Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's

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Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 6, 2004 @05:30AM from the he's-an-optipessimist dept.

geeber writes "There is an interesting interview with Bill Joy in the current edition of the Magazine in the New York Times. He is still obssesed with what he calls a 'civilization-changing event' brought on by the fast pace of research into dangerous technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Another interesting tidbit: he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."

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Get your tin foil hats here by The-Bus · 2004-06-06 05:35 · Score: 4, Informative

No boogedy-boogedy NYT registatrion required
here.

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Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Bill Joy??!!? by Richard_L_James · 2004-06-06 05:37 · Score: 3, Informative

If like me you were wondering as always it appears wikipedia has the answer... or so I thought !!!
Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server
Oh well never mind instead click here for a google cache of Bill's page on wikipedia
Re:James Watson on Gray Ooze... by ThisIsFred · 2004-06-06 06:36 · Score: 4, Informative

Also, one forgets that cells have been evolving against this possiblity for billions of years. If a "Gray Ooze" were possible it would very likely have appeared on its own.

I agree that the possibility of accidentally creating something dangerous is probably low (e.g. a genetically engineered mushroom that suddenly mutates into a human-killing fungus). However, I don't think the evolutionary argument has sway in all possible examples, because the danger involves creating something with specific functions not guided by evolution, an entirely custom-built microorganism for example.

There are two ways were I can possibly see that genetic engineering is potentially dangerous. The first is the chance that a genetically engineered microorganism that isn't dangerous to life on earth produces a byproduct that we didn't expect, which is dangerous to life. I highly doubt this would turn into catastrophe, since it's likely to be caught in the lab early on.

The other possible danger is that some lab is contracted to produce an intentially harmful microorganism or virus. Just because it hasn't evolved yet doesn't mean it isn't possible to piece together something incredibly dangerous and nearly impossible counter. Evolution doesn't appear to cover all possible avenues, it only appears to cover those possible in the amount of time allowed before there is a major change to the environment. That said, the geological record appears to show lots of "false starts" that were cut short by earth-wide catastrophes. IAANB (biologist) so perhaps I'm missing the big picture.

Anyway, my point is thus: We're far from the utopian promise of the future, and it will remain so because there is no single idea of perfection. War exists because one people want to force their political and social ideals on another people, even if there is no direct benefit for doing so. Against that backdrop, we've got biological weapons that look like the perfect WMD in a lab (chemical weapons and nukes don't reproduce when deployed, so they're less efficient), but turn out to be duds (luckily) when deployed. Imagine a virus which is airborne like the flu, destroys the immune system like HIV AIDS, can be spread by contact like a rhinovirus, but can be manufactured and stored almost indefinitely - unlike bacterial biological weapons. Assuming those traits aren't mutually exclusive, some agency, at some point, is likely to fund the research.

--
Fred

"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Interesting links... by Lank · 2004-06-06 06:53 · Score: 4, Informative

One of my professors this semester assigned a project comparing and contrasting the views of Joy, Dertouzos, and Kurzweil. The following articles shed some light about each one's perspective, respectively.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/reason.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/kurzweil.html

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Gotta get me one of these!
Re:There's a difference by sybert · 2004-06-06 11:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Knives -- 800,000 people killed in Rwanda with machetes, right under the UN's nose. The UN could care less because knives are not WMD's
Over 100 Million people were slaughtered or executed by guns and knives so that Communists could stay in absolute power.
Nukes -- The Bomb accounts for less than 1% of the WWII dead.
Saddam's WMD's accounted for less than 10% of the people he butchered.
Most current nuclear proliferation activity is directed over conflict in Israel/Palestine, where hundreds die a year. This is not even a blip in total world conflict.
The worst current conflict is in Sudan, where over 100,000 are expected to be killed this year. Nobody seems to care about this, nor does anybody seem to care that George Bush is the only world leader who is trying to do anything about this.
People who focus only on technology and not ideology are negligent. Freedom, liberty, democracy, and capitalism are the weapons that can make all other weapons obsolete.