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Nanotech Protests Begin
ByteWoopy wrote to mention a Wire.com story discussing the danger of nanotechnology, and the beginning of a backlash against the branch of technology. From the article: "...environmental activists sauntered into the Eddie Bauer store on Michigan Avenue, headed to the broad storefront windows opening out on the Magnificent Mile and proceeded to take off their clothes. The strip show aimed to expose more than skin: Activists hoped to lay bare growing allegations of the toxic dangers of nanotechnology. The demonstrators bore the message in slogans painted on their bodies, proclaiming 'Eddie Bauer hazard' and 'Expose the truth about nanotech,' among other things, in light of the clothing company's embrace of nanotech in its recent line of stain-resistant nanopants."
So sad, grey goo is unlikey to come from this... But we could still get cancer!
The problem with nanotechnology is that we don't really understand why much of it works, and we don't have any idea how the special properties it has will affect our bodies. Nano-whiskers? Great - I'm sure they help keep stains from getting on clothes. But what the *hell* are they going to do in my lungs?
As we've seen time and again, what we don't know really can hurt us...
--LWM
OMFGWTFBBQ EVIL TECHONOLOGY. GET NEKKID. Protests like this lower the value of all other protests. Sort of like spamming lowers the value of all e-mail, you have to filter out the crap to actually see the stuff that is worthwhile.
But who needs logic when you can jerk your knee around some. These guys have the same mindset as the Creationists, just a different issue.
*plonk*
The more you know, the less you understand.
It's easy to be anti-American/anti-Capitalist when viewing the website gives this error: "We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States."
would be nonstick cookware, which is where most people's daily encounter with teflon is. Obviously the easiest route to ingestion would be food cooked on it, compared to wearing pants. Especially if you use a metal utinsel to stir the food and accidentally scratch the pan, releasing the teflon.
So why arent they protesting sellers of kitchenware?
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They oppose scientific progress, not technical progress. They haven't figured out the connection yet. Not that this is terribly surprising, given how little they know about science.
The people who are opposing this are actually a different breed of religious fanatic, the neo-pagans, who do not espouse any particular religious affiliation but are nevertheless highly superstitious (often believing in ghosts, ESP, and psychics).
The fear of AI and nanotechnology is born largely out of ignorance of their limitations, combined with science-fiction scenarios that make for great fiction but terrible science. The grey goo just isn't going to happen. It's a matter of simple thermodynamics. It requires too much energy to break most things down and reassimilate them, far more than the goo is going to get in consumption. And the goo would have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry, so it could adapt to novel compounds. Anyone who still thinks this lies within the realm of possibility just took too much damn acid.
Conventional AI is just too limited to operate without a human babysitter. The closest thing we have to human style AI, neural nets, have to be trained, and remain remarkably limited. More powerful machines aren't the solution--more powerful AI's just require human correction more often. Rather than replace human beings with machines, we are far more likely to build human-machine hybrids, just because we are a whole lot better and cheaper at doing some things than machines. A human hive-mind is far more likely than a godlike AI that tells us what to do. We are are already moving towards this with the net and the first neural interface technologies, but Marvin Minsky and company have been banging their heads against AI for 40 years now, and they really don't have much to show for it. What we really want to do is build a human mind, but the fact is, it's just easier and cheaper to use the ones we have.
Expect at least some of it to backfire on the protestors.
I had no clue this existed until now.
Now that I know Nanopants exist that are stain resistant, I look forward to purchasing and wearing them. I just hope they expand this technology to shirts, and quick!
So Eddie Bauer may have gained a customer thanks to the protersters who are trying to prevent them from gaining customers!
D
Noooo, has nothing to do with "want", has everything to do with evidence.
I'll take a theory based on current science over a 5000 year old myth any time.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The protesters are protesting something that isn't even nanotechnology as it is commonly referred to in the first place!
Do you really expect luddite social-activist types to actually understand what it is that they are protesting against?
You are thinking in only one dimension (1D), with "right" and "left" as opposing signs. In reality there are many variables that define people's political positions, at least one per issue.
Also, for many people, political activism for their causes takes on a religious role in their lives. It gives their lives meaning and makes them feel part of a larger whole in the way that religion does.
Religious views become mixed up with political ones, to a greater or lesser extent. Religious values say that helping the poor is Good, that chastity is Good, or that being kind to other species is Good. Adherents then are prone to wanting those Good things put into law, or at least to have their government support their practice.
People see themselves as having a "right" or "left" charge, as belonging to a side, and then think they have to conform to all of the beliefs associated with that side. The religious overtones for certain issues bring religious conformity to bear. Couple that with peer pressure and you get the madness of crowds.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Penn & Teller's Bullshit! is hardly the pinnacle of fair and unbiased journalism. Those episodes are carefully edited to make the guests appear foolish. Obviously, editing is unnecessary to make many of them appear foolish. The editor's choice of who gets interviewed is also biased. Just because Penn says they asked for a representative does not mean the search for balance was fair.
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It sounds like Urban Myth. Like using a cellphone at a gas pump can cause an explosion. A well accepted Urban Myth does not make it fact.
click me
And your point is. . .?
Many if not most envrionmentalists claim they are "Progressives."
And to the best of my knowledge, most "Progressives" (you being the exception) are happy to have them.
There may be some "Progressives" like yourself who embrace advances in technology, but the socialist bedrock of your "progressive" ideology has proven more harmful than any catastrophe capitalism or technology ever whipped up.
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
My friend once saw some protesters holding the wrong sign up at a rally because they go to so many rallys they forgot what they were protesting at the time.
I wonder how many protester types have to be told when they arrive what it is that they are protesting against. Maybe corporations should start summer-job positions paying minimum wage to armies of young people to protest against whatever the corporations wish.
for example, pyrethoids [sic] seem to be completely safe in testing, but more effective than DDT and seem to have the same cost potential.
... it is genotoxic, very carcinogenic, neurotoxic, damages the liver and kidnes, is teratogenic, and is transferred in breast milk.
Oh yeah? Try spraying pyrethroids around your pet cat and see what happens. (Note that this is the effect of permethrin, which is a pyrethroid.
So much for "completely safe". "Completely safe" means no toxicity to unintended targets.
Also, you said about DDT:
Almost all of those have been said about pyrethroids, too (read the bold text in the last link above). I don't know what "testing" you have read up on, but obviously it's not the same as what I have read.
Thanks for playing.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"Lumber clear cutting" is a good one to work on. The protests aren't just about someone clearing a mountainside of trees, killing all the birds and frogs and ???. Some protest ALL lumber harvesting, even of trees planted specifically for harvesting, like a long-term corn crop. If the protesters aren't going to picket farmers for "clear cutting" their wheat and corn, why do they do it when lumber companies harvest their crop?
Some groups got the forestry agencies to stop doing preventative burns for years; it almost wiped out new growth of certain species of trees that couldn't grow without periodic thinning of competing species by fire. There were many protests when the burn policy was put back into effect... but the forest proved the protesters wrong.
About half the forest land leveled by Mt. St. Helens was privately owned, by lumber companies. The other half is federal. The federal lands have been left to natural restoration, while the evil lumber companies salvaged the wood they could and replanted. Guess where most of the animal life has returned to... yep, the "crop land".
Patrick Moore has a few things to say about these protests, since he used to partake in them.
Or would you prefer to continue separatism, child labor, or black lung?
Separatism doesn't seem to react as well to protests as it does to education and economic factors. Child labor has only been bannished from areas where economics made it possible to do so; it's still prevalent in poor parts of the world, where the picketing of Nike is only seen as the reason the factory providing jobs had to close. And the "cure" for black lung (better technology) also reduced the need for jobs in the mining industry... putting a lot of marginally-skilled people out of work in areas that didn't have other types of jobs to fall back upon.
Much as some people hate to admit it, economics moves the world. And many of the protesters are protesting that fact, directly or indirectly. But it is the prosperity that gives them the luxury of protesting.... Those who can't see beyond today's paycheck don't spend much time worrying about how the harvesting of the lumber for the house they live in affected the spotted owl's ability to make nests in KMart signs...
I work in a retail business in Houston and *RIGHT* across the freeway from me is a little lab where they make, among other things, large quantities of nanotubes and buckyballs. They mostly provide these to NASA and USA researchers for development of new lubricants for the space program.
The way I found this out was from the guy that runs it. He stopped in to take a look at my products and we got to talking about what he did, and needless to say, I was deeply interested.
The thing that freaked me out was that as we were talking about the C60 he messed with he showed me his palm and there were places where he had nanotubes and buckies embedded in his skin. All that went through my head was "WTF are the long term repercussions of massive nanotube and buckball inhalation (which he mentioned as well) and consumption?"
I guess nobody really knows, I just hope that they aren't bad because the guy was pretty cool.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.