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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on How probable is Molecular Nanotech? - Less Wrong Discussion

45 Post author: leplen 29 June 2013 07:06AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 June 2013 10:04:07PM 3 points [-]

Which one's the latest book?

Comment author: darius 29 June 2013 10:22:08PM *  5 points [-]

Radical Abundance, came out this past month.

Added: The most relevant things in the book for this post (which I've only skimmed):

  1. There's been lots of progress in molecular-scale engineering and science that isn't called nanotechnology. This progress has been pretty much along the lines Drexler sketched in his 1981 paper and in the how-can-we-get-there sections of Nanosystems, though. This matches what I saw sitting in on Caltech courses in biomolecular engineering last year. Drexler believes the biggest remaining holdup on the engineering work is how it's organized: when diverse scientists study nature their work adds up because nature is a whole, but when they work on bits and pieces of technology infrastructure in the same way, their work can't be expected to coalesce on its own into useful systems.

  2. He gives his latest refinement of the arguments at a lay level.