[extropy-chat] Nano-assembler feasibility - meta

[Chris Phoenix]

This post is meta-discussion.

Brett wrote: "From where I sit neither the case that these sort of 
assemblers are definately possible nor the case that they are impossible 
has ever been convincingly made."

Brett, what is your purpose in holding this discussion?  Do you want our 
readers to believe that we know nothing about how an assembler might 
work--and if so, why do you want people to believe that?  Are you trying 
to convince people not to work on or study assemblers?

It seems likely to me that this is your goal.  If not, please explain 
what your goal is.  What do you want to convince people of?

If I'm right about your goal, I have trouble imagining your motivation. 
  Trying to save tax dollars doesn't seem likely... maybe you're trying 
to prevent discussion of dangerous technology, but that would be very 
irresponsible.... what is your motivation?

My goal has been 1) to establish that we know, calculate, and reasonably 
suspect quite a lot about molecular manufacturing (the technical side); 
2) to convince people that, given what we know and suspect, there are 
several compelling reasons for investigating further.

My motivation is that I believe we may get an unpleasant surprise from 
someone developing molecular manufaturing technology before the rest of 
us have studied it, and I'm trying to reduce the chance of that.

If we can't agree on the purpose of the discussion, then there's no 
point in having one.  So let's see if we can agree on a basis for 
exchanging useful information.  Let's start by agreeing that there is 
some non-zero uncertainty about whether molecular manufacturing can work.

So how do we deal with uncertainty?  Scenario planning is a useful 
approach.  I propose that we structure our discussion around scenario 
planning, giving us--within each scenario--a context for meaningful 
discussion.  If you don't like this, please propose an alternate 
approach for dealing with uncertainty, rather than simply continuing to 
repeat that the uncertainty exists.

I'll follow with a post based on scenario planning.

Chris

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