Comments on: Mexican eco-terrorists declare war on nanotechnology, threaten scientists

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:44:00 +0000

“Nasty microscopic things that could wreak havoc on human life” is a plausible scenario but even without getting into the physics an all-encompassing “grey goo” never passed the sniff test. We’ve had self-replicating nanoscale constructs for a long time now: they’re called “proteins.”

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:35:00 +0000

Does that mean the term “grey goo” has a similar origin to “big bang”?

By: Jeremiah Blatz

Jeremiah Blatz — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:05:00 +0000

Are you kidding? Oil companies have over $3 trillion in annual revenue. They’re just ramping up?

By: Tynam

Tynam — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:53:00 +0000

It’s likely that the opening moves of the artilect war would contain this kind of human stupidity, yes, but that would just be the AIs taking advantage of our natural tendency to self-sabotage.

(MIRI was more of a brand confusion issue than a change of mission – thankfully.)

By: Tynam

Tynam — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:49:00 +0000

A better description: Drexler knew that the popular SF “self-replicating submicroscopic swarm threat” was not a plausible hypothesis at the time he wrote Engines of Creation. (Essentially due to energy input / resource constraints.) He was not worrying that the Earth would be turned into sludge or computronium, merely attempting to illustrate some more specific ecological threats.

As usual, nuance got lost in the press quotes.

So, yes, falsifiability is the distinguishing criterion – but the hypothesis is “not real” in that Drexler already believed the popular image to be false at the time he proposed it.

By: Tynam

Tynam — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:44:00 +0000

I can't find Drexler's original comment on this offhand, but take a look at http://www.crnano.org/PR-IOP.htm or Some Limits to Global Ecophagy

By: L_Mariachi

L_Mariachi — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:19:00 +0000

What makes a hypothesis “real” aside from falsifiability?

By: SophieMerry

SophieMerry — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Has anyone checked on Ted Kaczynski’s whereabouts? Still firmly behind bars, I trust?

By: Brad Ackerman

Brad Ackerman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:44:00 +0000

There’s an implied “those things are bad, except when I have them” in that manifesto — just like anti-gun politicians with carry permits, hard-right televangelists with homosexual liaisons, etc. etc. etc. Hypocrisy would be the new black, except it’s not really new at all.

By: Shiva Yam Hologram

Shiva Yam Hologram — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:03:00 +0000

It’s happening! Hugo De Garis’ artilect war is upon us! Anyone else get the memo that the Singularity Institute changed its name to Machine Intelligence Research Institute, btw?

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:00:00 +0000

Real or not it is just as likely as a computer system turning into a Skynet type of program, or future robots rising up against us (without a centralized command like Skynet). Honestly grey goo is probably even more likely. Since you are dealing with things at a nano level, once maker bots are building things in a similar size range, it wouldn’t be hard to program them for killing. Self replication might be the limiting factor in their wide spread effectiveness. More then likely you’d end up with something akin to a spreading virus than an expanding mass of nano bots.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:48:00 +0000

[citation needed]

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:47:00 +0000

Technology is anything invented after you were born that doesn’t quite work yet. :p

By: Sirkowski

Sirkowski — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 02:02:00 +0000

They should lead by example and destroy themselves.

By: Matthew Johnson

Matthew Johnson — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:27:00 +0000

How do you call them “eco-terrorists” when they want to whipe out a whole species. I call that pure stupidity on both ends.

By: jackbird

jackbird — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:22:00 +0000

I was hoping the diamond airships, telepresent improv acting, and undersea orgies would be the parts of The Diamond Age that came true, not the anti-nanotech terrorism.

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:33:00 +0000

Has anybody told the drug cartels that the fall of human civilization will substantially reduce the value of the US market? I have a sneaking suspicion that that might be a quicker solution than going through official channels.

By: eldritch

eldritch — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:45:00 +0000

It seems the Involuntary Human Extinction Movement is ramping up.

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:29:00 +0000

The Grey Goo hypothesis was never real. It was only suggested as a tongue-in-cheek scenario. Only the anti-nanotechnology types actually take it seriously.

By: Guido

Guido — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Solid arguments against primitivists

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1451

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Obviously these guys have never heard of the Grey Goo problem…

By: L8

L8 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:56:00 +0000

The article quotes part of this eco-terrorists manifiesto:

“Did those who modify and destroy the Earth think their actions wouldn’t have repercussions? That they wouldn’t pay a price? If they thought so, they are mistaken.”

Uh, dude… the researcher that you tried to destruct is in that very same Earth you wanna protect from destruction. Are you guys trying to launch researchers into space to kill them there with your bombs?

By: Rick Adams

Rick Adams — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:28:00 +0000

Aren’t bombs technology? Also, if they want to revert back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, would they consider spears technology… or clothes? It’s hard to see where the line begins and ends. I don’t think they’ve really thought it all through…

By: TheOven

TheOven — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:21:00 +0000

One has to ask why? If they just let the scientist do his nano-job, he’ll usher in the age of our robot-overlords and they’ll get their wish sooner than with pathetic bombs.