Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 15:14:56 -0700
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: SCAletters@aol.com
From: foresight@foresight.org
Subject: Re: Reply from SciAm
Dear Mr. Rennie:
Several readers have remarked that your recent response to Foresight
Institute is cleverly written; I agree, yet am
disappointed in the quality of its intellectual content.
To begin at the end: You close by claiming to have met
Ralph Merkle's challenge to address what he rightly terms
"the fundamental technical question: given the
currently accepted understanding of natural law, is
nanotechnology feasible or is it not?"
If science were opinion polling, I would criticize your
position for being based on a small and biased sample.
But science is still widely supposed to be about
knowledge of the real world and its potentialities; if we
accept this, then it would seem that advancing a negative
answer to Merkle's question would require statements of
the form "The proposal A appears unworkable because
it conflicts with scientific principle B." For
example, I am willing to state and argue the proposition
that "Faster than light travel through space appears
unworkable because it conflicts with the well-tested
principles of relativistic dynamics," or that
"Molecular machines cannot use thermal motion in an
isothermal environment to produce mechanical power,
because this would violate (among others) the principle
of microscopic reversibility." Many statements
purporting to attack molecular manufacturing on
substantive scientific grounds have been made over the
years, yet none has become a standard, widely-cited
criticism. Why? Because they have been refuted, and
because most scientists are cautious in their concrete,
substantive statements.
Unsurprisingly, you cite no such substantive statements.
Your letter instead tells us that some prominent
scientists are willing to disparage new ideas in vague
terms -- but this is neither new to history nor
informative by itself. You state "Given that the
people in question are the likes of [prominent names in
somewhat related fields] and others, they can muster
technical arguments in support of their position."
This is a reasonable hope; in a world having higher
standards, it might even be regarded as a scientific
duty. In my years of experience in this field, however,
they and others in their position have instead either
attacked a straw man, misapplied principles known to
bright undergraduates, argued from ignorance ("I
don't see how, therefore..."), or retreated to vague
generalities about the need for experiments to answer
questions that, oddly enough, they never articulate.
(Equating science with lab work leaves a significant
fraction of the NSF budget unexplained. So much for
string theory!)
An example of the straw-man problem: You note that
"Smalley talked explicitly about his doubts during a
presentation at the conference"; these doubts,
however, were not only vague, but centered on an
extravagant concept of an unreasonably-universal
assembler that no researcher in the field has proposed.
Although I delivered a public correction, Mr. Stix has
apparently conveyed the impression that Smalley was
addressing a proposal of mine. Just as Smalley voiced
doubt regarding unreasonable molecular assemblers, I
could declare my doubt that he will ever succeed in
turning lead into gold via fullerene catalysis. If I were
to suggest that he had proposed such alchemy, would this
qualify me as a critic of his work?
In stating that "theory and computer models are
insufficient proof [sic] of the ultimate feasibility of
these concepts," do you mean (1) that modern
physical models have no predictive value, or (2) that
they have predictive value, but not in distinguishing
between feasible and infeasible classes of technological
systems, or (3) that molecular machine systems are in a
special category, immune to fruitful study, or (4)
something else entirely? Please note that no thoughtful
scientist asks for "proof" of a theoretical
proposition in a nonmathematical context (see Popper).
One must instead weigh the evidence for alternative
conclusions, as is routine in fields ranging from
cosmology to aircraft configuration design.
If you're not yet nervous about the tenability of your
position, you should be. Our side of the debate is armed
with a growing literature, in books and refereed
journals, stretching back to 1981. After all these years,
your side seemingly has nothing in its arsenal but
misconceptions, a shrinking numerical majority of
uninformed opinion, debaters' tricks, name-calling, and
sheer bluff. It doesn't even have an articulate and
scientific spokesman. You say that "most researchers
working in allied areas--including ones embraced by the
nanoists [note name-calling] themselves--think that the
actual science in nanotechnology has gaping holes."
If this were true and widely recognized, then surely
someone, if only a lowly grad student backed by gratified
professors, would have published a paper or a Web
document describing one of these holes in our scientific
understanding. And, almost as surely, you would be citing
it. Can you deliver such a statement, or is this merely
more bluff and citing of uninformed opinion? Please note
that dredging up further variations of the banal
observation that proposed technologies don't yet exist
will win no points in this game.
In a year of effort, Ed Regis failed to find a
scientific-sounding criticism that didn't collapse on
closer examination, as described in his book. I have
sought a refutation of these ideas for almost twenty
years, including queries to scientific and technical
audiences of the highest quality. None has emerged, even
from the endless technical controversies on the internet.
A parsimonious explanation would be that my arguments are
hard to attack because they are, in essence, correct.
After all this fuss, one can hardly argue that no one has
been motivated to try.
Merely declaring that you know researchers who "can
muster [unspecified] technical arguments" amounts to
saying "Our position is credible because we know of
credible people whom we are quite sure could produce some
sort of credible supporting argument, some day, if they
ever tried." A lesser publication might be expected
to base its judgment on such grounds, but for your
magazine this should be profoundly embarrassing. If the
new editorial standards welcome vacuous blather of this
sort, then it would advance public understanding of
science and technology in the coming years if you were to
adopt a fresh, appealing name (Popular Scientific
American? Science People? Science Illustrated?) and thus
separate your product from the reputation and
expectations that the venerable name "Scientific
American" still carries.
Please do try to cajole one of those fierce-sounding
scientists into offering a public, scientific criticism
of the actual concepts of molecular manufacturing -- not
of their own misconceptions, not of the disturbing
consequences for medicine and economics, not of Ed
Regis's popularization, or of a dentist's remarks, or my
numerous personal shortcomings, but of the technical
content of the case made in Nanosystems. It's big and
detailed, offering a wide, stationary target that must
surely be riddled with those gaping holes and fatal
errors of analysis that we incompetent nanodreamers
produce in such profusion. If your advisors are right,
knocking it down will be easy and fun, and will do an
enormous public service in clearing nano-nonsense from
the air. Why not invite someone to do it, or assign
someone from your staff, or do it yourself? You might
find the effort enlightening, particularly if you request
a reply from our side of the fence and can recognize when
your side has lost an argument.
Good luck -- you're standing on thin air over a vast
chasm, and having company in this predicament adds weight
where it doesn't help. In politicized, journalistic
science, like cartoon physics, it may seem that you're
safe so long as no one looks down. But the world is
changing. Since the early 1980s, I've argued that a
hypertext system like the Web could one day help
depoliticize science and policy discussions by
facilitating genuine criticism, debunking bogus
arguments, highlighting substance, removing the arbitrary
power of editors, enabling freelance editing, indexing
and review, and, perhaps most significantly:
* by enabling participants to convert the
otherwise-invisible absence of a sound
opposing argument into a distinct, visible, and
influential feature of the intellectual landscape.
On the Web as it exists, this is best accomplished by
issuing a challenge together with a promise that the
response, if any, will be made easy to find from the same
site. We're now entering round two. Welcome to the
experiment, and thanks for the help you've already given.
Sincerely,
K. Eric Drexler
P.S. I always liked Mr. Peabody when I was a lad, and he
still strikes me as having offered (at least compared to
the general run of cartoon characters and dogs) an
excellent role-model for a budding young nerd. But
regarding his voice, I must disagree: it is of
professional quality, and vastly superior to my own.
On to SciAm
correction