[extropy-chat] British Royal Society Workshop Commentary

[Damien Broderick]

Although I agree with Hal's general position here, I think the precise
statement in question was poorly expressed rather than madly hubristic:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 1:43 PM

> "Foundational work in the field, especially Nanosystems (Drexler, 1992),
> has laid out a detailed theoretical approach to nanoscale mechanochemical
> systems and other nanoscale machinery that has never been successfully
> criticized."
>
> It's never been successfully criticized!  After eleven years!  What, was
> it divinely inspired?

I believe this assertion (often repeated by Drexler et al) means:
`Criticisms of its key arguments have never been successful in persuading
its author and supporters of their alleged error/s' or `It has successfully
surmounted critical challenges, often by showing they were ill-framed or
ignored arguments advanced in the text'. Whether this formulation would be
justified is, of course, another question, and needs to be dealt with on a
continuing challenge-and-response basis by Foresight. I agree with Hal that
the current formulation conveys a tone of absurd doctrinal confidence.

Damien Broderick