[extropy-chat] ENOUGH already

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Robin Hanson wrote:

> But I constantly run into
> academics whose reason for ignoring these issues is because "that's science
> fiction."  Now perhaps they would still say that if there were not actual
> science fiction novels about these topics.  But it does seem that the fact
> that some scenario is popular in science fiction is often taken as a reason
> not to consider it in "serious" discussions about the future.

Hmmm... Sounds like a "herd" or "peer review" effect to me.  Few people
want to stick their necks out for fear they might not get tenure or
their next grant application approved.

On the other hand one of the reasons I went back and learned all about
molecular biology was because I wanted a pet dragon (derived in part
from my thinking dragons were cool from reading the Dragonriders of
Pern series in my youth).  Once I learned enough about molecular
biology I was convinced they were feasible (don't know about flying
but there were some very big reptiles that flew) I started biotech
companies doing aging research because I knew it was going to be
a few decades until the technology developed sufficiently to do
whole genome design (and I wanted to still be alive to take
advantage of using it to design my dragon).

The other reason to have a pet dragon is because if I walk it
around Greenlake its going to be a babe magnet big time. :-)

It sounds to me like many academics simply lack imagination or
aren't willing to do the work necessary to achieve some of the
far out goals one finds in science fiction & fantasy stories.
How many of the people involved in serious nanotechnology research
have read every paper Eric has written on the topic as well as
Nanosystems?  I suspect it isn't many.  And that isn't even
science fiction -- its simply projected engineering capabilities.

Robert