[extropy-chat] The direction in which one is headed [was: ... several threads ...]

[Robert Bradbury]

Before replying to this please note [1].

Given comments by Keith, Samantha, Russell & others, I thought I would point
this out...

"If one does not change the direction in which one is headed one is likely
to end up where one is going."
 -- (perhaps an old Chinese proverb)

The last estimate I heard with respect to U.S. spending on the war in Iraq
over the last 3 years was of the order of $500 billion.  That is equal to
1000 space shuttle missions at an undiscounted price of $500 million each
and is significantly more than the costs I estimated several years ago for
the design of the enzymes required to construct a functional Drexlerian type
programmable nanoassembler [2] without taking into account cost reductions
that I outlined.  Whether or not that same amount of money would get you an
artificial general intelligence (AGI), I do not not know.

What is lacking is vision and the commitment to "make it so".

I might suggest that a few individuals setting themselves on fire in front
of the White House or the Capitol (with proper media coverage of course) [3]
as a way to move us from the relatively slow lane of  having conferences
about when it will happen and what form it will take, adopting "principles"
to be proactive rather than reactive, engaging in never ending email
discussions, etc. might be a reasonable approach to consider to speed things
up a bit [5].

Robert

1. Please do *not* morph this into a political discussion.  I intended this
observation primarily to point out that *both* access to and/or use of
"space" *and* the development of robust nanotechnology and are well within
our current capabilities and financial resources.
2. http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html<http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/%7Ebradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html>
In particular note that 174,000 person-years @ $100,000 each would be $174
billion.
3. It would be more dramatic (and perhaps wake people up more) if the
individuals willed their bodies to "science" and had the Alcor technicians
standing by to freeze them as soon as they were pronounced dead.  Designing
methods for self-immolation [4] such that "death" results quickly without
significant brain damage shouldn't be too difficult.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation
5. I say this in large part because it is costing us 60+ million lives a
year to continue the rather slow approach we currently appear to be
following.  Almost all of those lives will be lost forever.
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