Open Thread, November 1 - 7, 2013

witzvo

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Can someone explain nanotech enthusiasm to me? Like, I get that nanotech is one of the sci-fi technologies that's actually physics-compliant, and furthermore it should be possible because biology.

But I get the impression that among transhumanist types slightly older than me, there's a widespread expectation that it will lead to absolutely magical things on the scale of decades, and I don't get where that comes from, even after picking up Engines of Creation.

I'm thinking of, e.g. Eliezer talking about how he wanted to design nanotechnology before he got into AI, or how he casually mentions nanotechnology as being one of the big ways a super-intelligent AI could take over the world. I always feel totally mystified when I come across something like that, like it's a major gulf between me and slightly older nerds.

Perhaps the reason is that the ideas we're used to nowadays - like reconfiguring matter to make dirt and water into food or repair microcellular damage (for example, to selectively destroy cancer tumors) - were absolutely radical and totally unheard of when they were first proposed. As far as I know, Feynman was the first to seriously suggest that such a thing was possible, and most reactions to him at the time were basically either confusion, disbelief, or dismissal. Consider the average technologist in 1950. Hand-wound computer memories were state of the... (read more)

3Cyan12y

An analogy might help give a sense of scale here. This isn't an argument, but it hints at the scope of the unknown unknowns in nanotech space. Here on our macroscopic scale, some wonders wrought by evolution include the smasher mantis shrimp's kinetic attack, a bee hive's eusocial organization, the peregrine falcon's flight speed, and the eagle's visual system. But evolution is literally mindless -- by actually knowing how to do things, human engineering created electromagnetic railguns, networks of international trade, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the Hubble telescope. Now apply that kind of thinking to "because biology" on the nano scale...

3mwengler12y

Consider a machine as smart as a cellphone but the size of a blood cell. In a sense, a protein or a drug is a smart molecule. It keys in to a very limited number of things and ignores the rest. There are many different smart proteins or smart molecules to be used as drugs with many different purposes. Even so, chemotherapy, for example, is primarily about ALMOST killing everything while differentially being a bit more toxic to the cancer cells. Now increase the intelligence of ths smartest molecule by 10 fold, 100 fold, 1000 fold. Perhaps you give it the ability for a simple 2-way communication to the outside world. If its intelligence is increased, there should be MANY ways to allow it to distinguish a tumor, a micro-tumor, a cancerous cell, from all the good things in your body. All the sudden, the differential toxicity of "chemo" therapy (now nanotherapy) will be 10, 100X as high as it is for smart molecules. Now consider these smart little machines doing surgery. Inoperable tumor? Not inoperable for a host of machines the size of bloodcells that will literally be able to operate on the most remote of tumors from inside of them. Tendency towards obesity? How hard will it be to have a system of nanites that screw with your metabolism in such a way to eliminate all the stored fat in cells until told that, or until they measure that, we are down to a good level. These are just a few stories from medicine. I expect anybody who does not wish to get sick and die would be enthusiastic about these, but YMMV.