From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 14:43:15 MDT
On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 10:27:39AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > No. Treating a symptom (lack of food and lack of food production)
> > without dealing with the cause (lack of rule of law, lack of respect
> > for human rights) with replicating technology can be extremely
> > dangerous.
>
> I disagree -- food is entirely based on replicating technology.
> Its just that most of it doesn't do the conversion efficiently
> and is very poorly adapted for human purposes. I'm thinking
> along the since of solar ponds that directly produce blocks
> of cheese (much more efficient than the "natural" process).
Sure. But the problem here is that the local thugs make some people
unable to farm and would obviously attack solar ponds too. My real
worry was of course about replicator technology in general, but even a
simple intervention can easily go wrong if you do not take local
culture/politics into account. At the very simplest you might end up
disrupting the farmers but leave an infrastructure that the locals
cannot sustain without outside help
Another thing is that people are starving now. While replicators would
be wonderful, we better find ways of keeping them alive before then.
> But the vectors are fairly different a photosynthetic bacteria
> that produces cheese is probably pretty difficult to "weaponize".
> You solve that problem by making sure that only responsible
> people have access to the technologies.
One cannot guarantee that, only make it likely so that the responsible
people outnumber the irresponsible. Cheese production is in itself not
weaponizable (Mold bombs? Attack Limburgers?) but the gengineering
technology will not remain locked in forever.
> > I have always thought there is a need for a "nasty" aid organisation
> > that gives subversive, useful things directly to people, bypassing
> > whatever government they have. The microloan movement is a good first
> > approximation, but I would like to see something that would actually
> > airdrop satphones or nano seeds over hostile governments. But whatever
> > you give the people, the rulers will also have.
>
> True. You want, to the greatest degree possible, for the things
> to be difficult to adapt to evil purposes. The satphones and the
> bacteria cited above would be good examples. Perhaps sat-PDAs
> with built-in cameras so you send and receive your news unfiltered
> so state control of the media doesn't buy you much.
Yes. The technologies currently marketed to rich kids (cellphones with
cameras etc) will likely be very useful if spread in undemocratic
nations. A solar or spring-powered satphone with a camera and net access
would be a great tyrantbuster. And it will be rather cheap in a few
years.
What is needed now is to get the institutions up so such devices could
be distributed.
> If you can make the food production efficient enough, then I
> don't think surrounding countries would have any difficulty
> supporting an influx of refugees.
Unfortunately history does not support this assertion. Food availability
has not been the main factor limiting refugee acceptance in modern
times.
> So the only way "thugs"
> would stay in power is by imprisoning their population.
> Its kind of hard to stop a mass migration out of a
> country. How would the Swedish government stop the
> population from moving to Finland? I think you could
> only get away with that in places like Japan and even
> then there are lots of small craft in which to flee.
Why did Europe not let all those Serbians come, or for that matter
people in Belarus? After all, we have more than enough food. And why did
the Chinese not leave en masse for Taiwan?
While it is true that it is hard to stop an entire people from leaving -
or immigrating - in practice this kind of mass movement is extremely
rare. Usually the thuggery apparatus is efficient enough to keep
migration to a trickle, and many people are surprisingly willing to
remain at their ancestral home even if they are utterly oppressed and
deprived.
While food does solve the primary survival problem it does not solve the
thug problem, and the thug problem to a large extent sabotages the food
distribution.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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