[ExI] marksmanship

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Tue Jun 30 07:27:57 UTC 2020


People try to build self-replicating assemblers on the assumption - usually
a justified one - that they can control or at least contain said
assemblers.  If nothing else, fire should do the job: self-replicating
assemblers are almost guaranteed to require very precise molecular shape,
which high temperatures disrupt.

Assemblers that only make more of themselves are not very useful, save as a
technology demonstration.  Assemblers that can do that but also stop doing
that and instead make something else are a potentially useful tool,
depending on what else they can make.

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 12:21 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I am pretty sure I saw something about an advance in microscopy, but I
> guess I didn't see what I thought I saw.
>
> You are pulling my leg a bit about replicating assemblers, eh?  If they
> did what you say they do, why would anyone try to build one?  bill w
>
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 6:16 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] marksmanship
>>
>>
>>
>> Nothing is more complicated than my field.  Much, perhaps most of what we
>> think we know might be wrong.  Now for something completely different:
>>
>>
>>
>> I am re-reading some of Faynman's popular works.  One is There is Plenty
>> of Room at the Bottom.
>>
>>
>>
>> 'It would be very easy to make an analysis of any complicated chemical
>> substance;  All one would have to do would be to look at it and see where
>> the atoms are.  The only trouble is that the electron microscope is one
>> hundred times too poor.'
>>
>>
>>
>> Now if I am not mistaken I saw in the news the other day that for the
>> first time scientists have been able to look at a single atom.  (Took a
>> long time, didn't it?)
>>
>>
>>
>> Now why have I not seen scientists ecstatic about it if it is as
>> revolutionary as Feynman says it will be?
>>
>>
>>
>> bill w
>>
>>
>>
>> Scientists were most ecstatic when it was first done in 1989.
>>
>>
>>
>> Here’s an 11 yr old article about moving atoms one at a time:
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.wired.com/2009/09/gallery-atomic-science/
>>
>>
>>
>> We haven’t figured out how to build replicating assemblers.  This is a
>> good thing, for as soon as we do of course, then the planet turns to gray
>> goo, ending all life:
>>
>>
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
>>
>>
>>
>> The gray goo scenario has been suggested as a plausible explanation of
>> Fermi Paradox: the notion is that every intelligent species eventually
>> advances in technology sufficiently to discover nuclear weapons, which are
>> generally survivable because it takes many people working together to make
>> a nuke.  But any mad scientist anywhere could theoretically figure out how
>> to make a replicating assembler, which then devours everything to turn it
>> into copies of itself, converting the top surface of the planet to gray goo.
>>
>>
>>
>> My fondest hope is that intelligence is really not a fatally maladaptive
>> evolutionary trait.  But at times I fear that this explanation of the
>> silence of the cosmos is most disturbing in its plausibility.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
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