Submolecular nanotech [WAS: Goals]

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon May 17 1999 - 16:24:22 MDT


David Lubkin wrote:
> [jon wrote:]
> >Just give this machine any type of matter, such as water, and it
> >can rearrange the atoms to make anything else, such as an apple, or gold.
>
> Unless you're relying on the trivial traces of carbon, gold, etc. that may be present in
> tap water, you will not get apples or gold from rearranging atoms. There are far-out
> speculations about sub-nano technology that works on quarks, but it's still bad
> science fiction for now.

I don't know about that. Certainly I challenge the phrase "bad" science
fiction, because it's been done well a couple of times... but that's not
the point.

I know of at least two instances of sub-molecular technology. (1)
artificial atoms; (2) sculpted quantum states. (Unfortunately my links
appear to be broken - sorry, guys! (1) is changing the shape of a
single atom's wavefunction, and (2) is doing some kind of custom stuff
on probability distributions, I think. Anyone have a valid link?)

Not hydrogen-into-gold (does jon have any idea how much energy that
would release? it'd be orders of magnitude more than an equivalent
thermonuclear hydrogen-to-helium), not even close, but it strikes me as
a good reason to believe that nucleus-manipulating "atomic
picotechnology" would be an active frontier once atom-manipulating
"molecular nanotechnology" matured.

What the heck does he - does *any* race with that kind of technology -
want with gold, anyway?

-- 
        sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
         http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
          http://pobox.com/~sentience/singul_arity.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.


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