Slow or sudden? Big difference!

Yesterday, we began to consider the big differences between early and sudden development of advanced nanotechnology, versus slow and incremental development.

The potential benefits of molecular manufacturing (MM) are immense. Ironically, this will create at least two problems. There is, of course, the moral issue of ensuring that new benefits and possibilities are not denied to the world's citizens. There is also the problem that repression or prevention of MM, unless carried to hideous extremes of oppression, would simply attract a criminal element to supply the denied benefits through a black market. This in turn would make policing harder, leading to more restrictions and more incentive for crime.

The cycle between oppression and crime is one of several vicious cycles that could be induced and fueled by molecular manufacturing, but must be avoided. A technology that can quickly make billions of lethal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) the size of a small hummingbird for a few thousand dollars — total, not apiece — will create problems that cannot be solved by any simple solution. MM will impact security, economics, and information flow, each of which requires very different policy approaches. Bad policy in one area may create far worse problems in another area; bad policies will not cancel each other, but will each make the situation worse.

All of these reasons point to the urgent need for learning, as soon as possible, the earliest date by which molecular manufacturing plausibly could arrive.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology future

Comments

[davidoker]

Your thoughts on crime are wrong; the iraq incident that George Bush Jr has started is a living reminder of this; these people 'live' in another world; they simply do not understand democratic thought; it is like women who have been brought up to have sex; they just take off their clothes without thinking about it; or the supernatural religious; they simply have no idea about abstraction, generalization, and experiment, not to mention evolution; they live in another world; curiosity? What's that? is their response!
It is like most americans I've met so far in my life; they are always saying lets have fun with no thought that maybe exploration is fun. Their language shows that they are so hell bent to have fun that the language doesn't even allow you to speak up and point out, "hey, what about like hiking and other exploration?"

You guys also don't understand human nature; Bill Joy led the way when he said why can't we just have a cup of tea? He clearly does not understand that humans are the scientific species and the real ethics that comes from critical thinking; what supernatural religion says 'criticize everything I say!" None! And guess who is friends with Bill Joy? Chris Phoenix! I'm sorry, but I am forced to speak up on this; I remember Kaddymose over at nanodot.com, and I came in and said the religious have their place in the evolution of man, and Chris Phoenix comes in and mentions some Lewis author of christian apologetics; clearly, he is christian and is socially bound up with it all; his social place is predicated on believing and will not criticize it.

These people even don't know about critical thinking; they think critical thinking is following what their social group says; they think politicking in their social group is right and everytime conflict goes down, they just end up doing the same things shortly later. Instead of making up by actually changing their ways, they are back to their incrowding ways. They think if you just smile that puts the problems behind them, but the problems just crop back up. Instead of asking for my opinion, they just talk on the phone with each other and reach a group decision; i see the same thing happening with my girlfriend who I've never seen in years; they simply live in anther world, and they are not ready for curiosity and exploration.

I've pointed out time and time again that the supernatural religious do not want science and technology; why? because as is pointed out above, those people are living in another world; they are not ready for science and technology. They are constantly after evolution, genetics, cosmology, and now nanotechnology.

I at first got on here this morning after reading about Mr Treders ideas about crime and availability of food and stuff, but after thinking about Iraq, and all the weird social customs exhibited throughout the world as pointed out above, I am forced to say what I am seeing. You people have been disproven time and time again, and instead of going to academia first and gettin peer-reviewed, you have already made international business deals. Have to feed the poor, yes, but for money!

[michael vassar]

Ab Homium attacks, vast numbers of long run-on sentences, gross factual errors, (Joy friends with Phoenix?!), incoherent thoughts, favorable? mention of Kadamoose (hard to tell, as I said, he is incoherent), fantastic ignorance (some Lewis guy!?), pointless bitching about humanity and about HIS GIRLFRIEND. Please, moderate this guy. It's your site, and without moderators it will go the way of nanodot. David might concievably have some ideas, but there are also ideas encoded in the patterns of leaves falling in your yard if you use the right decription schema. If you don't screen out most of the informational noise in life, you won't see objects, just splotches of light.

[michael vassar]

Of course, intelligent people, people more moderate in moderation than myself who have still been accused of authoritarian moderation (because you can't win) can argue for a more lenient approach. In the spirit of immoderation, I'd like to post Eliezer's recent argument for moderation in moderation.

"A few people have asked me why I haven't removed Marc Geddes from the list.

First, he doesn't swear at people and he spells correctly. This counts for *a
lot* in whether someone stays on SL4.

Second, when someone obeys basic netiquette, I am biased against rejecting
them from the list because their opinions conflict with mine. There's some
known phenomena in social psychology that say: Leave the outliers in! Not
because they are valuable in their own right, but their presence shows that
dissent is tolerated, and mainstream people feel freer to express opinions
that leave the mainstream. If Geddes were not the list oddball, someone else
would be, and then people would ask why that person was still on the list, and
then when that person was gone, someone else would be the list oddball...

Third, Geddes makes a good, *clear* example of how *not* to do things. Fewer
serious posters have appealed to intuition to support their statements on AI
since Geddes made "intuition" look very silly, showing it could be used to
support completely arbitrary assertions. I still wish that people understood
*why* "intuition" is a poor way of arguing, but failing that, it's better that
they think the argument will make them look silly. "Not *looking* stupid" is
the closest thing most people have to a grasp on rationality, and Geddes helps
make "intuition" *look* stupid. Geddes has also helped show the folly of
believing that you understand everything but not being able to express it
mathematically, like those other guys can who are admittedly clever but alas
not so intuitively gifted as Geddes; may this encourage us all to study the
math. I realized that I could not get away with calling Bayesian probability
theory "the Way of cutting through to the correct answer"; it was nice poetry,
but Geddes rapidly appropriated "The Way" and started turning it into his own
gibberish, which tells me the effect nice poetry has on weak minds. Think of
Geddes as the SL4 List Canary. His function is to fall over first when people
start wandering into dangerous territory.

However, I would emphasize that nobody needs to reply to Geddes's more
incomprehensible screeds. If Geddes doesn't have to work at being
comprehensible to get a response - just like I or any other author has to work
at being comprehensible - then he will only wander off farther into the far
spaces, and that's not helping him. When Geddes seems to be going completely
nuts, just watch and learn what not to do. "

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

David, spreading incorrect information about another person, especially for the purpose of hurting that person's reputation, is absolutely not acceptable. Readers of this blog may not realize that you know almost nothing about me, and may take your confident but incorrect assertions about me as evidence that you do. You've said lots of wild stuff that I haven't been seriously tempted to moderate you for, but keep this up and you'll be gone.

Chris

[Jay]

Don't forget to ban MysticMonkeyGuru as well.

[davidoker]

I once again admit to allowin 'rushed thought' to get out what I percieved(spelling?) as so important.

Although, I don't take everything I've said in the last few weeks, it could be awhile before i edit over at nano-wise(although, I'm not going to totally back down from the truths as much as I can find them).

So, take care to all.

[Tom Craver]

Davidoker:

I'd suggest slowing down, narrowing the focus of your posts as much as possible, and keeping in mind that the primary focus should be nanotech.

Write, preview what you wrote, delete it, and rewrite just about the main things you wanted to say. Otherwise your posts will not make sense nor will they be taken seriously.

Less is generally more - we all have to struggle not to overwhelm the forum with the volume of wisdom we could pour into this forum... :-)

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it's telling that the only alternative to knuckling under to regulation you can see is *crime*.

[Jay Oatway]

The more we restrict access to what the people want, they more a black market will develop.

The first gov't that takes its foot off the brake and lets MM run rampant will find massive benefits and economic gains.

We all need to stop worrying so much about the sky falling. Trust the people to sort out how to mitigate the dangers themselves--if we can create MM, we are smart enough to use it without parental supervision.

[Tom Craver]

Brett:
I'm not sure that's a fair take. Mike merely pointed out that restrictions can drive demand into an underground economy. In the view of the government, such activities *would* be criminal, just as gin-runners were criminals (and behaved criminally) under Prohibition.

(At least back then we had the integrity to require a Constitutional ammendment for alcohol prohibition. Strange that no one recognizes that precedent as illustrating the unconstitutional nature of the federal Warondrugs.)

I agree with Jay - avoid as many restrictions as possible. We'll have sufficient problems to deal with without artificial problems caused by a Waronnano to match the artificial problems of the Warondrugs and Waronterror.

[Marc_Geddes]

Hey, michael vassar leave me out of it huh? Why re-produce Eli's message here?

Eli's a brilliant fellow but he hasn't got one mite of tolerance for anyone less smart than he is. SL4 seems to be merely a device for the ego's of Wilson and Yudkowksy. At least they care about the world at all.. that's more than can be said for the jerks on SL4 out solely for military and commerical applications of AI. A bigger bunch of pompus stuck in the muds I have yet to find than the Sing Inst cheerleaders.

Thanks.