Re: [Sci.nanotech] Re: Too much concern for "safety" and"morality"and"ethics"ofNANO


In article <126a3k1ko845mc7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
toby_kelsey@xxxxxxxxxxxx says...

Better not let anyone bake bread then -- it involves "unconstrained
replicators".
I think a lump of dough is a fairly constrained environment.
Then why is the air full of yeast spores almost everywhere on the
planet?

They only reproduce in well-known limited circumstances, and we
have co-evolved with them so we know a lot about them and can
co-exist. The problem with nanotech replicators is that we don't
know how they might reproduce and spread and what damage they
could do if introduced into our system. This isn't just an
irrational "anti-technology" fear. If I found a plant or mushroom
I didn't recognise, I wouldn't eat it for the same reasons.

Well, we don't know how nanotech replicators would replicate for a
number of reasons. The important one is because we haven't figured
out how they would do anything. They are non-existant and undesigned.
Despite the right-around-the-corner claims of some, they're nowhere
near close to being designed yet.

That makes it fairly difficult to know how to regulate them. I also
think it's fairly odd to make the assumption that the first, or even
second cut designs of these devices are going to work entirely too
well and replicate out of control. Everything I've ever designed,
professionally, has worked-- but nothing I've ever designed worked
orders of magnitude better than I intended it to!


I'm afraid that doesn't happen much. Generally speaking, policy is
made by frightening ignorant people until they will go along with
anything one suggests. See the current bans all of the world of
genetically modified crop plants, for example.

I thought they were legal in the US? I think most people have no
problem with GM crops as long as a) food products are labelled so
consumers can make an informed choice, and b) they can't contaminate
non-GM crops. Breaking these rules is what is upsetting many people,
rather than the existence of GM crops per se. I agree that many
policy decisions are irrational by the way, that doesn't mean we
should give up on making policy altogether.

At the risk of moving this into a discussion of politics, I submit
that most irrational-seeming regulatory regimes are spread by fear at
the base for political purposes. GM crops are no different.

In reality a lot of human planning and, yes, regulation is needed to
cope with the effects of new technologies.

That is a bald assertion, not a set of well reasoned arguments. I've
yet to see terribly well managed regulatory regimes. I'm told very
often about how well, for example, the FDA manages to "protect" us,
but my father had to have his most important anti-Parkinsons drug
smuggled in for him from Europe because it was only approved in the
US a decade after it was legal elsewhere. How many other people
blindly followed the law and died? I don't know.

The current regulatory environment (in the US and elsewhere) is
certainly not perfect, but that doesn't mean total deregulation
would be better. The FDA is probably heavily influenced by big-pharm
(aka "regulatory capture"), so in a way your experience is evidence
againt the market knowing best.

I don't think that this is a coherent argument. That one actor *in* a
market attempts to circumvent market principles by pressuring a
regulatory agency does not support your thesis. It rather supports
Perry's thesis, though, that the notion of the incorruptible
regulatory agents is mythical.

For the record, my complaint against overly restrictive regulatory
regimes in this context is two-fold:

First, the issue is not ripe for regulatory or ethical codification,
because none of these things exist.

Second, aside from issues of corruption, centralized regulation
regimes simply cannot explore the useful design spaces as well as a
market. Partly this is due to the centralization, partly because it
is the job of a regulatory scheme to reduce the exploration space.

Combining both of these is very likely to be very harmful over the
long run, with the added disadvantage that those who make the biggest
strides will be those most disinclined to obey the rule of law in the
first place.

With food and drugs,there is a credible libertarian argument that
people should be able to do what they want to their bodies. With
GM crops and nanotech, the possibility of negative effects on
third parties means regulation should be considered.

As for being just a bald assertion, many of the gains since the
industrial revolution have been the result of regulation, from
preventing six-year-olds working down mines to Clean Air regulations
(about 12000 people died because of the 1952 London smog). I
think the case for (some) regulation is good, but I don't expect
to convince a libertarian.

It is an under appreciated fact that a very successful part of the Clean
Air Act of 1990 is... a market driven emissions trading scheme designed
to reduce SO2 emissions with the end goal (and result) of reducing acid
rain.

The regulatory mindset is very interesting. It claims that there are
these supernatural entities,called "regulators",who unlike humans are
not subject to human foibles, economic pressures, political pressures
or ignorance, and are thus capable of making life and death decisions
on other people's behalf. I'm not sure I buy that idea.

Regulators are subject to pressures, which is why transparency,
accountability, and democratic control are all necessary. "Power
corrupts" is true in all spheres of life, including commerce and
industry. I suspect the head of the FDA is more democratically
accountable than the CEO of Monsanto.

However, this does nothing to address my more systemic concerns about
the efficiency of regulators. If you could come up with a distributed
regulatory scheme, or indeed any scheme which did not ultimately boil
down to a small bunch of guys doing their best to outguess or
outperform the billions of minds in the market, you might get more
support.

--
John S. Novak, III
The Humblest Man On The Net

.

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