From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Wed Jul 14 09:47:27 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA08824; Wed, 14 Jul 93 09:47:25 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.ed (ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu) by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA22281; Wed, 14 Jul 93 09:47:17 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu id AA12244; Wed, 14 Jul 93 12:26:09 EDT Message-Id: <9307141626.AA12244@ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu> To: ExI-Daily@gnu.ai.mit.edu Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 12:24:14 EDT X-Original-Message-Id: <9307141624.AA12237@ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu> X-Original-To: Extropians@ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu From: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Extropians Digest V93 #0390 X-Extropian-Date: Remailed on July 14, 373 P.N.O. [16:25:59 UTC] Reply-To: Extropians@ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: OR Extropians Digest Wed, 14 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 0390 Today's Topics: Analysis of static friction in Nanosystems bearings [1 msgs] Bearings. [1 msgs] Big Posts and Health Care Conspiracy [1 msgs] Black Thursday ban activity [2 msgs] Extropian Symbols [1 msgs] Free Will Cite [1 msgs] GATHER: MacWorld in Boston [2 msgs] Gone for the summer, or what's left of it [1 msgs] META: Killfiles and peace of mind [1 msgs] META: This whole thread is a waste of time... [1 msgs] Meta: Judgement Against Eric S. Raymond [1 msgs] Nightly Market Report [1 msgs] PHIL: Free will? [1 msgs] hand waving on nanobearings [1 msgs] subscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au [1 msgs] suggested netiquette [1 msgs] Administrivia: This is the digested version of the Extropian mailing list. Please remember that this list is private; messages must not be forwarded without their author's permission. To send mail to the list/digest, address your posts to: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu To send add/drop requests for this digest, address your post to: exi-daily-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu To make a formal complaint or an administrative request, address your posts to: extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu If your mail reader is operating correctly, replies to this message will be automatically addressed to the entire list [extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu] - please avoid long quotes! The Extropian mailing list is brought to you by the Extropy Institute, through hardware, generously provided, by the Free Software Foundation - neither is responsible for its content. Forward, Onward, Outward - Harry Shapiro (habs) List Administrator. Approximate Size: 50746 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 14:10:11 PDT From: desilets@sj.ate.slb.com (Mark Desilets) Subject: Black Thursday ban activity > >Derek Zahn writes: > >> 7 Eric Raymond > >> 3 FutureNerd Steve Witham > >> 2 Tim May > >> 2 Harry Shapiro > >> 2 Perry Metzger > >> 2 Garrett Goebel > > Garret Goebel has admitted to this and a punishment is forth coming. > > Oooh oooh! Me too. Punish me! I sent an errant post to the list that was supposed to be private to Tim May *AND THEN* had the audacity to apolgize. Certainly if anyone should feel the searing heat of judgement it should be *me*. Trembling with anticip.... ation.. Mark P.S. Feh! The list is in a sour mood. Although I must say that I appreciate the fact that the comments of James Donaldson have lured Mssrs Drexler and Merkle onto the list if even for a short while. The AIT seminar is good too. I guess I'll stay. (collective sigh of relief) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 19:21:30 EDT From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) Subject: GATHER: MacWorld in Boston Meet the week of MacWorld Boston, yes, yes. -fnerd greet me ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 19:45:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: GATHER: MacWorld in Boston This dicussion is being moved to exi-bos@gnu.ai.mit.edu request to join at exi-bos-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu if you wish to join a conscious being, FutureNerd Steve Witham wrote: > > Meet the week of MacWorld Boston, yes, yes. > -fnerd > greet me I am 100% going to MacWorld. I am looking for things to do in bostn. I am from that area so I don't need that sorta of info. I am looking for indivuals or groups who want to get together. I will have some sort of gathering on thursday night at my hotel room. Sasha has offered his home. I think I will decline that as I am interested in doing "eating out" and small group or indivual stuff (The show is rather tiring.) /hawk -- Harry S. Hawk habs@panix.com Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 20:12:55 EDT From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) Subject: Black Thursday ban activity Tim May writes: > > The "other" offenders posted at most a second message (don't know > about timing of fnerd's, though). I came back from a Sat-Tue weekend, sorted by subject, and started reading and responding. I saw Harry's message and immediately sent an apology to him privately and stopped posting. So the delay was in the way I processed my own backlog. I would cheerfully accept a reasonable (:-) penalty in the interest of peace if Harry were to suggest it. Meanwhile, I'll remember to give Harry's Meta messages priority. -fnerd do what I say, not what I do ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 19:30:13 CST From: "" Subject: suggested netiquette 1. Respect the other person's intelligence. You got that, or do I have to repeat it? 2. Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Bertrand Russell have pointed out that the appeal to authority is illegitimate. Three such eminent men obviously knew what they were talking about. 3. Don't insult people, you twerp! 4. Don't use dogmatic appeals to religion. It's bad karma, and the Archangel Gabriel is taking down every word you say. Dan Goodman dsg@staff.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 19:32:51 CST From: "" Subject: Extropian Symbols >For those who insist upon hostility to attempts to explore this part of our >common human heritage in the name of science, answer me this question: what >was the religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who originated science? > >Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! > One plausible answer is "Worship of the State." Dan Goodman dsg@staff.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 18:25:41 -0700 From: drexler@netcom.com (K. Eric Drexler) Subject: hand waving on nanobearings The following is a fine argument for cross-posting novel nanotechnology assertions to sci.nanotech, and letting the competent crew over there provide feedback before taking the assertions too seriously. James Donald writes: >You then act as if less than kT meant "very small, >effectively zero" Where is this assumption most clearly illustrated in my work? I can't recall making it. >in fact there are substantial energy barriers that need to >be overcome by substantial brownian motion. You assert what you have been asked to demonstrate. >If one links several nanocomponents to form a larger >nanocomponent, then if the links are flexible the larger >nanocomponent is going to be nondeterministic, and if the >links are nearly rigid, then the combined energy barriers >for the combined system are likely to be substantially >larger than kT with the result that the larger >nanocomponent freezes up. Your use of "likely to be" in this context suggests that engineering systems are given at random, when in fact they result from more-or-less intelligent design. The analysis in Nanosystems (Section 10.3.6, "Coupled sites", and Section 10.8, "Barriers in extended systems") indicates that in well-designed systems, stiff coupling can be used to *reduce* barriers. You assume that the result will "likely" be the opposite. >For nanocomponents larger than a nanometer, keeping the >energy barriers small means carefully combining the >components in such a way that the energy barriers balance, >rather than adding. This requires a very high degree of >symmetry, but composite nanocomponents have a lower, not >higher symmetry. Where did you get the idea that a high degree of symmetry is necessary? See Section 10.3, "Sliding of irregular objects over regular surfaces", and 10.8.1, "Sliding of irregular objects over irregular surfaces". Asymmetry can be designed; it needn't be random. >If you have a bearing that is >highly symmetric, and it is strained in some direction, >then it loses symmetry, so that effects that are intended >to cancel are likely to add. "Are likely" -- when the bearings are designed randomly? Or are you saying that this is "likely" (in your informed judgment) to be an unavoidable problem? Modeling exercises indicate that with asymmetric bearings having fewer than 50 atoms, barriers occurring under substantial (nanonewton) loads can be less than 1/100,000 of kT at room temperature (Section 10.4.4, "Properties of loaded bearings"). >...it is invalid to look at the individual >nanocomponents and say that for each separate >nanocomponent the energy barriers are less than kT, >therefore static friction is zero, therefore no problem. Quite so, but who said this? On the other hand, 1000 x 1/100,000 kT, although nonzero, is rather small. >True. I should not have made such a sweeping claim. What >I should have said is that nanomachines cannot both have >dry bearings and be rigidly deterministic, hence cannot be >modeled on macro machines, but must instead operate >thermodynamically, like protoplasm. A sweeping claim. >The approximation that you use, that all models for large >molecular structures use, that van der Waals forces are two >particle independently additive, tends to substantially >underestimate the stickiness of van der Waals forces. A model, please? (Note that van der Waals forces don't contribute much to the energy barriers in a nanomechanical sleeve bearing in the first place.) >Example: Attempts to model globular proteins of known >structure.... Diamondoid nanomachines are less sensitive to small errors in potential energy functions (Section 4.4, "PES [Potential Energy Surfaces] revisited", and in particular 4.4.2b, "Predicting the geometries of flexible structures is hard"). >Such examples show that the biases in assuming that van >der Waals forces are pairwise additive are systematically >in the direction of underestimating the obstacles to >sliding about. Indeed they cannot be other than that >because all reasonable approximations to van der Waals >forces represent them as purely radial. The forces between nonbonded atoms are generally modeled as purely radial. The forces between molecules they sum many interatomic forces, and hence are already far from radial. Again, can you present a model that shows a major difference in bearing barriers from nonpairwise interactions? >It seems to me that in order to argue that scaling >arguments are irrelevant you need to show that friction in >the macro systems being scaled is the result of >imperfections. You are proposing to argue about bearings by scaling from systems that lack the features of good bearings. This is silly. Random imperfections certainly ruin the bearings we've modeled. >A good analog of a nanoscale proposed bearing is a macro >bearing lubricated by hot HOPG in a vacuum. Why is this a good analog? I see negligible similarity. >The point is that asymmetries cannot easily be shielded >out, that everything tends to couple to everything else, >that high spatial frequency forces couple to low spatial >frequency forces (harder to shield) through nonlinear >effects, that the micro world is messier than the >macroworld, that perfect bearings are therefore harder, not >easier, to build, the ultimate imperfection being the >finite size and spacing of individual atoms, that in >consequence attempting to turn such a bearing will produce >a lot of bumping and shaking. Gee, I thought our models took some account of atoms, and of their highly nonlinear interactions. "A lot of bumping and shaking" -- is this intended to sound quantitative? What acoustic power level do you think is unavoidable for what kind of system operating at what frequency? Nanosystems addresses several such energy dissipation mechanisms (Section 10.4.6), and prevents convenient models for you to use or criticize. >None of this *proves* that dry bearings will not work. The >vague complicated and messy effects that I describe cannot >be "proven" mathematically to be significant.... Indeed, none of this amounts to a coherent argument about what has actually been proposed. >The designs that cells use look like they >are designed for a world in which the scaling law arguments >do indeed hold. It is tempting to believe that evolution has produced the optimal solutions for its problems. Alas for our pride in our protoplasm and opposable thumbs, anything like optimality seems rather unlikely. Neurons use salt water as an electrical conductor rather than metal, and work on a millisecond rather than the nanosecond time scale of electronic systems. Could it be that evolutionary constraints play a crucial role in the organization of biological systems? >> To be a bit more quantitative, J. Israelachvilli >> (Intermolecular and Surface Forces, Academic Press, 1992, p.106) >> states that the effect of nonpairwise additivity... >> is usually small, less than 20%, > >If the binding energy varies 20% as the bearing rotates, >then that bearing will not rotate. And if bearings were glued in place, they wouldn't turn. Do you have a slightly-plausible model that would predict such drastic variations from nonpairwise additivity in a well-designed bearing? Merely increasing the interaction forces by a factor of 100 would present no basic problem; the principles involved are robust. >> Very well. Your "description" is purely verbal, although >> it refers to mathematical concepts. Could you please >> present a concrete mathematical model of a bearing of >> the sort that Nanosystems predicts to work, but refuting >> that conclusion by showing rotational energy barriers large >> compared to kT? >> I will accept any plausible simplification that makes the >> calculation easier. Coplanar ring geometries (Nanosystems, >> pp.285-289) with less than 20 atoms should suffice to show >> your proposed effect and will result in small computational >> costs for almost any three-body potential. > > >20 Atoms? > >Interesting choice of scale. You and I both know that for >structures that small, scaling laws predict that static >friction will be much less than the forces arising from >brownian motion, or to use language more appropriate to >that scale, the energy barriers to rotation will be much >smaller than kT for reasonable bearings. Does that mean that I get points for showing a bearing model with 20 atoms that has high barriers? In geometries of the sort I suggested, two rings, each with 10 atoms, have a barrier enormously greater than kT. To get beyond handwaving, try modeling a bearing with 19 atoms in the inner ring, 27 atoms in the outer ring, and a coaxial, coplanar geometry corresponding to the case in Fig. 10.14, p. 289. (Remember, this is a test of sensitivity to the pairwise interaction approximation, not to the effects of environmentally-imposed asymmetries, hence simplicity is appropriate.) If you can come up with a non-ridiculous (by the criteria already outlined) potential energy function that produces energy barriers in this system that are larger than **one billionth** of kT at room temperature, I will publicly apologize for my low opinion of the quality of your argument on this subject. The computational load is trivial, and the criterion for passing is equivalent (by your scaling arguments, as best I understand them) to using more than a billion atoms. All you have to do is code up a suitable function of the relative positions of pairs and triplets of atoms, and sum the energies over the two rings, leaving rotation as a free parameter in the model. Finding two angles at which the energies differ by more than the stipulated tiny amount, and you win. (If you pretend to win by choosing a blatently bogus energy function, e.g., one that has no resemblance to anything you can find in the literature, I get to call you unpleasant names.) >A long >shaft so thin will be twisted up like telephone cord by >thermal disturbances, and you have motion, but not >determinism. Now you propose that we use shafts that are too thin? >Also a long axle that thin will be dragged against the >walls of its housing by van der Waals forces, so you will >have both random motion, because a long shaft that thin >will twist, and complicated sticking, because it will have >an off center, hence asymmetric, bonding with the shaft >housing This design is getting worse and worse. >One does not need accurate molecular modeling to predict >that such a contact will lock up part of the shaft solidly. Right! One would reject such a design almost without thinking about it. >One solution is to make the entire axle shaft one large >bearing. Thus instead of dealing with a twenty atom >bearing, ten atoms in circumference and two atoms thick, >we are dealing with a thousand atom bearing, ten atoms in >circumference and one hundred atoms long. > >I think you will agree that such a large bearing is likely >to lock up solidly. No, I would disagree because I understand nanomachine design well enough to know how to design structures of this sort that will turn smoothly. >The total van der Waals potential is >so very large that any small angular variation, inevitable >when the circumference is only ten atoms and the rest of >the nearby machine is not cylindrically symmetric, is going >to be vastly larger than kT. This is superficially plausible, but false. >Now if the bearing housing was totally isolated from >everything, we could stagger it uniformly and ensure that >everything canceled out perfectly. This is not necessary. >One solution is to make the entire axle shaft one large >bearing.... >...giving it a >larger circumference to match its long length, make it one >hundred atoms in circumference instead of ten.... >An axle that >large will suffer local flexing of an Angstrom or so under >van der Waals forces, destroying the cancellation, and so >it will stick Glad Wrap fashion, in the manner that Hal >Finney describes. Ah! You seem to assume that the interaction between the adjacent surfaces of shaft and sleeve is attractive and unstable. This would explain your concern with small corrections to weak, long-range, attractive van der Waals forces. The actual proposed designs have shaft and sleeve atoms pressed against one another with a significant fraction of a bond-breaking force, with interactions dominated by antibonding interactions (overlap forces, not van der Waals forces). These strong, short-range interatomic repulsions should, naively, be much more scary than the effects of which you've been warning. >When you rigidly lock a large number of such components >together you get a small macroscopic object, highly >asymmetric. Some of the imperfections will randomly cancel >out. Some will systematically cancel out. Some will >randomly add due asymmetry, Randomly adding? Sloppy design. >and some will systematically >add, due to large scale orderly asymmetry. Systematically adding? Dreadful design! Fire the engineer! >As a result the small macroscopic object will suffer the >ills that afflict macroscopic objects of that size - in >particular it will suffer from ills that we macroscopically >average out and call static friction. Yes, if we assume randomness in the design at the atomic level, we get structures that very much resemble conventional macroscopic objects. This is, however, a bad use of molecular manufacturing. In summary: Donald asserts that small modifications to the attractive component of the nonbonded interatomic potential will render symmetrical bearings of the sort described in Nanosystems unworkable. He has presented nothing that passes for an argument for that proposition. I have proposed a model system on which he can test any reasonable proposed potential energy function with trivial computational and programming cost, and a one-billionth kT criterion for a large enough energy barrier for me to publicly revise my estimate of his argument. I've coded such models, and we should get an answer after his first free evening, if he or a friend has rudimentary skill with anything as good as Basic on an Apple II. Donald asserts that asymmetries will produce large energy barriers in (necessarily asymmetrical) nanomachines, and appears to believe that the case for nanomachines rests on unrealistic symmetry assumptions. However, he shows no awareness of the analysis of irregular structures in sliding contact with regular structures (Nanosystems, Section 10.3), or of the analysis of the effects of load on otherwise symmetrical bearings (Section 10.4.4), or of the use of deliberate asymmetries to compensate for load (Section 10.4.8), or of the use of deliberate structural irregularities to compensate for edge effects in sliding rods and screws (Section 10.5.1, 10.5.2), nor of the use of tuning components to smooth the potential energy function of irregular objects sliding over irregular surfaces (Section 10.8.1). By assuming that *random* addition of energy barriers will be fatal to nanomachines of the sort proposed, he is in effect assuming that engineers will design systems *randomly*, giving no heed to key engineering constraints. This is not a useful basis for analyzing future technologies. I hope that readers of this list will excuse me if I don't bother responding to further material of this sort. I'm happy to respond to critics who have done their homework, and am eager to learn of corrections to Nanosystems, which surely has more errors than those corrected in the second printing. Lengthy, hand-waving assertions that nanomachines won't work because of unspecified forces, or because random designs won't work, are another matter. If I can be excused for pointing at Nanosystems one more time: "_Criticism of criticism_" "Research in molecular nanotechnology requires a design perspective because it aims to describe workable systems. It is easy to describe unworkable systems, and criticisms of a critic's own bad design have on occasion been presented as if they were criticisms of molecular nanotechnology as a whole." (From the preface, p.xviii) ----------------------- Eric Drexler ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 21:19:18 CDT From: derek@cs.wisc.edu (Derek Zahn) Subject: Gone for the summer, or what's left of it Tim May: > I'll be taking the rest of the summer off, or what's left of it So will I, now that Tim's note jogs me to action. Three reasons: 1) Practical. I'm swamped for the rest of July and will be roaming for much of August and need to set up a new office and get a product out the door (after deciding what product I should develop) and ... 2) Emotional. As a previous note indicated, I'm kind of upset at the bad feelings and completely unnecessary and senseless bickering and stubborn insensitivity. So much so that I'm starting to be tempted to participate myself. I need some fresh air to clear all of that out ... as part of a general intense effort at attitude adjustment that I'm trying to focus on presently. 3) Creative. I now have a list of 200-ish line essays I want to write for this community -- one in response to Hal's latest points from the AIT VirtSem, one on democratic corporations, one on current options for mobile computing, ... plus an article for Extropy #12. I tend to get sucked into discussions and a little quiet will let me actually make some progress on those projects. I've tried to make my posts interesting and entertaining. To the extent I've failed in that effort, I hope to make up for it in the future. See ya! Private email always welcome! derek ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 23:59:25 EDT From: The Hawthorne Exchange Subject: Nightly Market Report The Hawthorne Exchange - HEx Nightly Market Report For more information on The Hawthorne Exchange, send email with the subject 'INFO' to hex@sea.east.sun.com. For more information on HEx, send email to HEx@sea.east.sun.com with the Subject info. --------------------------------------------------------------- News Summary as of: Tue Jul 13 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Newly Registered Reputations: JPP Jay Prime Positive New Share Issues: Symbol Shares Issued JPP 10000 TIM 10000 Share Splits: (None) --------------------------------------------------------------- Market Summary as of: Tue Jul 13 23:59:01 EDT 1993 Total Shares Symbol Bid Ask Last Issued Outstanding Market Value ACS 28 29 29 10000 106 3074 ALCOR 15 17 19 10000 410 7790 ANTO - - - - - - BLAIR 15 30 50 10000 25 1250 CHAITN - - - - - - DEREK 1 4 4 100000 620 2480 DRXLR 10 15 25 10000 829 20725 E 15 25 100 10000 36 3600 ESR - - - - - - EXI - - - - - - FCP 10 11 11 10000 700 7700 GHG 15 - 50 10000 895 44750 GOBEL - 15 22 10000 757 16654 H - - - - - - HEX 100 105 100 10000 3328 332800 HFINN 1 10 5 10000 405 2025 IMMFR 15 - - 10000 0 - JFREE 1 50 50 10000 50 2500 JPP 8 9 1 10000 10 10 LEF 80 100 100 10000 1 100 LEFTY 25 30 - 10000 0 - LIST - - - - - - LURKR - 50 - 10000 0 - MARCR - - - - - - MLINK - - 2 1000000 2101 4202 MWM 1 20 20 10000 10 200 N 50 125 50 10000 33 1650 P 15 24 20 1000000 420 8400 PETER - - 2 10000000 1100 2200 PRICE 1 2 10 10000000 1410 14100 R 1 20 20 10000 151 3020 ROMA - - - - - - SGP - - - - - - TIM 1 - - 10000 0 - TRADE 15 20 - 1000000 0 - TRANS 20 25 - 10000 0 - WILKEN 9 10 10 10000 101 1010 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 22:38:11 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: META: This whole thread is a waste of time... ...but I might as well add to it, since I have time to kill. Quoth Lefty, verily I say unto thee: -=> [quoting Perry Metzger] -=>>I can list a reasonable reason. Most people violated only to the -=>>extent of one message -- that is, two messages. Eric posted nearly a -=>Give that you are one of the other offenders, Perry, you can surely imagine -=>that I find this explanation just a tad self-serving. Well, of course it's self-serving. He's an Extropian (TM). And an Objectivist (R). >;) -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 16:26:00 EST From: hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au (Dwayne ) Subject: subscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au subscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 23:38:43 PDT From: hfinney@shell.portal.com Subject: META: Killfiles and peace of mind I have to be honest: I added "pagan" to my "subject" killfile (using a homebrew version of the MH "slocal" mail sorting program) several weeks ago, and as a result I haven't really been aware of all the arguments which have apparently been going on. Occasionally a comment here or a slur there has given some hints that a certain amount of hard feelings were developing. But for the most part this has all gone right over my head, as I read a list devoted to discussions of nanotech and algorithmic information theory. Hopefully the new list software will make it easier for everyone to customize the list to a similar extent. I advise people to use these features. It's good for the blood pressure. Hal Finney hfinney@shell.portal.com HFINN on Hex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 23:38:45 PDT From: hfinney@shell.portal.com Subject: PHIL: Free will? The Eternal Optimist writes: > Does anyone have a good cite for the free will debate? I've long tried to > ignore it, since it has always sounded to me like both sides talk nonsense. > I only see two sharp, well-defined, extreme positions, and both are > straw-men. In between lies a big gray 'yes and no' land. Several years ago I was impressed by Daniel Dennett's book "Elbow Room". It is a fairly up-to-date treatment of the topic. Dennett basically argues that in a certain sense free will is compatible with determinism. My feeling, based on my reading of Dennett, is that "free will" refers to that process by which we make decisions. We weigh the facts, balance conflicting objectives and goals, consider our feelings, and finally come up with a course of action. We make such decisions all of the time. If the universe were deterministic, it might be true that a brain put into the same starting state would every time come up with the same decision. That does not imply, in my view, that there is no free will. Free will is compatible with such determinism in the sense that the feelings that we have as we come to a decision are real, just as real as other feelings or emotions that we may have. It's a matter of the level at which we look at our brain's activities. At the chemical level, it's most useful to discuss concentrations, molecule shapes, gradients, etc. At the neural level, we focus on firing rates and synapse connectivity. In the future we will work with higher levels, groups of neurons which collectively carry out functional processing. And at the highest level we speak of desires, plans, and will. EO mentions responsibility and self-transformation. We are all responsible for what we do in the sense that we live with the consequences of our actions. No philosophical argument can change that. One person says, "I have no free will, so all action is futile," and gives up, ending up in the gutter. Even then he says that this result was inevitable, hence he is not responsible for it. Yet he is the one who suffers from the cold and hunger. Another person tries to improve his life, and ends up living well. He enjoys the result of his decisions. Responsibility exists whether determinism is true or not. Similarly, we can seek self-transformation in both deterministic and non-deterministic universes. Our will, our decisions, are what lead to what we will become. I view the question of whether there is free will to be a semantic question as much as a philosophical one. It's hard to come up with a definition of the term that is really useful. Hal Finney hfinney@shell.portal.com HFINN on Hex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 23:38:44 PDT From: hfinney@shell.portal.com Subject: Analysis of static friction in Nanosystems bearings On the Extropians list, there was discussion of whether static friction could or would be a problem in the bearing designs in Nanosystems. James Donald on that list argued that by assuming that van der Waals forces between objects could be calculated by summing over pairs of interactions, the book was overlooking higher-order effects which would increase static friction to the point where bearings would not rotate. Eric Drexler disagreed with Donald's argument, and suggested that he undertake a specific analysis of a bearing with 19 atoms in the inner ring and 27 atoms in the outer ring, with a coaxial, coplanar geometry, as illustrated in Nanosystems figure 10.14. I made an attempt to analyze this kind of ring system using some of the formulas and models from Nanosystems. I was interested in whether compliance on the part of the inner ring would increase the barrier heights significantly above those calculated and graphed in Nanosystems, which I believe assume that the inner ring is perfectly rigid. Assume you have an inner ring of 19 atoms, 27 in the outer. Assume the distance between the rings is .2 nm, a common value in section 10.4 of Nanosystems. I couldn't find a clear statement of the ring diameter, but I took it to be about 2 nm. I don't think my results are too sensitive to this value. (The 34/46 bearing by Ralph Merkle in figure 10.17 has a "somewhat ill defined" radius of about 3.5 nm.) Drexler's Vvdw formula 3.8 with Hydrogen interfaces (as is assumed in most of 10.4) has an H-H energy minimum at about 0.3 nm. Since the bearing presses the H's as closely as 0.2 nm we can see that the forces between the inner and outer rings will be mostly repulsive. I calculated the Vvdw at closest approach for a pair of H's (0.2 nm) from eqn 3.8 to be 14.4 maJ or 1.4e-20 J. As an inner H moves around the ring it will seek an energy minimum halfway between two outer H's at about .3 nm from each This produces Vvdw of -.76 maJ. The difference between these two is 14.4 - (-.76) or 15.2 maJ, 1.5e-20 J. If the inner ring is rigid, then at any given time some of the atoms will be close to outer H's and some will be in the more energetically favorable positions between H's. These factors will tend to cancel out as the ring rotates through different positions, as Drexler's analysis shows in figure 10.14, with barrier heights of less than 1e-32 J. (The actual value is off the bottom of Drexler's chart, far below the level of roundoff error, and looks like it could easily be many orders of magnitude less than this.) However, if the inner ring is not perfectly rigid, its atoms may shift to line up with the spaces between the atoms in the outer rings, due to the considerable energy savings of 15 maJ to do so. If this happens, then as the ring rotates atoms will "pop" (Drexler's term) from one inter-atomic space to the next. As I understand it from his posting on the Extropians list, Ralph Merkle has shown that even when such local energy minimization is taken into effect, the potential energy as a function of rotational position is periodic with period GCD(m,n)/mn. In this case it is 1/19*27 or 1/513 of a revolution, just over 1/2 a degree. What could happen in this situation, then, is that at each rotation of 1/2 degree, one of the inner atoms will "pop" over to the next inter- atomic gap. Then at the next rotation of 1/2 degree, another inner atom will pop over. These pop-overs will occur in a regular pattern which depends on the number of atoms in the inner and outer rings. In the present example, where the number of atoms in the two rings are relatively prime, only one pop-over will occur per revolution step of 1/2 degree. Each time this pop-over occurs, one of the inner atoms must move from a low-energy state, through the high-energy state, and back to a low-energy state. This will therefore represent a barrier height of the difference between these two states, or about 15 maJ as calculated above. In this case, then, if the inner ring is sufficiently compliant to allow these pop-overs to occur, static friction barrier heights of 1.5e-20 J may exist. This is greater by over 12 orders of magnitude than Drexler's calculation of less than 1e-32 J assuming a perfectly rigid inner ring. Obviously it will be desirable to make the inner ring as rigid as possible in order to keep static friction low. But I think this analysis demonstrates that the amount of static friction is very dependent on the degree to which the rings are compliant and able to locally minimize energy. It would be good to see an analysis of exactly how much compliance would be expected in actual ring designs in order to determine whether the increased barrier height is large enough to be a concern. Hal Finney hfinney@shell.portal.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 8:42:08 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: Free Will Cite Nobody asks: >Does anyone have a good cite for the free will debate? "The Foundations of Knowlege, An Objectivist Perspective" by David Kelley. 7 lectures on audiotape that include a lecture on volition, a.k.a., free will. Details how it may have evolved. Best thing I'm aware of on the subject. Searle's coverage of it in "Minds, Brains, and Science" was unsatisfactory, as was Rand's declaration of it to be axiomatic without further explanation, as was Mortimer Adler's discussion of it in "Ten Philosophical Mistakes," among other of his works. And I like much of the rest of Searle's, Rand's, and Adler's work. Kelley's lectures are available from the usual bookstore culprits, Freedom's Forum and Laissez Faire. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jul 93 8:54:37 GMT From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu Subject: Big Posts and Health Care Conspiracy There were two issues involved with the recent long post of Eustace Mullins' Spotlight interview on the conspiracy theory of health care reform. The broadest one had nothing to do with its content, only its length, the second its content. I would like it if long posts were sent to exi-essay, rather than the main list. Makes things easier for me in many ways. Your mileage may vary, but others have expressed similar sentiments. Doing so wouldn't affect any batch mode subscriber to both, anyways, although it may increase the volume of exi-essay too much for some people. As for the conspiracy theory of health care reform, while sources such as the Spotight and Mullins are suspect in my mind, I'm aware of corroborating evidence. The Progressive magazine recently published a criqitue of "managed care," the type of reform most likely to be imposed, in which it was mentioned that such reform originated in the Nixon Administration, Nelson Rockefeller's man in the White House at that time (along with his personal foreign policy advisor, Hank Kissinger - who opposes American military intervention into Bosnia now). Hmm... Also, Hilary Clinton's not just a corporate lawyer. She was regular counsel of some sort (don't know what the official title was) to a Little Rock bank whose owners also financed Bill Clinton's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns early on, until the teacher's union and Davy Rockefeller got into the act. Add to this the capture theory of regulation that David Friedman could tell us much about, that regulations are acquired by firms in order to hurt their competition. Then subtract the particulars of who owns what firms, what their race or intentions may be, and what do you get? A powerful few renting political power to enrich themselves by exploiting their competitors and consumers in general. This can't be dismissed with the mere denunciation of any and all explanations of evil by reference to conspiracies of international private jewish gnomes of Zurich. Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL, The International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034.2711@compuserve.com Think Universally, Act Selfishly - starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 14 July 1993 01:12:53 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Meta: Judgement Against Eric S. Raymond I tend to work on a dozen letters at a time, then, after I have slept on them, fire them all off at once. This makes it easier for me to control my flames. (Perry should try it.) It was pure luck that I did not violate the posting restrictions. However Eric seems to have violated them deliberately, so fair enough to freeze him. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 13 July 1993 21:33:38 PST8 From: "James A. Donald" Subject: Bearings. The proof is valid, but is not relevant to the criticisms I have made. In <9307130055.AA08403@ude.tim.ia.ung.gnu.ai.mit.edu>, merkle@parc.xerox.com (Ralph Merkle) wrote: > In molecular bearings made from a shaft with m-fold > symmetry and a sleeve with n-fold symmetry, we prove that > the potential energy of the bearing as a function of the > rotational position of the shaft within the sleeve will be > periodic, with a period of GCD(m,n)/mn. This result > continues to hold true even when the shaft and sleeve are > jointly minimized, so that the abstract perfect symmetries > of the shaft and sleeve are marred by the perturbations in > structure each induces in the other. The problem is that the sleeve must be rigidly attached to something that does not possess an n fold rotational symmetry, and this will induce a breakdown of symmetry in the sleeve. For a small sleeve this is not a serious problem. For a large sleeve it is a serious problem. Furthermore even when symmetry is perfect, in a very large bearing the joint minimization will flex the atoms an angstrom or so, causing the shaft and the sleeve to locally match spacings, which will result in the variations of the potential energy developing an amplitude scale independent of the high spatial frequency. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves and our James A. Donald | property, because of the kind of animals that we | are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesdon@infoserv.com | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 Issue #0390 ****************************************