From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jan 09 1999 - 13:13:36 MST
Eugene Leitl <eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> writes:
> Notice that blue is static, as autoreplicating blue
> would seem to be basically undistinguishable from grey. Blue is
> brittle, and more complex than grey, so it will be outperformed anyway.
I disagree. Calculations are forthcoming, but basically the blue
doesn't have to be autoreplicating but could rely on a factory
production such as the one scketched by Josh at the latest foresight
conference; the replication rate will be extremely much higher if the
blue doesn't have to autoreplicate, and one can imagine a hierarchy of
immune-nodes: level 1-nodes producing lots of blue goo and throwing
them around, level 2 nodes spreading level 1 nodes very quickly, and
so on.
Blue can be extremely simple - antibodies comes to mind. If you can
just sabotage the replication of the grey, like by sti cking their
surfaces together, they will be in trouble. More complex devices,
without the need of carrying around autoreplicative capability, could
also finish grey goo a lot.
What to worry about is of course intelligently designed grey goo
intended to do a lot of damage, but I don't buy that just randomly
evolving nanites will be unstoppable. The question is rather how much
damage all this is going to do in a realistic scenario.
> Funny, I think the problem is at least nondecideable with our current
> knowledge. My intuition even tells me that grey has a slight or even
> noticeable advantage, which makes it fundamentally uncontainable once
> beyond a certain autoamplification stage.
One kilogram of finely powdered virus crystals will overwhelm any
human immune system. But that is not the kind of threat we usually
face, and it does not emerge naturally.
In the same way a huge, diverse amount of goo is likely hard to stop,
but if we can prevent such things from emerging by dealing with the
small amounts of goo the nanoimmune world stands a chance. Most likely
the only survivable states are a nano-free world or a world with
overlapping /or bordering) immune systems of various kinds, fighting
occasional skirmishes against goo outbreaks (wild guess:
self-organized criticality of the size distribution).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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