[ExI] Meat v. Machine

[Samantha Atkins]

On Dec 31, 2010, at 3:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:04:54PM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> 
>> Well now we don't have the heavy lifters we had before.  
> 
> We're only trying to deliver a number of small parcels.
> Each smaller than the one before.

Not if you want to do any space or lunar processing and manufacturing or house any human crews at all.

> 
>> Are you sure you believe that the current huge cost to 
>> orbit is good enough?  I have rarely been so utterly 
> 
> The parcels are very, very small. There are tens
> of thousands of inviduals who could afford one.
> 
>> amazed and had as much trouble believing a statement 
>> as that one.  Hell, we still don't have much better 
>> than 80% success putting payloads into orbit.  Why 
> 
> It doesn't matter if you lose some parcels.

I don't understand what you are talking about.  

> 
>> in the hell is this good enough?  
>> 
>> Again, we are three decades from machine phase.  Are 
> 
> Or we're 80 years away. Or a century. Nobody knows.
> Bootstrap is hard, let's go shopping.
> 
>> you sure we have that much time?  
> 
> Do you expect military ecovorous self-replicators 
> to be a serious problem, in that time frame?

No.  I expect us to suffer the Great Whimper, or if we have a bit more gumption, throw the war or series of wars that wipes out our technological basis sufficiently to doom the species in that timeframe UNLESS we find and do the necessary things in the next decade, two at the outside.  

- samantha