Trivially true: *I* can "launch" an assembler-project all by myself in
the next ten *minutes*. It does not follow that such a project would
succeed.

It is *extremely* optimistic and highly unrealistic that *any* country
will have a fully working assembler (defined as one that can at a
minimum assemble a copy of itself) in the next 10 years. I would say the
same thing if you replaced 10 with 30.

..... which is to say they are both very hard indeed. (as demonstrated by
the fact that no country is even *remotely* close to manage either one,
nor does anyone even have a real clue how you'd set about managing
either one.)

Again trivially true. You could even state it stronger: A general
assembler in the hands of any one nation *would* change balances of
power. (this is a lot like stating that a nation that developed
Abrahams tanks in WW-I would have 'an advantage'.)

And yet, there is no current strong push for nanotech in *any* country.
What do you suppose is the reason ? (hint: I have a good idea what the
reason migth be, I just wonder if *you* do.)

Yeah. You and Mike Treder have been thinking about it. So has many
others. That the two of you choose to label yourself the "Center for
Responsible Nanotech" does not significantly strengthen your arguments.
As far as I can tell the the "center" consists of the two of you, is not
open to membership for anyone else (even if they would want to) and has
as it's principal output three "primary papers", two of which are
"scheduled" and only one of which is actually published. That one is a
trivial summary of other papers filling all of maybe 5 pages. (and
"published" here seems to mean only "available from our webpages", not
actually accepted into a peer-reviewed publication.) You and Mike also
run the "Incipient Posthumans" (whatever that means)[1]

In short: Would you please try to let your arguments stand on their own
rather than attempting to bolster them up by having this "centre" lend
credibility ? This "centre" has no more credibility than you yourself
do.

mvh,
        Eivind Kjrstad

[1] It's hard to say what these "posthumans" do because their website,
made by Mike Treder consists of a single picture, with links that I'm
sure he has intended to point to relevant documents, but which do
instead point to locations like:

file:///C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Mike\My%20Documents\My%20Webs\myweb\b eginnings.htm

Which tells us a bit about Mikes operating-system, folder-layout and
html-knowledge, but nothing at all about the "incipient posthumans".

On 11 Feb 2003 23:50:13 GMT, Matthias Braun <msbr...@ph.utexas.edu>
wrote:

Hardly anyone wants to destroy the whole human race, just the part they
don't like, or think they can control.

The prospect of a "programmable disease" is pretty scarey. Imagine a
disease which was highly contagious but showed no symptoms at all until
a specific time and date, at which time it killed all the people it had
decided met certain criteria.

The criteria could be anything, depending on the terrorists involved. It
could be based on genetic markers, on speach, on GPS readings, even on
diet.

How do you mount a defense against such a threat? Constant monitoring of
possible vectors of transmission, such as taking atmospheric and other
environmental samples in populous places and examining them for
microscopic nanosystems. But there are many possible methods of
transmission, and the body has many possible hiding places.

If a substantial proportion of the population have some kind of internal
defences, which would be something along the lines of microscopic
nanosystems travelling arround the body, looking for invaders then they
might trigger a public warning, but warning in time to treat your entire
population with counter-agents? And there are other places such a
contagion might hide itself than the human body. How about a disease
that initially infects clothing, for example?

You're looking at an arms race, not so different from the eternal battle
between computer hackers and system adminstrators. Again you have the
problem that an attacker needs to succeed only once, whereas a defender
must succeed every time.

This stuff is still a long way off, of course, but I don't see anything
preventing it from happening.

news:b28bk502nkm@enews3.newsguy.com...

I am not up enough on the details enough to supply calculations
but it seems to me you are ignoring a difference between
monomolecular wire and dental floss which directly affects the
lethality. Namely tensile properties.

To take the skin test (pressing into skin):
Skin has two properties that protect it, resistance to direct
pressure and distribution of forces across its surface

The dental floss with its assumed (10^5) times larger surface
interface presses on a larger width of skin and increases the
area of skin transfering both of these forces over the entire
skin surface.

The monomolecular wire with its very much smaller interaction
area is better likened to a razor blade.
With a razor it is safe enough to press directly onto the surface
(blade perpendicular to the skin) since the unoving blade allows
the pressure to be redireted over the skin.  When you move the
blade sideways across the skin is where the cutting occurs.

The molecular wire however has tensile properties you mentioned
at the top, a slight expansion.

Any tensile structure when pressured or stretched _moves_ from
its natural position. In the case of the monomolecular wire the
expansion of skin pressing on it causes this expansion movement
to have the same action as a small movement of a very sharp razor
blade.

It may not have the strength to remain in one piece accross the
doorway. But the forces that caused it to break have already done
a lot of damage before the breakage and if it breaks at the
endpoint rather than the center of contact it will cause much
more damage as the wire is pulled around the limb or whatever
caused it to break.

At monomolecular dimensions it may be stopped by bone, or similar
but that is enough to remove a lot of soft tissue if not
protected properly.

Denfinately.

AJ

I will give a very incomplete answer based on one quick read-through.  I
refuse to wade through vitriol to have a discussion.  If anyone
(including Scott) thinks I've missed answering an important point, they
can restate it politely and I will be glad to answer it.  Future
vitriolic posts will get even more cursory treatment.

Regulation is not the same as law.  For example, technological
regulation can't be broken without cracking the technology--which is
usually possible but can be made quite difficult and sometimes
detectable--or social engineering, which can also be made difficult and
detectable.

I mentioned Gubrud's paper not as an appeal to authority, but because I
think it has interesting ideas that I'd like to talk about.  I'd still
like to talk about it.

I do think that gray goo is a concern.  You have to find it before you
can kill it.  And given that it can be microns in size, and some
varieties can presumably exist in deep ocean, I think finding it could
be pretty hard.  I haven't calculated the energy cost of sieving the
ocean yet, but I bet it's not easy.  And thousands of varieties (think
"script kiddie") may be harder to kill than one.  And releasing a new
"fix" for each new goo is not really practical when each "fix" takes
resources and creates litter and may have to provide coverage of the
entire globe.

Well, that's all I can remember.  Scott, I'm sure you'll be "very
disappointed" in my "sophomoric" response.  If that's all you can say,
don't even bother.  If you want to be polite, feel free to rewrite your
post, and I'll be very happy to have a productive discussion.

Chris

server.]

--
Chris Phoenix      cphoe...@best.com          http://xenophilia.org
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (co-founder) http://CRNano.org

Hm.  Well, that's your opinion... and a few years ago it was the opinion
of almost everyone... but the tide seems to be turning.  Danial Wayner,
who's heading Canada's nanotech institute, says it could be "15 years or
more before the first real breakthroughs in self-assembly."  The only
real difficulty is the mechanochemistry itself; the mechanical design of
an assembler is pretty easy.

I doubt we'll agree on this point.  Can we at least agree that some
respectable scientists say it could be less than 20, while others are
saying 50 or never?

My phrasing was unclear here.  An assembler-plus-nanofactory project is
not much harder than an assembler-only project.  Once you have an
assembler, designing and building (bootstrapping) a nanofactory just
requires some fairly straightforward mechanical engineering and lab
work--no new research.

CRN is about to publish a paper showing how the nanofactory part would
work.  Zyvex is supposedly publishing books later this year on
"Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines" and "Diamond Surfaces"
(http://rfreitas.com/, scroll down about halfway).  I haven't seen those
books.  It'll be interesting to see just how many DOF a mechanochemical
manipulator requires.

Yep.  And in the hands of two competing nations, would probably create
an unstable arms race.

Let me add a word to your statement:  There is no current *unclassified*
strong push for nanotech in any country.  I forget the reference, but I
think it was about a year ago that some industry-watcher mentioned that
some nanotech scientists had started stopping publishing.  

If there really are *no* projects, then that's because people listen to
Smalley more than Drexler.

We don't expect it to.  We expect our arguments to strengthen CRN.  We
started CRN so that people would know what to call us.

We're not a membership organization, meaning that we don't charge people
money to "belong."  Did you also read the part where we invited all
readers to send comments?  And we are actively seeking authors and
co-authors.  Our organizational structure is not unusual.  For example,
ETC Group seems to have four members; their ideas have been widely
published.  Further attacks on our chosen organizational structure will
get you nowhere.  

In fact, I wrote a detailed response to your subsequent points, but upon
reflection I see no need to defend ourselves or our organization.

One note: "Incipient Posthuman" is Mike's project, pre-CRN, not a joint
project.  Thanks for catching the web errors there.

Chris

--
Chris Phoenix      cphoe...@best.com          http://xenophilia.org
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (co-founder) http://CRNano.org

Militaries prepare for real potential enemies and cannot prepare for every
imaginable possible enemies.  CRN says nano-weaponry will cause an arms
race.  It needs to then identify who in be in such an arms race and why.
The US could spend trillions of dollars preparing for a war with Canada, but
that would just be silly due to how well the US and Canada get along.

Actually, we knew it was a major terrorist threat back then and even before
then.  When the Shah was overthrown in Iran by Islamic fundamentalists and
America, which backed the Shah, was proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini as
Satan incarnate, terrorist attacks against the US have been unfortunately
rather regular and building in severity.  And it goes back even further than
that.

I don't see how this would happen given the current state of the world.

Now you're talking nonsense or joking.

But it did change with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan.  There
hasn't been a major war in the world since that time.  No major power has
declared war against another major power and there is no evidence this will
occur for the foreseeable future.  The development of nano-weaponry should
have the same effect.

It depends what you consider to be nanotech.  Many conceive nanites as
possessing and needing to possess the ability to reproduce.  If this is the
nanotech you refer to, production of nanites will be neither expensive or
difficult.  Development of them will be, but not the production of them.

If that is what happens, then the world is a better place for it.  Nuclear
MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) has given us almost 60 years of world
peace.  If a nanotech MAD can do the same (and I think it would), it is
something we should be thankful for.

However, I do think there will be more players this time and possibly every
single nation in the world.

A likely possibility.

I would agree.

Scott Jensen
--
Like a cure for A.I.D.S, Alzheimer, Parkinson, & Mad Cow Disease?
Volunteer your computer for folding-protein research for when it's idle.
Go to http://www.distributedfolding.org/ to sign up your computer.

Speed of sound = 340 m/s.  Audible frequency = 20 Hz.  Wavelength = 17
meters!  When you get below a wavelength, you see it as changing
pressure, but it's still detectable.  (At some point the force applied
to the pressure sensor becomes smaller than the effects of thermal
noise, but even that isn't a hard limit.)

I think speaking a certain language is one of the harder criteria.  On
the other hand, the machines might be switched on by a broadcast radio
signal.  (Detecting radio waves is also possible for nanobots--the
electrical component of the wave affects point charges.  See
Nanomedicine 6.4.2.  I'm not sure what broadcast power would be
required.)

True.  But immunization, like anti-virus programs, may not be used as
widely as desirable, especially in civilian populations who may actively
resist it.  

I believe spread-spectrum technologies can be undetectable: each
pulse is below noise level, so you have to know when the pulses are
arriving to be able to add up enough pulses to get a signal.  So I was
told by a spread-spectrum researcher whose name I've forgotten.

The first nanodevice will not be easy to construct.  But if unrestricted
CAD-driven nanofactories become available, nanodevices will then be
fairly easy to design, and construction will of course be trivial.  And
CAD-driven nanofactories could follow the first workable assembler by as
little as a couple of months.

The same as the advantage of non-weapon products.  Two orders of
magnitude in strength (more in compression), six (energy) to twelve
(volume) in computing, something like nine in power conversion.  Not
to mention virtually unlimited manufacturing.  Plus very rapid
design cycle.  (Fast prototyping reduces need for simulation as
well.  And very small computers can reduce the need for complicated
mechanical engineering by trading it for complicated software
engineering.)

Chris

--
Chris Phoenix      cphoe...@best.com          http://xenophilia.org
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (co-founder) http://CRNano.org

And this raises an issue that I think you (Malcolm) wisely mentioned in this
thread previously, namely that of "who watches the watchers?" The possibilities
for abuse of the civilian's rights using invisible-to-the-eye surveillance
devices is rather scary!

We say it *could* cause an arms race--even that it's likely to.  We
don't have to identify a specific country--just a situation that's
realistic and plausible for the range of countries we have in the world.

So let's look at it this way.  If two countries like the U.S. and Canada
are extremely friendly, they have more to gain from a joint nanotech
project than from separate ones, and nothing to lose.  (A joint project
can move faster, get more patents, etc.)  Now, which combinations of
countries would you nominate for joint nanotech development?  I can tell
you some I would *not* nominate: India and China.  China and the U.S.
The U.S. and any Muslim state or collaboration.  A Muslim collaboration
and Israel (which BTW is already raising significant money for a
nanotech project.)

So let's assume that (for example) China and India are working on
molecular nanotech manufacturing in separate programs.  Do they trust
each other enough to share all their military secrets?  Of course not.
So neither one knows exactly what the other is doing.  A quick Google
search for <"arms race" India China> found this in the top 10 results:
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/2000/0609/security.main2.html

I have yet to see an argument that nanotech weapons would be at least as
stabilizing as nukes.  I have seen an argument that they would be
destabilizing, and it makes sense to me.  If (for example) the weaker
power felt threatened by the stronger, it would at least try to build a
"minimum credible" deterrent (quoting from that article).  Now, we don't
know yet whether nanotech-built weapons are better at defense or at
offense.  I suspect the latter, but it's too soon to say.  But if it
turns out that the minimum credible deterrent is also sufficient for a
credible threat, and if *both* countries fear expansionism (or
retaliation for previous events, or...) by the other, then you have all
the makings of an arms race.  

What is your definition of ally?  For example, is every nation in NATO
an ally of every other?  And are you assuming that all major countries
have stable governments?  I'm not.

I'd still like to talk about the content of Gubrud's paper.  It's not
just the destructiveness of nukes that tends toward stability.  There's
also the long-term cost of use (lower with nanotech), the indiscriminate
nature of destruction (significantly lower with nanotech), and the ease
of monitoring each other (vastly lower with nanotech).

Also, I wonder how much of the post-WWII stability resulted from the
existence of the new type of state--the global superpower--instead of
the Bomb.  The U.S. has declared war on several nations since then, but
they were too small to do us much damage other than in a social sense.
Back in 1990 Iraq was a noteworthy regional power.  And the U.S. did
fight with the other global superpower, the Soviet Union--we just did it
by proxy in several countries.  We were unwilling to undertake an open
confrontation, and this may in fact be because of nukes.  

Now let's take "global superpower" to mean a nation that can inflict
crippling damage at will on large areas of the globe.  Nanotech may give
multiple nations that ability, thus creating several global
superpowers.  Do they all play nice?  Or do they arm themselves (as
happened before when there were only two superpowers) and fight
semi-covertly at high cost to third parties (as also happened)?

Right.  And also consider that they may be a lot easier to steal than
atomic technology.  It's not easy to smuggle pounds of uranium, but a
small nanofactory would be extremely smugglable.

How many Cuban Missile Crises would arise from such a situation?  How
many of those would turn into major conflicts?  What's your estimate of
the damage caused by a major nanotech conflict, and the likely
geopolitical outcome?

An interesting point.  CRN does not intend to try to keep people bought
in.  We are still working on long-term strategy, but I can give a
tentative discussion, and I'd like feedback from anyone.  

For this purpose, I see the world as composed of many powerful
special-interest groups.  Large businesses are one, which I sometimes
lump under "Commercial".  Each major country is one, and sometimes I
lump them under "Government", or "Guardian" after Jane Jacobs.  Then
there are environmental and human rights groups, which in aggregate can
be powerful.  And scientists, technicians, and eventually hackers.
(This is not an exhaustive list.)  

Our current idea is to develop a workable administration plan, then show
in detail why each of those groups should want it according to their own
short- and long-term self interest.  If enough groups of enough
different types buy in, they will act within and across types to keep
the rest in line.  Of course some will not want to toe the line, and the
administration plan has to be prepared to deal with that.  Nuclear
non-proliferation has certainly been at least a partial success, and I
take some hope from that.

There are kinds of control other than force and law.  For example,
technological built-in controls can be made quite difficult to
circumvent.  That won't stop someone from developing it independently,
but it will make it harder to steal.  Another example: self regulation
is only somewhat useful or reliable (depending heavily on the kind of
community), but if responsible MNT (molecular nanotechnology) science is
willing to self-regulate somewhat strenuously, that could delay rogue
MNT development by at least a few years--which might be enough to build
defenses, and would at least give us a lot more opportunity to research
the problems and know what we're up against.

Then there's the separate question of whether strong world government is
unavoidable once MNT arrives.  There are several factors that could lead
from MNT to strong world government.  First, if nanotech is a major
factor in military defense/offense, the most stable situation is
probably a world government backed by nanotech.  Second, reaction to the
threats and dangers of nanotech can drive people toward wanting stronger
world government.  Third, if nanotech is useful in subjugating
populations (as it surely will be), a world government-type organization
with nanotech can make itself quite strong even against the will of the
governed.  There are probably other factors.

Chris

--
Chris Phoenix      cphoe...@best.com          http://xenophilia.org
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (co-founder) http://CRNano.org