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Don't Stymie Nanotech
Anonymous Coward writes "A new paper released by the Pacific Research Institute says that nanotechnology holds benefits for society if not blocked by misguided regulation or outright bans. Already, some prominent individuals (like Bill Joy) have questioned the rationale of continuing nanotech research - PRI's paper explains that nanotech has more benefits than drawbacks, and that bans and heavy regulation are not in society's best interests"
Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology.
We can't 'eat' air and dirt and use it (and it alone) to grow and reproduce. Nanites could, in theory, do just that, by using raw materials in the air and the earth to reproduce. It all depends on (A) how they are programmed, (B) how they mutate, and (C) how lucky (or unlucky) we are.-
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The oft-mentioned "grey goo" scenario is fundamentally flawed
Famous last words, friend. If there is anything humanity must learn, it is that we are imperfect. We must integrate into our planning the possibility that we are dead wrong, or face the consequences.
Anyway, by the time nanotech advances to a point where gray goo is conceivable, the world will probably suck bad enough and most people will be too self-absorbed to care if it all disappears.
On a brighter note, I believe that nanotech holds the possibility for a whole new way of living; a much happier way of living. It would turn our system upside down and revolutionalize what we spend our time on every day. The reason I have negative feelings is that the powerful and corrupt will have a hard time letting go of a world where they are on top and we are just peons. They'll be trying to find a way to stay on top.
You don't read all that much about nanotech in the mainstream press these days, of course, but it's possible that could change. Michael Crichton-- he of Jurassic Park, Timeline, etc.-- is just about to release a new book on the subject, called Prey. And I seem to recall reading something about the movie rights already being sold.
You know a science is entering the mainstream press when Crichton writes a thriller about it. In other words, you can look forward to several dozen articles in about a year's time on Slate with headlines such as "Nanotech - Is It for Real?"
Withstanding any climate is terribly easy when you're made of molecules of metals and/or minerals.
No, ma'am, it's not. Molecules are basically all the same when it comes to interacting with their environment. It's only when you start to look at them on the macroscopic scale that you start to see factors like hardness and tensile strength come into play. At the atomic level, a molecule composed of iron and lead is just as fragile as one made of nitrogen and oxygen. The same outside factors-- temperature, pressure, pH, radiation, etc.-- can crack metallic molecules apart as easily as anything else.
That said, nobody has proposed molecule-scale structures made of metal atoms. Carbon is just too damn useful not to construct the basic structure of your nanotechnological machine out of it. Once you start thinking about these things, the realization dawns that the most suitable elements for molecule-scale machines-- carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, oxygen-- are the same elements that comprise all life on Earth. Maybe there's a reason for that...
I write in my journal
"Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells."
Um... if you can do that, you can also program them to attack these malicious nanites. Stuff like that only works if you have a monopoly on the technology.
"I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides,"
So I'm going off-topic. Bah. I have karma to burn.
1.) incredible amounts of power output per unit mass of reactor. Even including radiation shielding.
2.) no need for an oxydizer. Great for submarines and spacecraft.
3.) Properly functioning reactors don't put out toxins (while just about everything else does). At worst you have "spent" fuel to get rid of, which doesn't accumulate anywhere near as fast as spent fuel in fossil fuel power sources (see point 1), and "spent" just means we don't yet have the technology to get more oomph out of it (if it's still releasing neutrons it's still useful). Why do you think we have so much focus on the "storage" of nuclear waste instead of "disposal?"
4.) The fuel itself may be more dangerous per unit mass, but go back to point 1 again.
All in all, nuclear power is probably less deadly than fossil fuel power. Even ignoring the way fossil fuel plants fund terrorism, you'd have no more black lung, no more exploding oil refineries, no more harsh chemicals put out by refineries, no more airborne carcinogens...
"Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals."
Let's see... bury nukes deep enough that the explosion (and any and all radioactive fallout) is kept underground. The explosion makes a crater, you connect the dots. Viola. What's so dangerous about that? Heck, if the Indians and Pakistanis can pull off underground nuclear tests with zero released fallout, what makes you think we can't?
"Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage."
Screw that, you can make a tank out of nanite paint. Remember the game Total Annihilation?
I'm reminded of "Can-O-Man" from The Tick.
turn to god!
Nothing is *simply* morally wrong.
Actually, anything that's morally wrong is simply morally wrong. That's because morality depends on one or more fundamental axioms provided from outside of the moral system. Every culture-- big or small-- has some set of moral axioms, and though not every member may agree on them, they can be used to construct childishly simple moral arguments. Capital punishment, for example, is morally wrong because the question of the time of a man's death is a choice that only God can make, and choosing to kill a man is to place oneself in the position of God, which is blasphemy, which is wrong. That argument only holds water if you accept all of the fundamental assumptions-- that God exists, that only God has the right to choose when a man dies, and so on-- but if you do, the argument is trivial.
Ethics, however, are more complex, because an ethical system is expected to be internally consistent, starting with no external axioms at all. An ethical argument against capital punishment might be that no one can predict what a person might do in the remainder of his natural life, so ending that person's life may be depriving society as a whole of a greater good. That argument, which many people find to be pretty compelling, doesn't depend on any unfounded assumptions, so it's more complex, but it requires less... oh, faith, I suppose, for lack of a better word.
Some people, though, reject all concepts of morality and ethics. These people, as I said before, are basically broken in my opinion. Arguing morality or ethics with them is a fool's errand, because they reject the prospect that one should act based on moral or ethical choices. Talking about ethics with a person like that is enough to make you want to jump off the roof, so I just won't bother.
I write in my journal
The exisiting nanotech, biotechnology, will force the world to deal with the perils of cheap, superdangerous weapons (and well-intentioned but misguided tools) well before built-from-scratch nanotech is advanced enough to matter. The world will not be able to afford letting people (including companies and governments!) keep activities of this kind secret much longer.
This will take some adjustment, especially for the USA since it is accustomed to depending on individual, commercial, and governmental ability to act in secrecy as the basis of freedom. (We are about the only holdout on international-inspection treaties on germs and chemical weapons, and we highly value my-home-is-my-castle and no-one-can-see-my-messages privacy.)
Solving this problem will not necessarily require a totalitarian regime, but that is what will happen if people who value freedom refuse to deal with it. We should push for a combination of openness (so everyone can watch for dangers), vigilance (because serious failures will damage both people and freedom), tolerance (so that openness still leaves people free to act unless they are clearly out of line), and widely-distributed prosperity (so that the zealots little base for support). And we should be tolerant of each other as we try to sort out how to balance these sometimes-conflicting goals.
But biotechnology (and later other nanotechnology) are going to be as much part of the solution (especially for health and prosperity) as part of the problem. It's not like everyone is in such great shape to start with.
Well, this is often given as the reason that we -should- develop nanotech. It's still going to be developed sooner or later, and I want our people to be able counter it. There's no defense against nanotech at this time, since the only real defense would be -other- nanotech.
The idea that banning it will make it go away is ludicrous. Sooner or later, some country will come up with potentially dangerous nanomachines. We can't prevent it. It reminds me of biological warfare agents. We restricted it, while the Russians continued working on it full-force. They were decades ahead of us. One virus given as an example tricks your body into attacking your nerve cells, basically causing a fatal case of multiple sclerosis. By the time any symptoms manifest, the virus itself is already gone, so there is no way to track it. Really nasty. I don't want some unfriendly group coming up with the nanotech version of that before we discover ways to counteract it.
Basically, the thought of a world where we can do such things is frightening, but the thought of a world where everyone other than us can is worse.
Brendan
[insert witty quote here]
It's impossible to come to any (useful) purely deductive conclusion without starting from some set of external, a priori axioms. Otherwise you'll be stuck coming to trival, circular, or conditional tautologies no matter how well you reason. (A is A, or if God exists then there is a God, or if God exists and only God should decide when someone dies then we shouldn't have capital punishment. These statements are all true by definition).
Even purely theoretical realms like math. How do you prove that 1+1=2 without reference to anything external? Perhaps you can, but as far as I can tell it's basically assumed by definition.
As far as your example of an "ethical" argument against capital punishment, it makes the assumption that a "greater good" exists and furthermore the assumption that "we shouldn't do things that deprive the society of a greater good" and also that "no one can predict what a person might do in the remainder of his/her natural life" and that "if no one can predict what a person might do, then that person may do things which contribute to the greater good" etc etc. You may disagree with the set of assumptions I've extracted but I think my point is clear.
Pretty much all human knowledge and reasoning is either based on assumptions that are just taken for granted, or inductive truths that are never 100% guaranteed to be true. This fact is somewhat intellectually jarring, but we seem to go on figuring things out about the world just fine nonetheless.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
I work in a lab where there is some degree of what I suppose would be called nanotech is performed - and I am continually confused by this "debate" over nanotech. So what exactly is the scale where the "evil things" happen? When I make a device that has features smaller than a micron, do the "evil nanotech" gnomes come out and start infusing it with evil spells?
If people want to debate specific techniques, that's fine, but the huge variety of techniques unfortunately clustered as "nanotech" share only one common thread: they have small, well-controlled features. Is small inherently evil? Should we fear dwarves and chihuahuas? I mean, this is honestly ridiculous. Many of these evil "nanotech" research pursuits are nothing more than attempting to make stronger materials and more efficient solar cells, for example. No one would fear this if you didn't call it nanotech.
On the other hand, if you ban it, then (not to be trite or anything, but...) "only criminals will have nanotech."
Would that be the criminals with multi-billion dollar research AND development laboratories? Right. This is exactly the view shared by the non-tech world, and it shows a lack of understanding of what nanotech IS (no offense). I can't just go to the garage, make some nanotech, and kill someone with it.
People outside (and many in) the scientific community simply have no real idea of what nanotech is. For a few years there, the best way to get a research grant approved was to make sure that the word nanotech was somewhere in there. That was just as dumb as saying "ban nanotech." Banning specific techniques perhaps makes sense, but again, why ban something because it's small? Don't throw out the solar cell with the self-sharpening bullet.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It's impossible to come to any (useful) purely deductive conclusion without starting from some set of external, a priori axioms.
Well, yes and no. In the strictest possible sense, you're right. When making ethical judgments-- which are, at their heart, value judgments-- you have to start with some basis for value. There has to be an explicit or implicit "X is good" in there somewhere. For example, in order for my previous trivial example of an ethical argument against capital punishment, you have to start with the implicit assumption that a benefit to society is a good thing, and that depriving society of a benefit is to be avoided.
But there's a significant qualitative difference between starting with "avoid doing harm" and starting with "God exists and he has given us rules by which to live." One starts with a proposition so obvious that it requires no rationalization. The other starts with a proposition based purely on faith, for which no rationalization is possible.
How do you prove that 1+1=2 without reference to anything external?
That's exactly what Whitehead and Russell did in their Principia Mathematica. (Not to be confused with Newton's book of a similar name.) They started with absolutely nothing and developed the principles of symbolic logic, sets, and relations, then finally got to cardinal arithmetic at the beginning of volume 2. So it is definitely possible to reduce something as fundamental as arithmetic down to first principles. It's not easy, but it's possible.
I write in my journal
Quoted...
"Capital punishment, for example, is morally wrong because the question of the time of a man's death is a choice that only God can make, and choosing to kill a man is to place oneself in the position of God, which is blasphemy, which is wrong."
Oddly enough, the Bible advocates a different stance to this. The concept of an eye for an eye also equates to a life for a life. Also, if taken at it's word, the Bible says that the authority system of government has the right to end the life of a member of society that infringes upon the right to life of other members of society. This is a basic outgrowth of what are called in the Bible "establishment principles." As described in the Bible, these principles are the set of moral rules that lead to a society that is free for everyone (not just Christians/believers). These rules have nothing to do with being a good Christian person. They have everythig to do with the function of a good government. In essence they are the Bible's form of perfect government. This is where the religious right people in the United States have really shown their ignorance of the text that they hold in such high esteem. I say this because the "establishment principles" the Bible describes preclude a form of government where religious doctrines are coded into law. Instead, the principles of sanctitiy of life, property, privacy, and freedom (for everyone in society!) are supposed to be the focus of government. In fact there is a Biblical injunction against legislating morality, and those who embark upon a crusade to do so are considered evil. The term that is used in the Bible to describe those who try to legislate thir morality is Moral Degeneracy, meaning that they are degenerate in their arrogance in their attempts to destroy the freedom of the members of sociey that do not believe exactly as they do.
Oh, by the way, your ethical argument against capital punnishment is faulty because the person could also do unspeakable things if they live. It could be argued that they are much more likely to comit crimes rather than do good because they have already shown a propensity in the past for breaking the law in heinous ways. At best the argumenbt as stated is a wash and therefore inconsequential. At worst it proves the opposite of what you used it for.
Anyways, religious principles should not be used to create legislation, but ethical and moral (morality being defined as sanctity of life, liberty, property, privacy) considerations are essential.
One last addition that addresses some things in this thread. As to the idea of abortion/stem cell research with regard to the Bible: There is no reason that any person that believes in the Bible should have anything to do with the abortion issue. The text is quite clear that God imputes life to the genetically formed body of a person at the moment of birth. The term "pneuma" in the Greek is used to describe the "breath of life" that is given by God at the monent of birth. In light of the spiritual aspects of humantiy that are described in the Bible, it is folly and arrogance for the Christian person to thing that humans create life through procreation. In other words, the Bible states clearly that until God imputes this additional, spiritual aspect into the body at birth, there is no "life." In addition, to bomb abortion clinics, or to harass doctors or people who are involved in the process, or to manipulate the judicial system to restrict abortion (see above) violates so many other Biblical principles that it is pathetic and ridiculous to even consider these people ambassadors of the Christian life that is described in the Bible.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Oddly enough, the Bible advocates a different stance to this.
Depends on how you interpret it. The Bible is a big book, and there's a lot of stuff in there that appears to be contradictory at first glance. There's the eye-for-an-eye stuff in the Old Testament, and the turn-the-other-cheek stuff in the New Testament, for example. Reconciling these disparate doctrines is a job for a person with more patience than I have.
The blasphemy argument is just one example of a moral case based in Biblical principles. You can flip through the Bible to find material to support any argument, any position at all, on this matter.
Oh, by the way, your ethical argument against capital punnishment is faulty because the person could also do unspeakable things if they live.
The chance that a person, duly incarcerated, can commit a crime is slim enough to be acceptable to many people.
At best the argumenbt as stated is a wash and therefore inconsequential.
Not at all, because the argument is based on the idea that it's better to err on the side of caution. A person imprisoned for life can still do good things. A person executed for his crime is lost forever.
There is no reason that any person that believes in the Bible should have anything to do with the abortion issue.
But the Bible should not be taken literally on matters about which biblical authors knew nothing. The concept of the "breath of life" is not meaningful in the context of what we now know about human development. Few could argue that a baby is not just as alive ten minutes before it is born as it is ten minutes after.
It's one thing to use the Bible as a source for moral guidance, for religious teaching and doctrine, for history, and for a whole host of other purposes. It's quite another thing to use it as a science textbook.
I write in my journal