Who’s opposing nanotechnology development?
from the getting-the-facts-right dept.
Senior Associate Mark Muhlestein writes to point out an ACM TECH_News summary "Big Risks on a Minuscule Scale" that, amazingly, labels Foresight Chair Eric Drexler as opposed to the development of nanotechnology: "The wide scope of potential nanotech applications makes it hard to determine the most dangerous risks, but opposition figures such as Eric Drexler and Bill Joy have envisioned doomsday scenarios in which nanobots either self-replicate and overwhelm the planet, or wreak havoc from within the human body." The ACM piece summarizes an article published in the Financial Times (09/25/02) reporting the fears of certain environmental groups (in particular one with the acronym ETC) that nanoparticles will pollute the environment unless all nanotech research is halted until its environmental impact has been thoroughly evaluated. The position of ETC, and responses to it, have been the subject of nanodot posts on October 18, 2002, August 19, 2002, and earlier posts cited therein. Bill Joy has been publicly worrying for more than two years that robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology might make humans extinct. [See also the special article in Foresight Update 41.] Eric Drexler has been worried about potential abuse of nanotechnology for more than 20 years (for example, see Engines of Destruction and A Dialog on Dangers) However, rather than opposing the development of nanotechnology, Drexler has sought ways in which nanotechnology can be safely developed and used to improve the human condition. See for example, the audio presentation A World with Advancing Technology.
October 23rd, 2002 at 9:23 PM
Perhaps Drexler should view this as good
Yes, the reporter should have done a better job of research before publishing the story but, look at this way, I'm sure Drexler is very tired of getting lumped with the nano-la-la crowd.
"The nano-la-la crowd" is the group of people that make uninformed claims about what nano can and can't do and paint an overly rosy picture of some beatific future. Some of them seem to think that we will live in land free of government, poverty, pollution, conflict, danger and controversy, eating soma until the stars burn out.
Sometimes Kurzweil seems to fall into this camp. Frank Tipler definitely falls into this camp. I think many of the extropians, transhumanists and singularity worshipers fall into this camp.
It's not going to be all milk and honey. Drexler took pains to make that abundantly clear in Engines. I think that Drexler should see this misclassification as a sign that he's putting the right spin on things.
October 24th, 2002 at 2:50 AM
Re:Perhaps Drexler should view this as good
I doubt it. I haven't read the articles referenced and will not bother to do so unless someone cites something "substantive" from them. It sounds like more ca-ca from the uninformed.
Are there environmental risks from buckytubes? Perhaps. If they have the same lengths, stiffness and biological undigestibility as asbestos fibers. But nanotechnology is not all about non-biodegradable buckytubes. So we are talking about the environmental impact of a small component of the nanotech phase space.
I strongly object to the use of the term the "nano la-la crowd". We have self-replicating nanotech now. You take advantage of it every time you eat a container of yogurt or drink a glass of beer or wine. Where do you think those substances come from? They come from self-replicating nanomachinery.
The nano la-la crowd can't eliminate government because it is necessary to implement the will of the people. On the other hand, poverty and pollution may be eliminated. It seems likely that conflict, danger and controversy will disappear to the extent that they are motivated by self-perceptions of "poverty". Any remaining conflicts would seem to be dictated by ideology (as we seem to see now with radical Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Hindu people).
October 24th, 2002 at 10:04 AM
How about "singularidroids"?
I think you're missing the point. I think what he's calling the "nano la-la crowd" are the people who say that, just because we get nanotech, we automatically get some sort of utopia. Oddly enough, it's usually a utopia that happens to fit with all the speaker's personal preferences and prejudices. It's not that it's wishful thinking to say that we'll get nanotech (or AI, which I think is more interesting). It is wishful thinking to say, without any plausible explanation of how, that such technology will remove all the world's problems. You may not say that, but plenty of people do. The nano la-la crowd is out there, and isn't doing anybody any favors.
On specific problems…
I actually agree with you that, assuming we survive the transition, poverty as we know it is probably going to go away. I'm far less sure about pollution; there are almost certainly going to be things that are a lot easier to do if you don't worry about cleaning up afterwards.
I do not agree with you that the removal of what we think of as poverty will remove people's self-perception of poverty. I suspect that the threshold of what's perceived as "poverty" will simply go up. What makes you think that people's "poverty detectors" are set up to look for absolute, rather than relative, levels of affluence?
As for conflict in general, I believe that human conflict has a lot more to do with status, territory, and dominance games that come straight out of the hindbrain than it has to do with ideas. Ideology is an epiphenomenon, a cloak over the real issues, or at the very best a way of tricking the underlying organism into channeling its impulses in less dangerous directions.
We're still operating with hunter-gatherer brains. Unless we change that, we'll still act in ways that enhance reproductive success in small bands that have severely limited technology and resources. We will act so regardless of whether it's "rationally" useful in whatever new conditions we find ourselves in. That means that, unless we either modify our brains or get a lot better at using culture to sublimate our impulses, we're still going to have wars. And we've been trying the culture thing for thousands of years with only limited success.
By the way, I could easily imagine a plausible far future in which government was eliminated. I could much more plausibly imagine a near or far future in which government still existed, but didn't give a flying fuck about the "will of the people". That could be either a good thing or a bad thing.
Of course, the real problems of the future will probably be something surprising.
October 24th, 2002 at 2:43 PM
Re:How about "singularidroids"?
Yes, I think I agree. The definition of poverty changes. In some very real ways a person in a trailer park in the United States lives much better than a Pakistani bricklayer or some feudal vassal in acient Europe. Food, housing and clothing are actually pretty cheap now, even consumer electronics are getting to be very cheap, yet the stigma remains.
Nano will make these things cheaper still and robots will do all the physical and easily formalized labor but, there will still be stigma attached to the starving artist living on the public dole and slumming it in nanofabricated apartment projects. I think this is really a social problem rather than a technology one.
On the question of pollution, I should have been more clear. Yes, nanotech will largely clean up and eliminate all forms of bulk technology pollution. The landfills, radioactive storage facilities and toxic waste dumps of the previous century are doomed. However, we really don't know yet all the ways that nanotech is going to pan out in terms of environmental impact.
There is the possibility of deliberate abuse leading to massive environmental damage. One can imagine a set of nanomachines that catagorically removes all evidence of a certain genetic library from the ecosystem, including fossilized DNA, thus making a species irreversably extinct.
Personally I'm worried about the reliability of the software controlling all this stuff too.
On the other hand, it's hopeless to think that a risk-free world can exist. Nano might greatly reduce or eliminate some old risks but at the same time, new risks will emerge.
I am just saying that nano, like all other technology, will be a mixed blessing. Having said that, I still think we should develop it.
October 27th, 2002 at 5:56 AM
Re:How about "singularidroids"?
There are two levels of poverty. The first is "real" poverty — where your survival is threatened. I firmly believe nanotech will eliminate this. The second is "perceived" poverty. Nanotech cannot eliminate this since it is self-determined. But if there are lots of public domain nano-designs so you can own the BMW public domain variant rather than the Mercedes proprietary variant of any nanotech based product, then it will be obvious to almost everyone that self-perceived poverty isn't really that much different from being wealthy.
It seems to me since nobody will be dependent on physical labor for survival and everyone will have much more free time so the status of artists and entertainers will increase in society. There will be no need for the "public dole" as it is not essential for survival. If extended longevity is part of the picture, as it appears likely to be, then returning to college to learn a new trade or skill seems a likely choice for many members of the population. So it seems likely we will have much more flexible attitudes towards the occupations and lifestyles people choose.
Since pollution cleanup is generally a matter of cost and cost depends largely on energy and energy will get much cheaper in the nanotech era, I don't expect pollution to be a problem. We have the potential to increase our energy harvesting capacity from ~1-2% now found in plants to ~30-35% in the most efficient solar cells. Human population and energy consumption seems very unlikely to grow by a factor of 15-30x given the increased energy utilization efficiencies that nanotech will allow. That will allow much more energy to be available for cleaning up any waste materials (which as Drexler points out are likely to be much lower using nanotech manufacturing).
I can't see the point of machines removing genomic information from an environment unless they are targeted to removing non-native species that now cause environmental problems.
I think one could use the development of gene therapy protocols as perhaps a warm-up exercise for the development and application of nanotech devices. On the whole as we develop greater confidence in our abilities more people will be helped than hurt by nanotech. That doesn't mean that mistakes will not be made. It does suggest that we will learn from them and become better designers.
March 28th, 2007 at 7:06 AM
Glad to hear it