Re: U.S. Public Sensible About Nanotech

From: John S. Novak, III (jsn_at_panix.com)
Date: 07/25/04

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    Date: 25 Jul 2004 19:30:57 GMT

    In article <cdusvo02ubn@enews4.newsguy.com>, Richard Steven Hack wrote:
     
    >> Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the study found a
    >> majority (57 percent) of respondents selected medical advances as
    >> the most important benefit, followed by environmental cleanup (16
    >> percent), security and defense (12 percent), and improved human
    >> physical and mental abilities (11 percent).

    > I have one problem with that. The public clearly has no clue that the
    > latter (improved human abilities) is in fact the primary goal of
    > nanotech. (I assume they don't make the connection between "medical
    > advances" and the latter.) And I suspect the public, once informed of
    > how much of the human race is going to be made obsolete by a new
    > nanotech-based species, is going to be MUCH less receptive to nanotech
    > than Foresight believes.
     
    I have multiple problems with your assessment.

    First, you're either enthropomorphizing or self-aggrandizing.
    "Nanotechnology" doesn't have a primary goal, or any oals except in
    the loose sense of "arranging matter to molecular precision."
    Likewise, steam engines didn't have a primary goal, except in the
    loose sense of extracting work from heated gases. (Of course in both
    cases, those primary goals were the goals of the people developing the
    technology, and the technology just the expression of that goal.)

    And while I know some people have as their primary goals the
    application of nanotechnology to the human body for the purpose of
    enhancing it, I don't think it's fair to say that this is the primary
    goal of enough people, that it can therefore be construed as the
    primary goal of even the nanotechnology community.

    Second, I do and will continue to draw a distinction between health
    advances and improved human capabilities. I don't think it's a
    stretch to say that curing cnacer is a health care advance, while
    respirocytes swimming in my bloodstream letting me take my afternoon
    nap at the bottom of a swimming pool is an improved human ability.

    Third, while there will be an inevitable grey area (how about
    respirocytes for emphysema victims?) that does not invalidate the two
    general categories. Those categories will be defined, and argued
    over, for quite some time (if, of course, we actually realize these
    capabilities.) But, I claim, this is a good thing for people whose
    primary goal *is* the development of advanced human abilities, because
    it will create a slippery slope effect.

    While I doubt anyone but Leon Kass and his merry band would turn down
    immortality or superhuman abilities if they were offered on a platter,
    they won't be offered on a platter. Immortality will not come
    (assuming it comes) in a single pill five years from now. It will
    come in small increments, a cure for this, a cure for that. Likewise
    any extrahuman abilities, and those *will* start as medical advances.

    In a very real sense, I expect that perfectly reasonable, perfectly
    acceptable desires for improved health will start people on that road,
    and once that happens, it will continue. 

    -- 
John S. Novak, III              jsn@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
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