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saturn comments on The basic argument for the feasibility of transhumanism - Less Wrong Discussion
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EMP destroys equipment by inducing high voltage and current in unshielded conductors, which act as antennas. The amount of energy picked up is related to the length of the conductor, with shorter conductors picking up less energy. Anything small enough to be described as "nanotechnology" would probably be unaffected, as long as it's not connected to unshielded external wiring. (An unmodified human touching a conductor would also experience an electric shock during an EMP.)
Thank you! That makes me very happy.
Why do you particularly care about EMP?
I was worried that human augmentation might come at the cost of susceptibility to EMP's: tricksters finding it humourous to walk around with controlled radii EMP devices and troubling augmented humans.
As opposed to beating random people with a stick, for instance? Try not to worry about unlikely things
Point taken. But the repercussions of EMP disruption of augmented humans aren't akin to playful beatings with sticks: an augmented eye short-circuiting, an augmented arm rendered considerably heavy dead weight, an artificial heart stopped.
Unless of course you meant stick-beatings of a fatal or maiming nature, in which case I would not call them tricksters but thugs. Sorry if my diction misled.
'playful' beatings with sticks?
Indeed. Messing with people's implanted devices, whether it is a standard pacemaker or sci-fiesque medical nanotech, would be a severe act of assault, not a prank.
What puzzles me is why you care about this particular type of assault, since other types seem much more likely.
That was the only way I could reconcile 'beating random people with a stick' and 'tricksters'; 16th century vagabonds in London, for instance, may have found it an amusing pastime.
EMP assaults come (or came, if it indeed would not prove problematic) across as the largest obstacle in ensuring augmentation's safety from malicious attacks, as it would be difficult to identify a guilty party in a crowd, and attacks might, if the technology develops to allow for it, be relatively easy to carry out.
What types of assaults do you consider having a higher probability?