[extropy-chat] Nanotech educations

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Chris Phoenix <cphoenix at CRNano.org> wrote:
> Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> > There are those who want to discuss the technology
> > (but don't necessarily have a clue about its
> > realities), and then there are those who want to
> > practice and develop the technology (but suck at
> > beating their own drum).  There's a lot going on
> that
> > you don't see if you don't look for it.
> 
> Like what?

I'd have to know exactly what you know to pull the
best examples, but for a sampler, check out
http://www.foresight.org/MolecularMachineSymposium/index.html#Topics
- and that's just the stuff organized enough that
there can be a conference about it.

> I doubt it's a matter of being bad at
> self-publicity--rather, it's that
> no one dare admit to working on "nanobots" or even
> toward them.

I've found that a lot of the people working towards
them are finding more immediate applications for the
steps they're working on.  (E.g., a nano robot arm,
independent of sensors and gross positioning and
feedstock and so forth, can still be useful.)
Talking about where the tech might lead is nice, but
talking about what specific benefits your specific
project will deliver brings you money; I do not blame
the people involved for heavily favoring the latter.
(Besides, some of them genuninely haven't thought
through where it could lead - but who cares?  Wait
'til they're done, then build on their results, just
like science has always done.)

> > Then again, I do wonder what specific benefits are
> > sought from a public discussion of the massively
> > unknown.  (Beyond just alerting people that
> technology
> > X exists: in truth, while it's not yet developed,
> it
> > can be argued not to truly exist yet.)  
> 
> It's not just the public: the more some academics
> say "nanobots" are 
> impossible, the less anyone can talk about what'll
> happen when 
> nanofactories arrive.

Those saying nanobots are impossible have, themselves,
been largely silenced by disproof.  Which is why many
of them changed their tune (as I reported a few months
back in my NNI conference report): okay, they're
possible, but *here's a more feasable and more
immediate way to deliver the same benefits*...  (For
varying specific ways, each of which would require its
own research project.  Which, as it so happens to
turn out, they have the capabilities for if funded,
rather than this mysterious "nanobot" initiative that
was perceived to take funding away from their labs.)

Cool thing, turning enemies into allies like that. ^_^

> And I do think it's important to plan ahead for such
> powerful technology.

I would tend to disagree, depending on the exact
meaning of "plan".

> I dislike suggestions that an elite should make
> decisions for "the 
> public" while keeping them in ignorance.

Elite?  No, I meant *no one* makes decisions "for the
public".  It's like libertarianism to government,
only applied to science.

No one, not even a self-appointed "elite", really
knows where this will lead.  (People can make guesses,
and some of those guesses - especially the educated
ones - will turn up lucky, but we can't really tell
exactly which one will turn up correct yet.)  But more
importantly, what is there to "plan" for?  The
knowledge will be created and spread.  We can plan for
some of the aftereffects, trying to make sure most
people have access to this new power (but perhaps not
those who would abuse it the worst), but that
infrastructure is already in place.  We can try to
accelerate its creation; governments and some
companies are already trying that, but more could be
done.  Trying to do much more than that amounts to
assuming one or a few specific guesses absolutely will
turn up correct and planning accordingly, which has
proven to cause problems when the true path of the
future disagrees - slightly or strongly - with the
planned-for path.  Why create trouble like that, when
it can be avoided by simply doing nothing (towards
this end)?

> MNT is not technology-limited. 

I strongly disagree.  The state of the art available
to most researchers in precise placement of varying
types of substances is limited to the 10s of
nanometers range*, and that's a slow and complex
process for any significant volume of end result.  A
few experiments have gotten down to atomic precision,
very slowly and using equipment and/or techniques not
generally available (or widely applicable outside of
the specific experiment, so far as anyone's figured
out and widely published yet).

* I could make an argument from authority here - this
specific manufacturing process is one that I am
currently using, and as far as I can tell I'm at the
bleeding edge of what's possible for structural
synthesis - but I invite anyone who disputes this to
do the same literature search I did.  (In this case,
"literature" includes brochures and Web sites from the
suppliers of equipment and services, i.e. the people
who turn theoretical capability into actual
capability.)

That said, the technology is being developed.  And,
in fact, development of the enabling equipment is
almost the same thing as development of MNT itself.
(Once you have a device that can assemble things at
the atomic level, you have a device that can assemble
things at the atomic level.)  But until it arrives...