A Modest Proposal for Prince Charles
Phil Bowermaster writes "The Prince of Wales is once again warning about the dangers of nanotechnology:
The Prince acknowledges nanotechnology is a "triumph of human ingenuity".
"Some of the work may have fundamental benefits to society, such as enabling the construction of much cheaper fuel-cells, or new ways of combating ill-health," he says.
But he adds: "How are we going to ensure that proper attention is given to the risks that may… ensue?
Hmmm, well if he's really this concerned, I can think of something that might really help."
July 14th, 2004 at 7:35 AM
Patronizing
Such patronizing attitudes help nobody. Just because you wish to see nanotechnology developed, that does not mean you should turn a blind eye to potential dangers this technology would bring. Prince Charles' anxiety is quite understandable, since even the Foresight institute is yet to come up with any real solution to dealing with nanoterrorism.
July 14th, 2004 at 8:01 AM
No Solution
There is no solution to nanoterrorism – well, that's not true, there is one solution, but it's not a viable one (at least, not to the majority.)
The only way to stop nanoterrorism and for nanotechnology to be used in a way that will benefit the entire world, is if the technology is used to wipe out the entire human race as we know it. That doesn't necessarily mean killing everyone off, it just means disposing of the imperfect human element. As long as that exists, we will continue to have wars, territorial disputes, greed for wealth and power and all that other nonsense.
The next step of evolution is at hand, and those who can't take that vital next step, shall perish because there will be no room (or toleration) for them on this planet any longer.
July 14th, 2004 at 8:17 AM
No Solution or The final solution?
'Disposing of the imperfect human element'???!! If nanotech is in the hands of eugenicists with such distateful views as this, no wonder there is growing societal anger. What is your view of the imperfect human element – who exactly do you want to dispose of? disabled? homosexuals? Jews? .. I think we have been here before.
July 14th, 2004 at 8:56 AM
Re:No Solution or The final solution?
No, I was simply stressing what another poster already pointed out a couple days ago – it is absolutely vital that ALL humans become transhuman. We will be perfect both genetically and physically, and will be equal on all levels. This type of equality is the only way we will ever survive in a post-nanotech era.
The imperfect human element in which I speak of is none other than the 7 deadly sins – greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, vanity, and sloth. Dispose of these, and it could be said that one would no longer be human…which is the entire point.
July 14th, 2004 at 10:49 AM
Genetic equality is not outcome equality
Even if all humans were genetically identical and perfect, their lives would still be different. That's because human vices are not caused by the individual's genes, but by the individual's choices. Every man is capable of learning to read, for example, but billions still are choosing not to. Despite all the public libraries in the world, it is still up to each man to _decide_ to want to learn, to _decide_ to learn to work, to _decide_ to dedicate his life to achieving something. As long as some people do not decide or decide otherwise, there will be poverty, stupidity, wars, slavery, and all the other things that are caused by people unable to support themselves.
July 14th, 2004 at 11:06 AM
You are quite an example
> "disposing of the imperfect human element"
Oh, that's real cute now. The trouble is, who gets to choose the "imperfect"? Will the Israelites choose the Palestinians or vice versa? There are many people with varying opinions on how to select the "worthy", so the outcome is quite likely to be the death of everyone. Kadamose clearly illustrates, by his own existance, that there are many people who want to perform this sort of "ethnic cleansing". I have seen several posts on nanodot expressing the same desire. Now combine this with the fact that these are the people most interested in nanotechnology, and with the fact that those interests may well lead them to employment with those who eventually discover the capability to realize such desires. Perhaps then you will see the danger of developing nanotech in the first place.
Yes, you have guessed it, I am trying to say that it should not be developed at all. The usual argument against this is that if we don't develop it, then the bad guys surely will. I don't think that this is necessarily correct. Designing an assembler would take a lot of work, funding, brains, and just plain talent. Those things are quite rare. Consider nuclear weapons, for instance; so far, only the United States and Russia (though the latter is rumored to have stolen them) have actually developed nuclear weapons from scratch. Everyone else just stole the information. Consider this for a moment. Of all the billions of people in the world, only one country was able to do the actual invention. And that is for something as relatively simple as a nuclear bomb, where most difficulties are in getting the material to implode fast enough. Now compare this with an assembler, which would have several orders of magnitude more complexity. And consider that unlike nuclear weapons, or anthrax, or nerve gas, an assembler can not be seen or touched, and can only be debugged in simulation. It would not surpize me at all, that if all the major research organizations were to boycott MNT, that it would simply _never_happen_. Add to this the fact that we are running out of oil and are on a verge of a dark age, and you can be almost certain of it. I think that as long as there are Kadamoses in the world, nanotech should remain science fiction.
July 14th, 2004 at 11:16 AM
Re:You are quite an example
1) You'd have to boycott vast areas of nanoscale technology. Otherwise, it'll get rapidly easier to develop an assembler. Sensing, manipulation, and simulation tools are all improving; by 2030 it could be a PhD thesis project.
2) You'd rather see an oil-less dark age than MNT? How many billion people do you think the dark age would kill? How many do you think MNT would kill?
(Please email me if you reply to this.)
Chris
July 14th, 2004 at 11:34 AM
Re:You are quite an example
You misunderstand – as of this writing, everyone is guilty of being human. Therefore, there will not be any choosing of the 'worthy' as you state it. Everyone will 'suffer' the same fate, and that fate is to become more godlike.
Also, in regard to your previous statement about poverty, etc – those who are born into poverty, have very little chance of changing that fact – unless they get lucky and win the lottery. It takes money to obtain knowledge, and it takes money to make money, something which the majority of the people on this planet simply can't do. Therefore, this piece of the equation needs to be obliterated. With the money system gone and 'humans' being wiped off the face of the earth forever, everyone will experience true equality; both genetically AND statistically.
Though it is true that it is our actions and our decisions that ultimately define us – the options that currently exist today, won't exist in the near future. The coming change is going to be so tremendous that none of us can even fathom what's going to happen. Personally, I'm looking forward to creating the paradise I should have been born into to begin with.
July 14th, 2004 at 11:57 AM
Re:Genetic equality is not outcome equality
Man is controlled by his/her genes. Free will is an illusion. Everything is predetermined through our genes.
Our genes determine how long we live, what diseases and hereditary information were passed on from parent to child, and control our cognitive processes…ultimately making the decisions for us.
The old psychology statement, "Leaders are made, not born" is a crock of shit. Leaders are born – and that ability is then later refined, for better or for worse.
July 14th, 2004 at 12:44 PM
Yes! A dark age is better
> You'd rather see an oil-less dark age than MNT?
Definitely. Because I consider survival of the species is more important than survival of the present civilization.
> How many billion people do you think the dark age would kill?
3 or 4. Maybe 5. People are not as bad off as you think during the dark ages. Sure, there might be no electricity, but wood heat is almost as good. Farming is not as hard as city folk think; plants grow on their own without any human help, it's just the yields that will go down, bringing the population numbers down. No medicine? Most diseases will not kill you and a little common sense can save more lives than antibiotics. Cleanliness and fitness will keep you in good health, and if you die a decade sooner from pneumonia, well, life has to end sometime.
> How many do you think MNT would kill?
I think that it would kill every human being on earth.
Seriously, a dark age with its severe population culling by disease and hunger is going to kill far fewer people than a single nanoplague. People stick together. They feed each other and take care of each other. An earth with a population of a million people is a pretty good earth, in my opinion. But bring in the nanoplagues, and you can infect everyone on earth and kill them all at the same instant. This might even happen inadvertently; suppose a government wants to control crime and requires everyone to implant a chip that would kill the host by remote control. If you have nothing to hide and commit no crimes, you have nothing to fear from this; right? Nobody complains about the PATRIOT act or the national ID card, so this might not be as big a step as you think. And then some punk teenager cracks the government's encryption key and just for fun broadcasts it on his radio. Oops.
July 14th, 2004 at 1:01 PM
Poverty is not hereditary
> as of this writing, everyone is guilty of being human.
Speak for yourself
> Therefore, there will not be any choosing of the 'worthy' as you state it.
Oh? And what about that idea of killing off the inferior humans you mentioned?
> Everyone will 'suffer' the same fate, and that fate is to become more godlike.
The trouble is, humans can't handle being godlike. These days, an individual can not do much about his hate. If a white man hates all blacks, he can't just go around and kill them without retribution. The police will find him and stick him in jail, so he probably will not find the action too attractive. But with a simple nanovirus he could eradicate the entire black race, without any fear of being discovered. And then suppose a black man gets a similar idea: "why should these white dudes get all the breaks? If I kill them all, I would have more money and more stuff." And then an Arab would rediscover his hatred for the Jews, the African tribes will remember their hatred for each other, the Serbians will remember the "inferiority" of Bosnians, the Japanese will think they may be better off without Chinese, etc. And what happens then? Everybody dies.
> those who are born into poverty, have very little chance of changing that fact
Oh? Are public schools not free? Libraries are available everywhere. These days, if you want to learn something, it will cost you very little. Degrees cost money, but work experience is often just as good. Get an internship and prove you can do your job well and you'll be hired. It doesn't take a PhD to not be poor.
> it takes money to make money, something which
> the majority of the people on this planet simply can't do.
And how do you think the people who have money made that money in the first place? Money represents production and if you produce you will get money. If you sit on your butt and produce nothing, the of course you will be broke.
> With the money system gone and 'humans' being
> wiped off the face of the earth forever,
> everyone will experience true equality; both
> genetically AND statistically.
If you kill off money, you kill off value, because money is the standard of value. Money is the guarantee that you can exchange the fruit of your labours for the products of other people. Nanotechnology will not change this because while the nanobots can produce many things, they still must be told how to do it. Even the most sophisticated car plant requires humans to oversee the assembly line, fix things that break, and design the actual cars. Nanobots will not change this. You'll just pay for different things. Energy will always have value. Matter will always have value. Land will always have value. And as long as there is value, there will be money.
> the options that currently exist today, won't exist in the near future
Huh? You better elaborate on that.
> The coming change is going to be so tremendous
> that none of us can even fathom what's going to happen.
Just because you can not fathom it, does not mean other people can not. Eric Drexler has been doing it for years. And I can imagine most of the changes very well myself.
July 14th, 2004 at 1:11 PM
I pity you
> Man is controlled by his/her genes. Free will is
> an illusion. Everything is predetermined through our genes.
I pity you. A man who holds such beliefs will not get far in life. To assume you are helpless to change your life is to assume you are unable to live at all. Thinking that you can't help being poor or stupid or unemployed is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because to do anything at all you must first believe that it is possible. To accomplish anything at all you must believe in your abilities and to have confidence in your knowledge. I am sorry that you have evidently never experienced that. To assume that all your actions are predeteremined through your genes, is to deny responsibility for them. To deny responsibility for your actions is to deny your own existance, because it is in the very definition of life is that it can adapt to its environment and it is the essential difference of the human species that we can adapt our environment to suit our needs. That's why we have houses, because someone didn't like the "we can't help living in caves, we were born to do it" mentality. That's why we have fire, because someone didn't accept the "we can't help it that lightning didn't strike today" whinings. That's why we have every bit of technology that has been developed since the dawn of time. And none of it was made by people who thought they "couldn't help it".
July 14th, 2004 at 1:33 PM
Re:Poverty is not hereditary
Oh? And what about that idea of killing off the inferior humans you mentioned?
I never said anything about murdering anyone. I simply said that 'humans' need to be wiped off the face of the earth – that can either mean killing them through mass genocide (which is what you think I meant) or 'evolving' them into transhumans (which is what I meant). It's all about the birth of the 'new human' that isn't human.
Oh? Are public schools not free? Libraries are available everywhere. These days, if you want to learn something, it will cost you very little. Degrees cost money, but work experience is often just as good. Get an internship and prove you can do your job well and you'll be hired. It doesn't take a PhD to not be poor.
That isn't saying much, considering the public school system sucks. But are school supplies free? Can a person of the lowest social status work productively in an environment that is filled with people who come from both the middle and higher classes? The answer is no. Though productivity is possible on a small scale, it's extremely restricted due to the environment.
And how do you think the people who have money made that money in the first place?
INHERITANCE
If you kill off money, you kill off value, because money is the standard of value. Money is the guarantee that you can exchange the fruit of your labours for the products of other people. Nanotechnology will not change this because while the nanobots can produce many things, they still must be told how to do it. Even the most sophisticated car plant requires humans to oversee the assembly line, fix things that break, and design the actual cars. Nanobots will not change this. You'll just pay for different things. Energy will always have value. Matter will always have value. Land will always have value. And as long as there is value, there will be money.
Money is based on supply and demand; Nanotechnology is literally going to wipe out that part of the equation. Without supply and demand, you have no economy, and with no economy, there's no money. It's worthless.
Of course, alot of the so called nanotech visionaries claim that 'information services' is what is going to fuel the economy of the future…but that isn't going to happen either. It sounds like a bunch of wishful thinking by people who wish to keep the old ways of their ancestors intact.
The money system WILL crumble and it will NOT be replaced.
Just because you can not fathom it, does not mean other people can not. Eric Drexler has been doing it for years. And I can imagine most of the changes very well myself.
I like Drexler, and have been a supporter of his 'vision' for over a decade now. But saying that he can fathom what is coming is just giving him WAY too much credit. Remember, the technological singularity is coming in less than 8 years (end of 2012), and Chris and Drexler have both stated that the Singularity will be unpredictable on ALL counts.
July 14th, 2004 at 1:52 PM
Re:I pity you
"There are some people who are born who are like keys that move the world and have no connection to the social hierarchy established by man." -Beserk
Why pity me? I'm the one who is going to turn this world upside down and change it forever. But it's a genetic mutation that makes me think like this – if it weren't, I would be like every other braindead zombie out there, getting married and having children and all that other rubbish.
You're the one who obviously needs to be pitied, but that pity needs to be shared among all of us, considering we are an imperfect race, with the majority of it having no desire to achieve perfection. Such an existance should not exist in the first place.
July 14th, 2004 at 2:56 PM
Re:Poverty is not hereditary
> But are school supplies free?
What supplies do you need to learn that 2 + 2 is 4? School supplies are not a necessity. Only the mind is the necessity, and the desire to learn.
> Can a person of the lowest social status work
> productively in an environment that is filled
> with people who come from both the middle and
> higher classes? The answer is no.
What does it matter if other students happen to be from different social class? Sure, you might have trouble making friends, but you are in school to learn, not socialize. So the answer is yes, you can. You just need to want to.
>> And how do you think the people who have money
>> made that money in the first place?
> INHERITANCE
Inheritance does not create money, it just passes it on. To have anything to inherit, your ancestors had to have made some money by producing.
> Money is based on supply and demand; Nanotechnology
> is literally going to wipe out that part of the equation.
> Without supply and demand, you have no economy, and with no economy, there's no money.
> It's worthless.
Nanotechnology will not wipe out supply or demand, it will simply change the nature of things supplied and demanded. Sure you can build a car nearly for free with nanobots, but where will you get the iron to do it with? Well, you say, the cars will be made from dirt then. And who owns the dirt? Land prices will go up tremendously as dirt will be mined and sold. There will, after all, be so much demand for it. But to make nanomachines you need more than silicon that you can find in dirt, you need carbon and lots of it. Nanotubes need carbon, most chemical reactions only work with carbon, and you can't eat silicon products either. There is a limited supply of starting materials and thus there will be a demand for them. The landowners will be suppliers. Hence the need for money. You'll also have to pay for the software to make your new car. And the royalties for all the intellectual property embedded in it (you didn't think that issue would just go away, did you?)
> The money system WILL crumble and it will NOT be replaced.
So what will you do then when you need some matter to make food? If you are "transhuman" and can absorb pure energy, how will you pay for that? You won't be able to run just on sunlight, you know. There are cloudy days, and you might want to go indoors now and then. With your "transhumans" being immortal there would be a whole lot of them. They don't die and then insist on having children too. Exponential growth ensues and you will have so much poverty, you'd wish it were 1995. House prices will be sky high. Computer space for the uploaded will eventually be even scarcer and will be plagued by the requirement to watch advertising for a set number of hours every day, or risk getting discontinued. Space colonization won't work either because there is just no way to throw humans off the planet faster than they can breed. Not with a hundred space elevators. And then there is the energy to consider, which will be far more than most will find affordable.
> Remember, the technological singularity is
> coming in less than 8 years (end of 2012), and
> Chris and Drexler have both stated that the
Don't believe everything you hear. "Singularities" of various kinds are just speculation, and perhaps a bit of wishful thinking that inventions can "just happen" without any effort whatsoever. The world does not work that way. Nanobots will not evolve all by themselves, they will have to be created, step by step. And that will not happen in 8 years. In fact, it may not happen at all, with all of those naysayers hanging around.
July 14th, 2004 at 3:02 PM
Re:I pity you
> I'm the one who is going to turn this world upside down and change it forever.
< sarcasm>
Sure you are. You are born to be great, right? That means that no matter what you do, or not do, you will be. Gosh, that is so convenient. All those inventions just popping into your head out of nowhere (just 'cause you're worth it), money and power, baby! All without a single gram of effort. Why strain? You are predestined, so you'll succeed even if you do absolutely nothing.
< /sarcasm>
July 14th, 2004 at 4:57 PM
Scale of the boycott
> You'd have to boycott vast areas of nanoscale
> technology. Otherwise, it'll get rapidly easier to
> develop an assembler. Sensing, manipulation, and
> simulation tools are all improving; by 2030 it
> could be a PhD thesis project.
I rather doubt that. The assembler is not merely a combination of sensors and manipulators. It is a complex machine that will require a lot of talent, a lot of knowledge, and a whole lot of thinking to invent. Your average PhD will not be up to the task. Furthermore, current research in the so-called "nanotechnology" is really nothing more than chemistry with a new name. What they do has nothing to do with Drexler's MNT and, although it provides tools for MNT research it does not by itself further that area of knowledge. Consider biotechnology; there are currently many tools to manipulate DNA and proteins, creating a variety of genetic modifications. But this is an entirely different task from creating a new living organism, and it is unlikely that any current research will achieve that goal. Indeed, I am not aware of any efforts seeking it.
To create a thing is much more difficult than to copy it. Once somebody creates an assembler, it really will be feasible to do a PhD thesis on an improved copy thereof. It will also be entirely feasible for an individual to steal the designs or even the actual assembler from his employer. Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" book contains a very plausible scenario on how this may happen. Are you willing to trust the world that there would be no such individuals, or that they would only do this with benign intentions? I do not.
So what needs to be boycotted? Any active research into actually developing self-replicating entities. As I already mentioned, most "nanotechnology" companies are merely doing surface chemistry, so this would not affect them. I should also say that such a boycott is already being initiated by our own government, although for government research only. What needs to happen is the extension of the same boycott to private research in the same fashion that the government already prohibits development of nerve gas without a license.
Assembler research will not be easy or cheap. It can not be done in some terrorist's basement due to the amount of expertise and equipment necessary to construct stuff on nanoscale. These days that means clean rooms and chip factory style machines. The other possible options, like manually building it with an STM or synthetic chemistry just don't sound practical to me at this time. An STM takes a long time to position even a single atom and nobody has even tried to do three dimensional structures yet. Synthetic chemistry has trouble with anything more than a hundred atoms or so, except for polymers which are not exactly precise structures. This means that if somebody is doing MNT research it will be noticable. It will be traceable, because the required equipment is hard to make. This way it will be controllable, or at least no harder than controlling nuclear proliferation.
If you control it, won't there be underground research going on in all those unfriendly countries trying to destroy us? Perhaps. But consider their success rates with other technologies. For instance, only China has been able to manufacture a PC microprocessor, even though the basic concept has been around for decades and the actual plans have been around at opencores.org for quite some time too. How about biotech? Only the big countries, the U.S., some Europeans, Russia, and Japan have any research at all. The U.S. and Japan account for nearly all of it. Such failure, considering that you only need to know how to splice a piece of DNA into a plasmid to qualify. If the big countries (US, Japan, England, Russia, France, Israel and a few other europeans) stop all MNT research, I sincerely doubt that there would be a single scientist left in the world with enough brains to even begin. And there is such a scientist, he probably will not have any funding to do it.
July 15th, 2004 at 10:47 AM
Re:Patronizing
His anxiety is understandable, but his assumption that he's the only one looking at or thinking about the risks is arrogant and uninformed. There probably won't be a "real" solution to nanoterrorism until there is a "real" nanoterrorism threat. No group has done more to plan for and prevent the dangers of nanotechnology than Foresight.