[ExI] Coursera Nanotechnology has begun

Giulio Prisco giulio at gmail.com
Wed Nov 20 08:19:36 UTC 2013


Yes, criticizing early Drexler's visions is Politically Correct these
days. Of course only PC science gets funded, and suspects of unPCness
can kill a scientist's career.

Note that even Drexler himself, in his last book Radical Abundance,
seems to forget his juvenile unPC sins and focus on down-to-earth
nanotech only.

This means also that, even if many technologies discussed on this list
in the 90s are approaching the mainstream, radical futurist groups
such as the ExI list have still an important role to play. The
mainstream may have appropriated a mild version of transhumanist tech,
but they don't tell the whole story.

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
>>
>> On 2013-11-13 01:25, Adam A. Ford wrote:
>>>
>>> I am surprised at how much the course conveners refer to Drexler's views
>>> as Science Fiction in forums and in the main lecture video:
>>> https://class.coursera.org/nanotech-001/lecture/7
>>
>>
>> Maybe you should bring up what he really argues for? See his Guardian
>> blogs, and his recent book. The problem seem that everybody argues against
>> Strawman Drexler, who has little to do with real Drexler.
>
>
> This is definitely seeming to be the trend here.  Even one of the professors
> clings to Strawman Drexler after having been called out on it, in detail, by
> four of the respondents (myself and Adam included).
>
> But it turns out there might be a financial incentive for this: if the don't
> spout that, government funding sources worry they're promoting a scary
> vision of uncontrolled nanotech, and pull funding (because of course one
> must not be seen as supporting that which scares the sheeple, if one wishes
> to get reelected).  And of course we wind up dealing with those who got
> funded, far more than those who did not.
>
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