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JoshuaZ comments on Why space stopped captivating minds ? - Less Wrong
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This does not follow. This depends on a lot of conditions, such as how fast the robots replicate, what resources they need, and how broad the circumstances they can replicate are. If for example someone could make a self-replicating robot but the robot required boron in some critical part, its replication would be severely hampered.
Moreover, even having a self-replicating robot isn't by itself necessarily useful if you can't control it in detail or get them to then do exactly what you want. And a self-replicating robot with no control could be quite bad.
But these are essentially minor nitpicks, and I agree with your point if one adds the appropriate minor disclaimers.
I was thinking more in terms of the original claim. Self replicating robots able to replicate quickly enough and flexible/controllable enough to make a permanent colony on the moon for us.
I mean, I assume that was the original point instead of sending very large, slow Von Neumann machines to tile the moon with copies of themselves. That would be cool but probably not worth the expense, and it'd carry such an awful risk of backfiring on us.