From: Lyle Burkhead (lybrhed@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Apr 11 1999 - 20:52:32 MDT
(continued from my previous post)
I wrote,
> How complex would this simulation be?
> What would it be comparable to?
The point being that whatever the answer is, the system itself will be at
least as complex as the simulation.
Billy Brown wrote,
> With these points in mind, the size of the system
> needed to make "anything" collapses from a large nation
> to a rather small one, or perhaps a large city.
I don't necessarily disagree with this. In fact I would go further: if
"anything" is construed to mean "anything in a pre-defined set of products
of moderate size," then it wouldn't even require a city. It could be a
completely automated system, like a programmable machine tool. When I say
the box is a society, I am referring to the box that can make literally
anything.
Instead of trying to discuss everything at once, we need to do this step by
step. The first part of Geniebusters (through section 7) is concerned with
the question: is there or is there not going to be an Assembler
Breakthrough? The second part (through section 14) introduces some new
topics, but it too is ultimately concerned with the same question (see the
last paragraph at the end of #14). Let's settle that question first,
before getting into other questions. Let's take "anything" in the sense
required for the Assembler Breakthrough.
So far, no one has attempted to defend the Assembler Breakthrough as
described in Engines. Even my most hostile critics say that the
Breakthrough with a capital B isn't going to happen (and they are hostile,
apparently, because they have just glanced at the site, and they think I am
attacking nanotechnology in general, or technology in general, or AI in
general).
Lyle
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