On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Conclusion:
> These people are deliberately avoiding all mention of diamondoid and
> drextech. I'm not sure whether they're good guys or bad guys, but I
> don't trust them.
Judging from the response I got from the NSF spokesperson and his
assistant at the Foresight Conference last year (when I suggested the
time required to build nanotech aircraft carriers was 2-3 days),
they just simply "don't believe it". Most of the NSF folks do not
have a biotech background so they don't know what self-replicating,
self-assembling machines can really do (NIH funded groups on the
other hand just might "get" it).
They kind of believe it in the sense of "oh, yes, well maybe someday"
but they can't make the mental leap from "nanotech" to self-replicating
machines. This makes some sense in terms of these people are on the
edge -- they have to read the grant proposals and separate the doable
from the fantasy. Is their job to fund the "not completely improbable"
research (i.e. next 3-5 years). Anything beyond that they really don't
consider.
Their perspective would be accurate if diamondoid nanoassembly proves
very difficult or designs at the atomic level prove very difficult.
So, when going to Congress for money, its better to focus on the
"doable". Much better to fund research on biotech-derived molecular
motors or buckytubes or nano-composites or nanolithography (things that
already exist) than to go after the gold rings on the merry-go-round.
You have to realize that *most* people in government, research, etc.
are *highly* conservative. I suspect their mental mindsets do not
let them entertain paradigms that would grossly upset their world-view.
Really now, do you think the government would actually fund a technology
that would eliminate revenue sources for the government and perhaps the
government itself (if all the people "leave") if it knew that would be
the ultimate result?!?
A few people may be clued in but I have to believe most are pretty clueless.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:17 MDT