Re: Nano Morality


In article <123j70bsq9mss6c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<URL:mailto:rhooker123@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Well I do suspect that Nanotechnology will bring back the age of
powerful governments, with the collapse the global trade economy and
the work economy it will be necessary for the State of some form to
come in. Of course in a post scarcity society it is interensting to
think about what the state will be.
[snip]

This is obviously not the correct forum for political discussion,
maybe you want to take that to alt.sci.nanotech? I don't know if
there are any newsgroups which suit discussions of the social and
political consequences of nanotech. Maybe someone should propose
the setting-up of soc.nanotech?


I don't think we understand the dynamics of human society enough
to do more than speculate on what effect nanotech might have on
our political institutions.

We don't know if mature nanotech will be pre- or post-
Singularity, if that even happens at all.

There is no guarantee that we can build an AI capable of 'looking
after' human use of nanotech.

There is also the problem of predicting consequences, and that
gets so complex so quickly that even massive nanotech-built
quantum computers would be reduced to guessing.

We need to put in place a system understood by humans, and
(mostly) agreed to by humans, and we need to be doing it now. We
cannot rely on it making use of god-like AI. That is what the
CRN are about.

Just as an example of a 'human-scale' system, here is an article
on controlling the use of assemblers that I wrote last year:

http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/nanotech/safeassemb.htm

I'm not claiming that it is water-tight, but it might give us
something to talk about that is humanly achievable. The hard bit
is the political will to attempt it!

--
Rory McLean
rory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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