> If we accept the argument in Drexler et al (UNBOUNDING THE FUTURE, 1991, p.
> 259), the only way to stop some demented or feckless brat from reprogramming
> his genie to emit meteorological quantities Aum Supreme Truth happy gas, or
> pick plutonoium out of the sea and stockpile it for later fun times, is to
> maintain strong regulatory authorities which licence users of genies able to
> produce dangerous outputs only if these are restricted to sealed assembler
> labs or factories. This rather short-sheets the utopian dream of a genie in
> every pocket, but I find it hard to see any other way to forestall the Fermi
> Paradox.
The other obvious way is to get the hell away from Earth as soon (or
better, before) we get that level of MNT. I'm actually worried about this,
and I hope whoever is going to move first to orbit or the belt has room
and need for a creative computer scientist/neuropsychologist...
And keeping tight control over MNT won't work in the long run - unlike
nuclear weapons there are no easy chokepoints (as far as we currently
know). Even if the loonies don't do anything horrible, there are
governments, corporations and careless scientists.
[I currently have grey, blue, green, red and golden goo mentioned on my
terminology pages. I wonder how many more kinds we will see when/if we get
MNT?]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y