[extropy-chat] British Royal Society Workshop Commentary

Chris Phoenix cphoenix at best.com
Tue Dec 9 02:29:05 UTC 2003


Never having been successfully criticized is an attribute common to most
(ideally all) current scientific theories.  I'm surprised that the
statement sounds hubristic or doctrinal.  

Perhaps the problem can be found in Damien's two interpretations, which
are not even very similar to each other.  I completely agree with his
second restatement, the one about how it has successfully surmounted
critical challenges by showing that they're just plain weak.  That's
what I meant, and I think the history of the debate supports that
statement.

If "never been successfully criticized" doesn't sound like that, then we
should change the formulation.

Chris

Damien Broderick wrote:
> 
> Although I agree with Hal's general position here, I think the precise
> statement in question was poorly expressed rather than madly hubristic:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 1:43 PM
> 
> > "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?
> 
> I believe this assertion (often repeated by Drexler et al) means:
> `Criticisms of its key arguments have never been successful in persuading
> its author and supporters of their alleged error/s' or `It has successfully
> surmounted critical challenges, often by showing they were ill-framed or
> ignored arguments advanced in the text'. Whether this formulation would be
> justified is, of course, another question, and needs to be dealt with on a
> continuing challenge-and-response basis by Foresight. I agree with Hal that
> the current formulation conveys a tone of absurd doctrinal confidence.
> 
> Damien Broderick

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



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