From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Jan 10 2001 - 12:18:47 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> writes:
> http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010108S0690
>
> Whoa, check out the assembler-proof container!
>
> Could this material represent true chemical-scale imperviousness,
> attackable only via macroscopic forces or thermal energy, there being no
> way to abstract an atom even with mechanochemistry?
It looks nice, and it is a neatly simple solution. I wonder if it
would be truly impervious: what if I throw in an electron into the
surface layer? If it doesn't move down into the layers underneath, I
will likely get a slight dislocation where I could insert my molecular
pliers. On the other hand, if the bottom layer eagerly eats both
electrons and holes, then it would be very tricky to grip this kind of
surface. The surface atoms might also be a bit too crowded, so a
sufficiently strong phonon might get one to symmetry break and escape?
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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