[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Social Equality and Politics

[Brett Paatsch]

Robert Bradbury wrote:

... as Mike has pointed out
> to me offlist we do not have Nano-santas today.  But the
> question to ask just might be how do we get them here
> a bit sooner?

If Nano-santa and genie-machine requiring an assembler are
the same thing then I don't think that's "how soon" is the 
question.

The question is is it possible? And the answer is we don't know 
until we see a systems specification that shows a full set of 
components necessary to produce an assembler (at any scale
would be a very good start). 

If we knew an assembler could be produced from 300 or 
even 300,000 parts because those parts together constituted
a full set of elements then we could look at various ways to 
improve or better optimise the design and to apply a timeline.
We'd have a basis for working out how long it might take to
build the parts and to assemble assembler number 1. Without
a list of components showing its possible any time and cost
numbers may as well be numerology.

We could just as usefully ask "how soon to Elvis next appears
in concert?"

Drexler did not outline a set of parts for an assembler in 
Nanosystems and if Von Neumann or anyone else has 
done it I haven't seen it.

Unless we can see that it is possible somehow in engineering
terms to build an assembler (by reference to a full set of
components -even a suboptimised set at the microscale or
any scale) how soon is a premature question. 

Show the world that assemblers are possible with a spec
that contains all the parts and it would be possible to put
both a political and commercial value on each of the parts. There
would be a reason to pursue each part.

In politics, as in engineering, opportunity costs matter as there 
are only a finite amount of resources to go around. 


Regards,
Brett Paatsch