<div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>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.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 12:21 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I am pretty sure I saw something about an advance in microscopy, but I guess I didn't see what I thought I saw.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">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</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 6:16 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div style="border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:none;border-top:1pt solid rgb(225,225,225);padding:3pt 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal">> <b>On Behalf Of </b>William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] marksmanship<u></u><u></u></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">Nothing is more complicated than my field. Much, perhaps most of what we think we know might be wrong. Now for something completely different:<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">I am re-reading some of Faynman's popular works. One is There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">'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.'<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">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?)<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">Now why have I not seen scientists ecstatic about it if it is as revolutionary as Feynman says it will be?<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">bill w<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">Scientists were most ecstatic when it was first done in 1989.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">Here’s an 11 yr old article about moving atoms one at a time:<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><a href="https://www.wired.com/2009/09/gallery-atomic-science/" target="_blank">https://www.wired.com/2009/09/gallery-atomic-science/</a><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">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:<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo</a><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">spike<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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