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Dyson On Grey Goo, Bioterrorism, and Censorship
Phronesis writes "In "The Future Needs Us," Freeman Dyson reviews Michael Crichton's Prey. After disposing of the bad science (The Reynolds number of nanobots 'the size of red blood cells' would limit their top speed to 2 mm/sec, which would make it hard for them to swarm or chase people; Solar power would provide no more than 20 nanowatts, which would not be sufficient for the activities the book describes; etc.) he turns to the more general theme of fearmongering about nanotechnology and biotechnology, comparing Prey to Nevil Shute's On the Beach ('Prey is not as good as On the Beach, but it is bringing us an equally important message')." Read on for a few more notes from the story, which makes an interesting followup to reader cybrpnk2's positive review of Prey .
"Dyson notes Joy's oddly prescient comment in April 2000 that
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.but objects to Joy's recommendation that we should 'relinquish pursuit of that knowledge...so dangerous that we judge it better that [it] never be available.' After a discussion of the actual history of biological warfare and bioterrorism, Dyson quotes Milton's Areopagitica in defense of intellectual and scientific freedom, concluding that 'Perhaps, after all, as we struggle to deal with the enduring problems of reconciling individual freedom with public safety, the wisdom of a great poet who died more than three hundred years ago may still be helpful.'"
I've read a few of his books over the years, and would put him up there with Richard Dawkings. Great read, even for the non-scientific.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
The problem with this is that knowledge (or even simply ideas) once taken out cannot be jammed back into the can. Nor should it. Security through obscurity is never really secure... if you know what I mean...
00101010
Yeah, "Prey" might scare the beejeebees out of people, but maybe get a few interested in real nanotechnology. For that, they can take a look at Small Times, which has covered the environmental issue extensively both in this article and in its upcoming dead-tree-edition cover story.
After disposing of the bad science (The Reynolds number of nanobots 'the size of red blood cells' would limit their top speed to 2 mm/sec, which would make it hard for them to swarm or chase people; Solar power would provide no more than 20 nanowatts, which would not be sufficient for the activities the book describes; etc.)
And there is no way the earth can be round! We'd fall off!
Oooo...and there is no way that a craft that is heavier than air will every be able to fly either.
This is what annoys me about the arguments like this. They don't take into account that science is evolving all around them that will render the limitations they are planning on obsolete at the same time. So the 'smart' scientists push forward and screw things up...they've done it before. Nanotech is scary shit...to deny that is arrogant and short-sited.
Brilliant...
Dyson & Bill Joy both relate to the Unabomber Manifesto,
which has some stunning sections on technology:
Industrial-Technological Society Cannot Be Reformed
Restriction Of Freedom Is unavoidable In Industrial Society
The 'Bad' Parts Of Technology Cannot Be Seperated From The 'Good' Parts
Technology Is A More Powerful Social Force Than The Aspiration Freedom
The complete manifesto is here
BEFORE YOU REPLY, please read a bit.
He has some ideas that are VERY similar
to ideas that get posted here on slashdot.
One excerpt here...
While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications . . . how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence.
One of the most intereting conversations I've ever had was with a fellow who was pursuing a career in particle accelerator work.
According to him there used to be similar "Grey Goo" arguments surrounding some earlier particle accelerator work. There was some worry that an experiment, by chance, might create a form of matter that was more stable at lower energies, causing a chain reaction that would convert normal matter into this more "stable" matter, plus energy.
I really don't know enough about the field to flesh this out better. However, rather than being frightening, the conversation really captured how exciting fields on the edge can be.
I always had trouble with the grey goo concept, on which Crichton bases this book, on the grounds that I have a hard time figuring out what the damned things do for food.
The dominant energy source around us is organic matter. You can't get much energy out of eating inorganic matter (rock) because, aside from carbon (coal, graphite, diamond), it's mostly well-oxidized and sitting in a free-energy minimum. That's why we don't burn rocks other than coal in the fireplace. This means that the nanobots would be competing with natural life forms for organic matter and I doubt they would do well in the competition.
The machinery by which living things extract energy from organic matter is quite sophisticated and I don't see any prospect for engineered nanotechnology out-competing basic bacteria on this front.
Similarly, if most of the energetically favorable raw material around is organic, if the nanobots are to reproduce, they will likely be built of organic compounds, so they are again competing with bacteria that have a 4 billion year head start in optimizing themselves for the environment. If they are built of inorganic compounds or make much use of elements that are not generally found in living matter, then they will need to use much of their metabolic output to fighting entropy as they purify (reduce sand to silicon, for instance) and synthesize the necessary building blocks.
Until the question of where a nanobot gets its food and how it reproduces are plausibly explained (we don't need reduction to practice, but some plausible background is necessary), I will not take scenarios involving huge swarms of malevolent grey goo seriously, even in fiction.
here
Forget all the tech arguments(it's *fiction*, folks) this guy has some serious issues - he seems incapable of writing realistic female characters. Jurassic Park - the little girl was constantly whining and crying - at least Spielberg gave her some intelligence("Hey - this is Unix! I know this! :) ). Andromeda Strain- I only recall some nurses. Now, in Prey, the hero's wife goes to the dark side and conjures up some Clones(see: Attack of).
Mebbe Mr. Critchton should go for a little sensitivity training?
Dyson rocks, though.
DT
"Parent Stolen from Amazon" sounds like a headline from a tabloid about a jungle abduction.
Seriously, though, nothing was stolen. Something was copied, however. Copying is not theft.
If it truly were stolen, the original would be gone and you would have been unable to link to it.
So huge, in fact, that I thought the TNG episode was actually pretty lame for the way it handled the sphere. I mean, given that the thing's usable surface area was 100,000 times the surface of all the planets in the Federation combined (assuming 3190 Federation worlds to round the numbers out), you could easilly devote a season or a serries to the concept (once you worked out that nasty little solar flare issue, of course). Are you listening, Rick Berman?
It also says a lot that Niven was absolutely stoked when Dyson contacted him and told him he thought Ringworld was plausible.
(Apologies for posting anonymously - I moderated a an earlier comment in this discussion)
I'm not entirely certain whether I agree or disagree...
There are a number of different styles of science fiction. We've got the kind you describe, where amazing technology exists solely because the author wants it to be there. The author wants something to happen, so he waves his hands and says 'it's all because of science.' There's no deeper meaning, and there's no attempt at any sort of realistic theory behind things. These stories are nothing but suspending disbelief and enjoying the ride.
Then there are the books that, while quite possibly written for entertainment as well, also go about playing the 'what-if' game... These are the sort of stories that, even if it isn't the main premise, wind up bringing up issues and trying to answer the question "If we had technology to do X, then what sort of things might happen to us..." These aren't trying to explain how the technology itself works, but rather how the having that technology affects people.
Finally, there are the science fiction books that actually try to propose valid explanations for what is going on...
There can be mixes amongst the categories(frequently something explains a theory and tries to analyze how it might affect people), but it's pretty easy to find examples of all these different types of books in SF... And it doesn't mean any one type is inferior to the others.
That said, while I haven't read this particular book, one of Crichton's recent books, Timeline, annoyed me with one particular trait. If it had been written as an 'enjoy the ride' style story, it would have been fine(though a little predictable, but that's a separate issue). The problem arose in that he spent large portions of the book quoting and referencing scientific papers and books on science trying desperately to justify and explain something, while he really didn't have any sort of grasp on the subject matter. Trying to pass yourself off as explaining the technology in SF, when you don't have a clue as to how the subjects your discussing work is something I find rather grating. If he'd just waved his hands and said 'and the scientists discovered time travel,' then I would have found the book significantly better...
Then again, this is just my opinion.
I tend agree with you on that point, but I also have to admit that if it wasn't for him I wouldn't even know about other people's theories. And let us not forget his articulation on the concept of the meme, a worthy epiphany in its own right.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
It is impossible.
One. Nanites such as these acting together would still not be able to do more than a similar collective group of entities, like, say, a human being. And the individual nanites can still only move at 2mm per second, and they *don't* have a wide range of abilities (for example, human muscle tissue of various types can contract, which these nanites could never do).
Two. The solar energy figures provided by Dyson - who knows a thing or two about such things - are for *total solar energy absorption*. That means the figures include electricity, heat, light, etc. The nanites might - maybe - be able to harness 100% of that energy, but they can't magically increase it.
Three. Crichton is a fricking nano-luddite who's pretty good at fear-mongering and pretty bad at technology. Remember "Congo"? The amazing broadband link that took minutes to receive a text message but sent video at full fidelity in real-time?
Four. Emergent Behavior is a wonderful fear tactic to use on people who don't understand physics and engineering, but there's one thing emergent behavior can't do - magically change the laws of physics. It means that while something may behave in ways that were not anticipated - and the more complex the system, the more likely that is to happen - there are still hard and fast unbreakable limits to the capabilities of the system.
Keep your $.02. Stop, think, and try to get better value for it next time.
Not sure that too many people really believed that scientists could soon have dinosaurs rampaging through their back yard.
I think you've hit on an important point here: there's no reason to believe that anyone will take "Prey" any more seriously than they did Jurassic Park. In that sense, I think Dyson's entire piece is misguided. If he wants to argue with Bill Joy, he should do so directly, rather than dragging a piece of unrealistic irrelevant pulp fiction into it.
Dyson's comparison to "On the Beach" doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The consequences of a major nuclear war would not be very different, in the most important respects, from that described in On the Beach - i.e. unthinkable numbers of people would die, and life on Earth would barely be worth living. The situation with nanotech is nowhere near so clear.
Dyson claims he's trying to combat myths that might enter the public consciousness as a result of "Prey", but it's not clear that the public is going to be any more worried about the realistic consequences of nanotech, than it is about scientists cloning killer dinosaurs.