Indeed. I had thought they had better resolution than that. Shows what you get when you have a lack of clear detail. I had thought they might also be useful for a non-invasive VR interface. Angel and I have talked about them a couple of times since Johnny Mnemonic. Wouldn't mind better details?

Ah… glad to have that cleared up. I did not know that, having a dearth of information on them beyond a William Gibson novel. Thanks.

As someone who currently deals with SQUIDs on a daily basis, I can assure you there is absolutely no way these devices can ever be used to map brain structure at the molecular level, particularly not remotely. Such a proposal does not even come close to plausibility. SQUIDs can be used to map brain electrical activity to millimeter resolution at best. This is good enough for some diagnostic and research purposes, but not for "uploading."

I've always thought non-invasive synaptic mapping could be accomplished by S.Qu.I.D.s of sufficent resolution joined to a computer with enough complexity and memory to record and interpret the data. Would not require even opening the skull and also contains the possibilites of providing interface possiblities for VR in the short term.

As for the creation of self replicators, your very existance argues for the feasibility, but does not prove that they can be manufactured of the materials proposed by Drexler. His proposal is based mostly on the concept of carbons utility for creating the structures and the availability of it for inexpensive construction. There is also thye possibility that due to it's use in organic chemistry, it might be possible to modify existing bio-processes to make Drexler's structures. While Drexler's designs are unproven, he himself states only that they are *possible* and bases the rest of his findings on that assumption.

I may not agree with the man's politics all the time, but I've not found anything too far fetched in his science.

The basic problem is that Drexler's popular writings made it sound like progress toward assemblers would be straightforward, that people would start picking up atoms with STMs and building things, bigger and bigger things, and after a few years they'd be building machines, and then assemblers, and then the assemblers would be self-replicating, and then Wham! I know, I know, this impression would have been dispelled by a more careful reading, which would have found lots of caveats. But it is the impression that came across to many people, and it led to a lot of cargo-cult activity anticipating the imminent arrival of "the assembler revolution." I think this is what the scientist critics were reacting to with their blanket dismissals.

By now it is clear that nanosystems at the level of self-replicating assemblers are a very distant goal; in fact, we cannot be certain at this point that the goal will turn out to be feasible and cost-effective in practice, although there is still no good reason to doubt that it is physically possible and ultimately achievable.
There is no doubt that we can ultimately create some kind of "artificial life" which self-replicates and can be programmed to make products in a wider range of materials than those of natural life, and which realizes much of the potential described in Drexler's popular and technical publications.

But it is not at all clear how soon such a technology will be realizable, nor exactly what form it will take. In particular, the case for the Drexler/Merkle diamondoid technology has not been proven nor has it been made in a fully persuasive form. Although simulations show that diamondoid nanomachine systems can work, they have not shown that all of the steps needed to fabricate such systems by direct mechanosynthesis can be carried out. We have not seen any simulation of a self-replicating assembler system going through a full cycle of self-replication. Such a simulation, even if carried out at a low level of accuracy, would go a long way toward dispelling skepticism that the technology is feasible.

When I asked Eric about this recently, he said that his "engineering intuition" told him that all the necessary steps could be carried out by assemblers of the type he has designed. I'll take that at face value, but admit that my own intuition falls short of such a conclusion. More importantly, such a response does not pass muster in the scientific world. I can say, for example, that my intuition tells me that noninvasive molecular-scale mapping of the brain, as required for "uploading" without killing the subject, is impossible, but without giving a detailed and specific technical analysis of why I think this is so, I can't reasonably hope to settle the debate with people like Ray Kurzweil who assert that this is not only possible but likely to be achieved within a few decades.

The bottom line: Nanotechnology is already a reality, and there can be no doubt that it will lead eventually to complex nanosystems with the capablilities of life and more. However, we do not know how quickly progress will be made, and we cannot regard the case for diamondoid assembler systems as proven.

Humm… Personally, I look at it from this perspective. The Average life expectancy is based on a figure that assumes two invalid points. One: That during my lifetime, I will recieve medical care no better than my grandparents recieved. Two: That during my lifetime, medical science will not improve. Both are false assumptions and not readily appearent. I don't make general statements about an end to scarcity, or immortality, but like most predictions of the future, it seems both side are again making a fundimental assumption. That technology and science will not improve beyond what we currently know. I won't make that claim, not now or ever. I could take what we currently have today and create a world you'd never recognize, and that's if research came to a complete halt. To make assumptions about what the future science will be beyond 10-30 years is pure hubris. Superstring theory may make a way to create matter from pure energy, or create wormholes that cross universes. I don't know, it may amount to yet another idea on the junk heap of history, like philogston. Anyway, it's too early to say what the future will bring with certainty. Scarcity may truly be a thing of the past once the breakthrough comes. Best to keep an open mind.

This one's one I'm not sure which way I'd swing, because at it's base, it's a debate for ends justify the means, i.e, tailoring a Nanotech pitch to downplay the "hype" vs. an open approach where all the cards are on the table.

I'm don't think I can fully agree with either side, becuse while I favor the open approach, I don't feel the majority of Nanotech researchers have really told the general public the *full* potential of MNT, because there are many aspects of it they find disquieting, but at the same time, I can rationalize selling MNT on the basis of what it can do for the individual, not on what it could mean to humanity, but what it could offer *you*.

Face it, we all support MNT for what it offers to *US* personally, not what it offers to humanity. We want what Nanotech offers that nothing else does.

In the end, that may be the best way to sell it the world at large. Tell them what it can do, everything it can do, for each and every person. Show that it has such a broad appeal that everyone can see what advantages it has for them, and maybe, it will stop being the esoteric playground of the few who have bothered to understand what it really means.

Because if you can build a widespread public demand for MNT, you'll get the funds in nearly unlimited amounts.

I'm not really that worried about the venture capitalists, ambitious scientists or government functionaries selectively blurring distinctions or misapplying definitions.

The reason is that a lot of the things that are getting this new surge of funding can still tie into nano, even though they are not directly related. For example, the principles learned in making replicating MEMS can still apply, in general, to replicating nano assemblers. Research in bio-engineering can still tell us a lot about how to restrain dangerous replicators. Much, though not all, of this knowledge will not be wasted once the real assemblers are built.

It is true that opportunists looking for money may slow down deserving research but this has always been a problem. Think of it as a useful breaking system inherent in the process of scientific and technical research.

My real worry is the question of open research. I don't want the various militaries of the world to disappear into secret labs with this stuff.

Another of my worries is security and quality taking a back seat to profit, citing Microsoft (Or name your favorite corporate baddy.) as an example.

I consider cryonics to be a separate field. Used as an argument to win support for money and minds to bring about molecular manufacturing or medical nanorobots it seems to turn serious minded people away. Motivation from medical possibilities for the living are appropriate. It is premature to assert that lives will ever be saved by cryonics. That is a matter of faith. It is in effect a religious assertion. It amounts to a technical version of Pascal's Wager i.e. it is more rational to believe in cryonics because it might work that it is to not believe it because it might not work.

"- but it is the promise of biorobots and nanorobots and cryonics — the things
that will actually save human lives that motivate my interest in molecular nanotechnology."

Great. And for me it is the promise of meeting material and medical needs and the challenge of the technology which holds my interest.

Yes, of course there are limits. I've written several papers on exactly how fast one might expect to expand on the physical level as well as the limits at the computational level over the last 3 years. The concepts behind Jupiter Brains and Matrioshka Brains are that there are some really hard limits unless a transition to subatomic engineering is feasible.

With regard to the points raised. It is already clear that it is difficult for desires to increase without bound unless the entity having the desires does so as well. There are limits where even the richest people in the world realize that owning another car or owning another house is pointless. The desires move into the realm of what does not yet exist, and then the difficulty bringing of those things into existence regulates the rate at which resources are consumed. It is completely obvious that unlimited reproduction is impossible. The universe is finite. Here on the Earth, the developed countries are below the replacement reproduction rate. So it is seems questionable whether in populations where the survival of the individuals is relatively comfortable and approaching natural longevity limits whether populations would continue to grow. [It would be interesting to determine why this is the case -- does humanity have a "self-extinction" meme?] For those interested in this topic, there is an interesting societal approach to this problem in Tom Kirkwood's "The Time of Our Lives".

"Rational" thought may be what gains you the ability to regulate your desires and your reproduction. Certainly an issue that nanotechnologists and people associated with the Foresight Institute should be concerned with is what to do about vectors that would generate machines, robots, AIs or humans that function to increase "irrational" thought! As the vectors in the genomic and biomedical industries are in the direction towards increased therapeutic control over our unconscious "drives", the direction for humans should currently be towards increasingly rational behavior. So I agree that nanotechnology itself does not prevent shortages. Only rational behavior in light of the architecture of the universe may manage that feat.

"Living forever" (for informed people) is the short form of saying "Living until the laws of physics prevent it". Dyson has written a paper on how to survive the heat death of the universe [1]. Whether that will be feasible depends in part on whether protons decay which is currently undetermined. I personally would view living forever "unproductively" as a relatively pointless exercise. But to the extent that I can use the resources available in a productive fashion, I would enjoy doing so. That might suggest a metric by which one might evaluate worth the results of expanding or constraining the resources available to individuals. I would stress the problem of using the "prevailing wisdom" in evaluating the worth of the "productive use" of resources. History would show that it is often the most radical ideas that produce the most significant breakthroughs, so one must be very careful in the development of such metrics.

If I sound like a "loony cultist" it is because you may lack the knowledge of the information base I am working from, or knowledge of that information base. If I am using terms such as "unlimited resources" or "living forever" freely in ways that they may be misinterpreted, I apologize. People who take the trouble to explore my background would understand that I mean "relatively" unlimited resources and "potentially" living forever. That is why "reputation analysis" is an important part of reviewing anything one reads on a public news system (or in a newspaper or journal presumably). You have to know how to value the comments of an individual so you know how much value to place on their assertions or statements. I apologize if my previous statements could be considered "misleading" as I was trying to balance the discussion between people who might be familiar with my perspective with those who might be unfamiliar.

References
1. "Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe", Freeman J. Dyson, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51(3):447 (July 1979)