From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 15:59:37 MST
The Los Angeles Times published on op-ed today on nanotech:
"It's official. The nanotechnology debate is underway. Michael Crichton's
alarmist book, 'Prey,' with its menacing swarms of molecule-sized robots,
hits bookstores this week, with a Hollywood spectacular soon to follow."
This link may require a (free) subscription:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-moore26nov26,0,6877032.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
However for the most part the article is not very informative and
often quite baffling. It talks about the Human Genome Project and the
many ethical issues raised by that effort. Here is the solution: "The
founders of the Human Genome Project acknowledged that they did not have
answers to these significant societal questions. So they set aside 5%
of the project's annual budget for a program to define and deal with the
ethical, legal and social implications raised by this brave new world
of genetics -- creating one of the largest such efforts ever."
Did that really solve anything??? Other than provide some good public
relations for the HGP? I haven't heard of any of the ethical issues
raised by genetic sequencing having been solved by this panel of
ethicists. Issues of commercial use, ownership, patenting; questions
of access to genetic information by law enforcement, medical personnel,
insurance companies; all of these questions are as much up in the air
as ever. To the extent that they have de facto solutions (like the
community-wide genetic screening used a few times in England, or the
patent office policies allowing genetic patents) these have been created
by the political process and not this board of ethical experts.
One thing I've noticed in articles by public policy analysts and
ethicists: they all advice giving more money to public policy analysts
and ethicists! Notice in the above what really impressed the author
wasn't so much that the HGP set up an ethics council, but that they gave
it 5% of their budget. That was a lot of money. Imagine if 5% of the
money spent on nanotech went to public policy scholars like the author.
That might not do much for society but it would certainly benefit her.
Her overriding point is one which, unfortunately, I can't agree with:
"Whether nanotechnology research results in the ultimate doomsday machine
or in mankind's salvation is up to us."
That would be nice, because I think most people would vote for "mankind's
salvation" without much hesitation. Unfortunately I don't think it's that
easy. I think to some extent the answer to this question depends on the
laws of nature. If nanotech turns out to work a certain way, it will be
practically impossible to prevent doomsday machines from being generated.
See Robert Freitas 'Ecophagy' paper for how bad things could get if you
could build a self-replicating assembler out of atmospheric gasses, for
example.
So far I don't see us as being on a really safe path to nanotech.
My guess at this point is that it will be militarized pretty soon by the
major powers of the world, if that hasn't happened already. Maybe we
can get to a Mutually Assured Destruction state where each side is
uncertain about what awful counter-weapon the other side has, and a
military stalement can hold while spin-offs leak out to the public.
But I don't know how you wind it down. And any such equilibrium will
be unstable as more and more countries join the doomsday weapons club.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:25 MST