[extropy-chat] Nanotech educations

[Chris Phoenix]

Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> 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.

Most of this is fundamental research and enabling technologies.  This 
technical symposium is being pretty near-term: the closest they come to 
mentioning mechanosynthetic exponential manufacturing is one paragraph 
buried in the middle of a list.

"Molecular machines produce controlled motion on a molecular scale. By 
bringing other molecules together in a controlled way, they will one day 
be used to control the sequences of chemical reactions that will enable 
molecular manufacturing of complex nanosystems."

The rest of the conference talks about implications of molecular 
manufacturing, so the organizers clearly intend to acknowledge its 
existence.  But there's nothing in the technical symposium about, for 
example, CAD systems that can allow us to design with sub-molar numbers 
of machines.  And I suspect at this point, it's CAD that'll turn out to 
be the limiting factor in how quickly MNT can be developed.

> I've found that a lot of the people working towards
> ["nanobots"] 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.)

I agree.

> 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.

What I'm complaining about is that general-purpose mechanosynthetic 
exponential manufacturing is still considered as "where the tech might 
lead" rather than "a major and powerful goal that will be achieved 
surprisingly soon."

> (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.)

I think this will delay MNT.  And make it happen more abruptly and 
proliferate less controllably when it does arrive.

> Those saying nanobots are impossible have, themselves,
> been largely silenced by disproof.  

Just a few days ago, Whitesides went on BBC and gave the Fingers Fallacy 
to explain why Drexler possessed insufficient imagination.  Bleah, and 
double bleah.  And I haven't heard Smalley retract any of his chemistry 
mistakes yet, either.

> 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*...  

In these comparisons of feasibility and timeline, what cost and time are 
they claiming for MNT?  Or are they simply engaging in rhetoric?

> (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. ^_^

I'll believe they're allies when they stop telling people not to 
research MNT.

>>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".

Identify ways we can hurt ourselves with it, and take whatever actions 
are necessary to avoid the worst dangers.  For example, it looks like an 
MNT-driven arms race is a very likely outcome, and would probably be 
disastrous.  Planning would involve first, analyzing the danger in more 
detail, and second (if it turns out that the danger is significant) 
figuring out ways not to get into that situation.

Other possible dangers include massively oppressive government; several 
kinds of environmental disaster; several kinds of disastrous social 
disruption; artificial scarcity causing megadeaths per year; several 
other possibilities that I won't mention here because I'm less sure of them.

> 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?  

We can know with pretty good confidence that certain things will become 
techincally possible.  Like, the avionics/electronics for a jetliner 
will weigh less than 10 kg and cost less than $200.

 From this, we can predict that certain things which are stable today 
will become unstable.  And if one of those things is geopolitics, then 
we might want to make a plan for a new way of doing geopolitics.

It could be argued that it's better to figure it out as we go along--to 
wait until things start to fall apart, and then figure out where to go 
from there.  I'm not being snide--this may actually make some sense if 
we have no clue how the present systems work.  But I think we have 
enough of a clue to do at least some of our homework in advance.

> 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.  

I'm not at all sure you're right.  Especially since it may not be abuse 
that kills us, but simply old reactions in new situations.  Like arms race.

> 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)?

You don't think it's possible to identify likely instabilities and 
vicious cycles, and work to steer clear of them?  I'm not proposing _a 
plan_ in the "five year plan" sense.  I'm proposing _planning_ in the 
sense of gathering information, projecting possible outcomes, and 
sometimes choosing between them.

>>MNT is not technology-limited. 
> 
> I strongly disagree.  

Sorry, I misspoke.  MNT _research_ is not technology-limited.  If we 
wanted to start a crash nanofactory program today, we could write useful 
software without waiting for any lab results.  And by the time the 
software was done, the lab results could be achieved too.

> 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*, 

Huh--I thought DPN could get down to 5.  And surely ebeam of masks can 
get below that.

 > and that's a slow and complex
> process for any significant volume of end result.  

Does "significant volume" mean ten nm^3, or 1 micron^3?

> 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...

MNT is not just eutactic manufacturing.  It's exponential manufacturing. 
  And the fact that you, who are relatively well-informed and 
open-minded, think these are almost the same thing makes my point for 
me: most researchers are quite uninformed about the goals or the 
implications.

Chris

-- 
Chris Phoenix                                  cphoenix at CRNano.org
Director of Research
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology          http://CRNano.org