From: John Marlow (johnmarrek@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jan 06 2001 - 19:08:09 MST
"The idea of someone being smart enough to build a
universal assembler and concurrently being dumb enough
to not build it with sufficient controls is
nonsensical..."
**Oh? And who sayd intelligence is related to caution,
meticulousness, or indeed sanity? Teams of highly
intelligent people design software; does that mean it
is bug-free? The same is true of nuke plant
construction and safety systems--does that mean
they're flawless?
**Hitler was quite intelligent. Was he sane? Perhaps.
Was he evil? Undoubtedly. So--suppose the first one
smart enough to build the damned things is evil?
Suppose further that he or she is insane--and desires
nothing more than to destroy the world and everything
on it?
**Ah--what then, hmm..?
**As Joy has said--a terrifying empowerment of extreme
individuals...
john marlow
At 07:37 PM 1/5/2001 -0500, you wrote:
"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> > I quite agree that nuclear weapons are an easier
problem than biological
> > or nanotech weapons. The orginal poster said that
if "the consequences
> of
> > failure" of nuclear weapons were the same as
nanotech, we would all be
> > dead. Not so, it is the nature of the technology,
not the possible
> > consequences, that determine the ease of control.
I believe we are in
> > violent agreement.
> >
> > steve
>
> By "the consequences of failure" one means to say
that control has failed.
> Consequently, since we've failed to control nuclear
weapons (Hiroshima,
> Nagasaki), identical levels of failure in regard to
nanotech or biotech
> warfare would kill us all, since these latter
technologies have such
> killing power.
I fail to see such killing power. Much ado about
nothing. Biotech
warfare has been with us for centuries to no ill
effect. The idea of
someone being smart enough to build a universal
assembler and
concurrently being dumb enough to not build it with
sufficient controls
is nonsensical. Purely Pollyanish Paranoia Posing
preposterously as
proper public politics.
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