Re: Give a man a fish... Give a man a nuke...

Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Thu, 4 Sep 1997 18:38:05 +0000


On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

> Besides, it's not going to be one psychotic, it's going to be entire psychotic
> governments, or even the entire Chinese government which, though sane, might
> realize it couldn't dominate a population with access to nanotechnology. Give
> the Chinese government nanotechnology and they will launch an all-out effort
> to create a preemptive strike.

But that makes its job much, much harder. A fanatic can build a goo which
reproduces without limit and eats anything, while a government must create
a goo which destroys everything except them. This means that the
government must already have created an effective antidote to the goo and
all we have to do is reproduce it; many, many people will die, but we can
clearly stop the goo. This is why the random psychotic scenario is the one
to be most feared, and not the nanowar.

> Giving nanotech to one person is taking a big chance.
> Giving nanotech to all governments is simple suicide.

So the obvious solution is to eliminate the governments...

Mark

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