Re: NANO: Directive of Evacuation

Nicholas Bostrom (bostrom@mail.ndirect.co.uk)
Fri, 29 Aug 1997 15:52:30 +0000


Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:

> The Directive of Evacuation:
> "Do not declassify nanotechnology until all persons wishing to leave the Earth
> have done so."
>
> I think this is a very Libertarian, cautious, ethical way to state the issue.
> Strategic considerations make it necessary to partition humanity and remove it
> from large masses before allowing everyone access to nanotechnology.

Why do you think that a multipolar world order with nanotech would be
possible just because people move out into space?

> I should also propose the easiest way to do this without leaving anything behind:
> Carve the Earth's crust into citylike sections or hundred-square-kilometer
> sections, whichever is larger, and lift all the sections into separate orbits.
> Transportation between sections must be provided. Also roofing and
> centrifugal gravity.

This sounds like fantasy to me.

> So, a bit after nanotech is discovered, the sky changes color, airports and
> the Interstate undergo some peculiar changes, and space is filled with giant
> spinning crowbars with domes on one side and counterweights on the other.

This is from the same person who has written about the singularity?

------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Bostrom
bostrom@ndirect.co.uk

*Visit my transhumanist web site at*
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