31–40 of 43 posts
This assumes that some artificial organism we construct would be more robust and efficient at self-replication than run-of-the-mill single celled organisms.
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Presumably they have automatic safeguards against it, and these emergencies occur when somebody outsmarts them. I wonder if this can be generalized to an interesting theory--how do you prevent all-consuming self-replicating behavior in a system with minimal intervention otherwise? Is this question even meaningful?
It should be pretty easy: keep track of the ancestry of each object and kill off any family tree that's expanding too quickly if the server gets overloaded.
Internally Second Life calls their countermeasure the "gray goo fence" but I can't find many good descriptions of how it actually works online, except some mentions that the restrictions on how much something can "rez" increase exponentially. This link was the best description of it I could find:
http://alphavilleherald.com/2006/09/linden_lab_grey.html
I believe that, since the attack mentioned therein, they've done other things, such as restricting certain scripting functions to trusted people. But folks have been known to find exploits anyhow.
Of course, feel free to correct me if you actually play Second Life. I've only been following news of it from the outside. I've never actually played it.
I've never understood why people are that worried about it with nanomachines, though. We already have gray goo (though much of it, like algae, is green). I mean, most single-celled organisms are capable of that kind of mass replication. And they can be found pretty much everywhere already. I'd be more worried about accidentally engineering a super-virus or whatever than gray goo per se.
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What's wrong with that assumption? There are some efficient mechanisms that evolution hasn't invented because they could not be reached by a series of gradual refinements. The wheel has long been said to be one of them, but I guess now we know that that's not strictly true. But nature's wheels are all very small and are bound to remain small because of their purpose, even though many organisms could benefit from larg…
Nuclear bomb isn't so complicated that evolution couldn't figure it out, for example, but it didn't and won't anytime soon. That's kinda true, but there was a natural nuclear reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Also, the Sun seems to work pretty well. If course, neither of these evolved though biological mechanisms, though, but they did arise in a natural environment. I find it diffi…
Also, all a nuclear bomb requires is enough fissionable material in a small enough space that the reaction is run away. I see no reason to suppose that a spot particularly rich in uranium (or other such materials) couldn't get squeezed hard enough to explode, or that a critical mass somehow formed by natural processes (particularly those which put it under very high pressure).
I suspect that the reason we haven't observed this happening is because most of the material is not present in concentrated form and because it decays over time.
But just so you know, people have accidentally assembled critical masses by hand. There's no special magic to it, other than getting a large enough quantity of suitable material in the first place (which is really, really hard). You can read some of the scary things that happened here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
They called it the "demon core" after a few people died working on it.
In a battle between Grey Goo and a Paperclip Maximizer, who wins? http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
Drexler thinks it's nonsense: http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/indepth/19648
No, Drexler doesn't think it's nonsense. He just thinks that it will be unnecessary to make replicators for the manufacturing purposes he has in mind. He says >In particular, it turns out that developing manufacturing systems that use tiny, self-replicating machines would be needlessly inefficient and complicated. The simpler, more efficient, and more obviously safe approach is to make nanoscale tools and put them to…
Drexler thinks we underestimate the difficulty of building run-away replicators. Nature's had 4 billion years and hasn't managed it. Yes, I'm aware of the wheel argument.
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No, Drexler doesn't think it's nonsense. He just thinks that it will be unnecessary to make replicators for the manufacturing purposes he has in mind. He says >In particular, it turns out that developing manufacturing systems that use tiny, self-replicating machines would be needlessly inefficient and complicated. The simpler, more efficient, and more obviously safe approach is to make nanoscale tools and put them to…
That's like saying, "This does nothing to diminish the risk of a Moon-based Turbo Death Ray if one is, in fact, created." We might be able to make one if we tried really hard. But it would be pointless and difficult, and there are so many more pedestrian failure modes that it seems pointless to worry about it. Drexler thinks we underestimate the difficulty of building run-away replicators. Nature's had 4 billion year…
Second, you say it is difficult with many failure modes. So was going to the moon. How can you possibly think it's so difficult that it will never get done? In a thousand years?
Third, you cite Drexler to claim that we underestimate the difficulty. (Who underestimates it? Me? The irrational people who Drexler is afraid will take away his funding, or the handful of academics who seriously consider the issue?) The argument for extreme caution does not rely on it being easy to build run-away replicators, only that it is reasonably possible and that the results are catastrophic. Can you really argue with 99% certainty against the feasibility of future technologies without any sort of restriction based on physical law?
Fourth, you say you are aware of the wheel argument...so...what is your reponse? Should we also consider the laser argument? The computer argument? The space-ship argument? Or the argument from any of the nearly countless things that humanity has created in the past 40 years that never existed in the previous 4,000,000,000 that life was around?
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That's like saying, "This does nothing to diminish the risk of a Moon-based Turbo Death Ray if one is, in fact, created." We might be able to make one if we tried really hard. But it would be pointless and difficult, and there are so many more pedestrian failure modes that it seems pointless to worry about it. Drexler thinks we underestimate the difficulty of building run-away replicators. Nature's had 4 billion year…
First, you say building replicator is pointless without giving an argument. This is clearly wrong. I have already given you one example of the use of creating replicators, and here's another: weapons. Second, you say it is difficult with many failure modes. So was going to the moon. How can you possibly think it's so difficult that it will never get done? In a thousand years? Third, you cite Drexler to claim that we…
I do think it's interesting the amount of anger I encounter whenever I even remotely question one of the Singularitarians' babies. There seems to be more ... emotional attachment ... than is healthy for skeptical inquiry.
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How useful is the wheel without roads? In terms of mpg efficiency, weight efficiency, and off-road capability, the wheel seems comparably less efficient than evolved legged locomotion. At least for the purposes that are more important for animals.
Can you please provide the numbers you used to compare the mpg and weight efficiency of wheels vs legs?
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First, you say building replicator is pointless without giving an argument. This is clearly wrong. I have already given you one example of the use of creating replicators, and here's another: weapons. Second, you say it is difficult with many failure modes. So was going to the moon. How can you possibly think it's so difficult that it will never get done? In a thousand years? Third, you cite Drexler to claim that we…
I apologize, but I don't have the time to put together a considered response right now, though I wish I did. Maybe this evening. I do think it's interesting the amount of anger I encounter whenever I even remotely question one of the Singularitarians' babies. There seems to be more ... emotional attachment ... than is healthy for skeptical inquiry.
I'd very much like to hear what you have to say, because even when I've discussed this with academics who work in nanotech (though I've never spoken to anyone working directly on replicators), I've never heard a better argument than "it's really, really hard".