[extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Dan Clemmensen <dgc at cox.net> wrote:
> Robin Hanson wrote:
> >
> > Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14%
> > in the US.  Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision
> > - what other energy generation do you have in mind?

Firstly, the energy figure: the US consumed 3,613,000,000,000 kwh at an
average price of $0.08/kwh, for an energy budget of over $289 billion.
GDP was just over $10 trillion, so the figure is just under 3% of GDP.

Comparing this to medicine isn't quite smart, because energy is a
resource that impacts the cost of medicine, and the energy cost of
medicine does not necessarily equal just 3%. Typically the higher
technology a product is, the more energy it requires to produce. As
technologies age, we find more and more energy and labor efficient ways
to produce that technology.

However, if you want to do a raw comparison of portion of the economy,
the biggest, outside of medicine, being government (a part of medicine
being governmentally provided, of course). Can you produce and deliver
government via nanotech? Nannynanites?

> 
> I think that the step from "hardware" to "bioware" is extreme. The 
> social impact in  the "hardware" space will be extreme even without 
> "bioware." The impact of "hardware" on medicine will be fairly
> profound 
> by itself, allowing for massive improvements in existing medical 
> hardware and the creation of new medical devices a the micro level,
> even 
> without "bioware."(autonomous systems at the nano level.)
> 
> Solar, geothermal, and sophisticated conservation do not depend on 
> atomic precision. However, they use low-density energy sources, so
> they 
> require more capital equipment per Kwh. Thus, the enabler here is the
> 
> (assumed) dramatic reduction in capital cost made possible by
> nanotech, 
> rather than atomic precision itself.
> 
> I would note that atomic precision and ultra-strong materials 
> (diamondoid MNT) may enable the design of small (household) fusion 
> plants. This is easier than medical nanotech, but I think solar, 
> geothermal, and conservation are easier.   (PLEASE NOTE: I do not 
> advocate solar, geothermal, or sophisticated conservation with
> today's technology, so this is not some knee-jerk environmentalist
> rant. With today's technology these approaches degrade the
> environment except in special cases, because the environmental
> costs associated with the capital costs more than counter the gains.)

Conservation does not have a significant environmental impact, and
generally can be obtained for about 1.5 cents / kwh, far lower than the
cost of producing electricity (avg of 8 cents) itself. In fact, one
reason that the US electricity prices is so much lower than the rest of
the industrialized world is that we've invested large sums in
conservation rather than nuclear infrastructure. Reductions in demand
brought about by conservation have lowered our energy costs to a
significant degree. In fact, it was only after the Republican Congress
nixed conservation funding  in 1995 that energy prices started to rise
again, after slowly dropping through the 80's and early 90's.

Renewables technologies generally require a capital investment that
averages over 75% of its total lifetime costs, while nonrenewables tend
to average under 25%, with fuel and labor operating costs being the
bulk of lifetime cost of such sources. While I agree that with high
interest rates, renewables become non-cost effective, saying that the
environmental impact of the capital investment (I assume you are
talking about things like impact of dams on fish stocks and analogous
impacts) ignores the ongoing impact of non-renewables on the
environment, from oil and coal field damage, to shipping spills, to
refinery pollution, to consumption pollution (ash heavy metals, acid
rain, radionucleids in fly ash, incomplete consumption, etc). With low
interest rates, and if operational externalities are taken into
account, renewables are certainly more advantageous than nonrenewables.


=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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