Re: Re Active Shield concepts

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Wed, 01 Sep 1999 14:00:38 -0500

hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> There is a good fictional interpretation of this in Neal Stephenson's
> Diamond Age. There is a constant warfare between good and bad nanotech
> going on all around. The air is full of "soot", which is composed of
> the destroyed bodies of the broken nanotech. Apparently the good guys
> always win as nobody melts down in the book, as I recall.

If it ever gets up to that point with military goo, we'll have lost so totally that - hell, I don't even have words for it. Try this: We'll be really, really, dead.

Nanotech warfare in the air you're breathing is the equivalent of shooting it out with invading enemy troops in the basement of your house. It doesn't matter if you win the battle because you've obviously lost the war. 

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
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