[extropy-chat] British Royal Society Workshop Commentary

[Hal Finney]

Mike Treder writes:

> CRN was recently invited to comment on the published report of a UK 
> government workshop exploring likely developments in nanotechnology, and 
> associated ELSI issues. You can view our commentary here - 
> http://www.crnano.org/RSWorkshop1.htm

Just kind of a nitpick, following along with my rant last night:

"Foundational work in the field, especially Nanosystems (Drexler, 1992),
has laid out a detailed theoretical approach to nanoscale mechanochemical
systems and other nanoscale machinery that has never been successfully
criticized."

It's never been successfully criticized!  After eleven years!  What, was
it divinely inspired?  Did the hand of God reach down and write this book?
Because no human being can create a 556 page book without error.

These kinds of claims smack of cultishness rather than science.  They make
belief in nanotech sound like a matter of faith and religion.

And if in fact this book has managed to avoid "successful" criticism for
so long, that is an indictment of the book, not a compliment.  It means
that the book is so vague, circumspect, or confusing that critics are
unable to grapple with it.

Every author knows that his ideas are imperfect.  He should be writing
so as to seek and invite criticism, in order to improve the quality of
his concepts and advance the state of knowledge.  But I don't find this
attitude in Nanosystems.  I don't see any admissions of imperfection,
or expressions of uncertainty.  The overall tone is one of supreme
confidence.  Even though each chapter closes with a list of open problems,
they are mostly of the form, find even more examples to show all of the
ways that nanotech can work.

It may be that Nanosystems is written this way intentionally, because it
means to be as much a political as a technical book.  It does not exist
to invite people to criticize its proposed nanotech manufacturing system,
but rather to convince people that they should support investment and
research towards the technology.

Whether this is true or not, the fact is that the book has failed to
generate an engaged and dynamic intellectual debate about the prospects
for nanotech.  Instead it is largely used as a political bludgeon,
as in the "never been criticized" quote above.

I'd suggest that what we need today are works that get criticized.
Criticism is how science advances.  Avoiding criticism, such as by
the tactic I discussed earlier of shifting the burden of proof, is a
counter-productive strategy which must be abandoned.  Your critic is
your best friend.

Hal