective*. Totalitarianism likewise is problematic. That error exists because ideology ITSELF is subjective. Ideology is an external mind imposed upon a people.

The *first* solution, and maybe the only one necessary, is to define a people without using ideology. Most of human history has done this… people were geographically-based, not ideologically-based. But at the 21st century, how do you move away from ideology and what do you move to?

How to Minimize War

This requires three things: a strong global community that shares defensive values, that community providing the results of war while avoiding the humanitarian and economic costs, and a reduction of weapon strength to enable the militant power of that community (and reduce the damage from any military endeavor).
None of these conditions have been met.

The global community is threatened by the power and aggression of America. Weapon strength continues to increase, with space-based nuclear weapons being perhaps the tragic end-state of the development.

“Providing the results of war”: governments and perhaps even states would be subject to change from the global community. This will be done through law and the resolutions of that community.

The easiest manner of arriving at this position is to increase the power of the global community relative to the power of any other controlling force. Currently, the problem is the American government, but it is also necessary to prevent the development of any other dominant group (including private sector groups).

In the short term, the solution is for the world to come together to oppose American aggression, including military war against America if necessary (diplomacy is the first step).

Once that is accomplished, monitor the means of power groups within the world and through law prevent them from reaching a certain level (the power ceiling).

This power ceiling can be relaxed once the military power of these groups is lowered, so nuclear weapon bans would be enacted and enforced to prevent military adventurism and authority. Even the global community would maintain only a small supply of nukes (with laws in place restricting their application), as last resort measures.

An examination of the effect of economic power would be undertaken to determine any required measures on that front.

On Groupthink

Groupthink is typically a political ploy done by pretending to agree with something (often but not always the dominant position on an issue within the local group). In straight cases, the motivation is to gain political power within the group. In other cases, pretending to groupthink is a means of mocking groupthink.

Only when straight groupthink is not recognized is it a danger. A common way to recognize groupthink is when the person in question agrees to the position with no or minimal comment, or with paraphrases of comments made by others supporting that position (this can be difficult to determine, as the comments paraphrased can come from a source outside the group). Note that groupthink need not result from a comment at all… someone can groupthink based off of the group’s recommendation of a game for example, and buy the game (without doing any individual research).

In every group I have ever been a part of, degree of groupthink is linked largely to the capability of the individuals in the group. Qt3 has had varying degrees of groupthink… in Politics & Religion at times there have been major problems… large dogpiling and other despicable techniques have been used. The Games forum is also subject to considerable groupthink, and is the section where its most prevalent at the moment.

Groupthink is a failure of morality and individual responsibility, and its degree of existence is one of the major ways of evaluating any group.

On Human Cloning

Cloning technology has a long way to go before it becomes viable. Once it progresses though, it has the potential to radically alter human society.

If the technology is perfected and the clone has no inherent defects, what may the outcomes be? The political battle over clones will be fierce. What will regulate their creation?

Cloning will be a reflection of modern politics… either in the control of the government, the private sector, and/or the people.
If governmentally-controlled, human-creation factories are an intoxicating proposition for aggressive states (and may make states aggressive that were not before). Churn out human after human, feed them into the military machine… a neverending supply of cannon fodder. Eugenics programs will reduce variability in the populace. Castes will develop, giving each of the clone range-types specific roles in society. If early results are successful, the non-cloned population may be deemed inferior and killed, so as to not take resources from the clones. This may turn despotic governments into totalitarian ones.

If the private sector controls cloning, the benefits of cloning will favor the wealthy. Laws will be made that put the clone under the control of the client (as he paid for and thus owns the clone).

If the public controls cloning, clones will be used to increase the lifespan of the original (organ-farming).