From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 1997 - 19:01:01 MDT
CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> Nuclear weapons - or anything that produces ionizing radiation - will, in
> general, greatly favor the city, provided it makes use of aqueous phase
> thermodynamic nanotechnology (i.e., biology-style) and provided the nukes
> lack the physical power to just obliterate the city. The proposals for
> machine-phase nanotech so far are all hypersensitive to ionizing radiation as
> they have no way to put stray atoms back in to place or to replace arbitrary
> damaged parts. Biology-style nanotech benefits greatly from extreme
> redundancy and positional independance. If even one element in a rod-logic
> computer malfunctions the whole thing is in a very bad situation. Current
> living things can survive extensive hits on anything other than DNA, and with
> redundant genetic systems could take even that.
Why can't the black goo use biology-style nanotech? In fact, the black goo
has the best of both worlds; they can use sharp, efficient "tactical goo" to
keep the city under pressure, backed by a sea of biological "strategic goo"
bearing nuclear weapons. The city *must* surround itself with tactical silver
goo or the tactical black goo will eat right through it... so each nuke blows
off a layer of silver goo.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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