Re: [Sci.nanotech] Assembler in ten years?


In article <12kvl2l5r6gc1e3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, perry@xxxxxxxxxxxx
says...


Jesse Spencer <spencerfdnydelete@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
I do realize that Nanotechnology won't bring us immortality, but it
does have the potential to give us lifespans of several hundred to
perhaps thousands of years.

Turn on your television on any given day and you'll see images of
starving children and people suffering from diseases that have no cure.

Nanotechnology may be able to save these people.

If you drastically reduce the death rate tomorrow you will have a human
population explosion in short order.

The planet can probably handle many times the current population
without any real difficulty.


Er, excuse me. The planet is struggling to handle the _current_ level of
population. Given the human drive to over-use resources that currently
exists.

Take up google Earth(tm) and run a high-level overview of the green
belts of America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The 'Tropical
Rainforests' that have been turning to brown are now visible from space.
Then see if you can spot _any_ sign of the 'white-belt' of permafrost in
the northern hemisphere as far down as the top of china.

Much confusion as there is over global warning, the true/false is
irrelevant now. The simple fact of it is that we are in the middle of a
global-wide relative drought and the food production land is all dying
off by degrees of latitude due to a whole mix of reasons. Some of which
nanotech may solve or moderate in the long-term. Some will never be. The
catch 22 is the 'long-term' aspect may be too long.

Paradoxically, the best way to reduce the population appears to be
increased education, health, and wealth. The countries with the most of
these three factors are all in negative population growth and have been
since the late 1990's if you disregard the immigration factors.

Sure, we could develop nanotech fast and provide free resources to the
entire world. But what would you do to educate the now independent
masses on the world/social-friendly way to live? If anyone has a
solution to that one, it was needed yesterday.

Giving every human on the planet exactly what they want is a never-
ending cycling straight through an ego driven hell of anarchy into
extinction. The scenario has been thrashed about by Sci-Fi for decades
with all the reasoning.


This would circumvent the natural process of selection.

So does taking antibiotics if you have an infection.

Not until humans are able to quickly expand throughout the cosmos is
this a good idea.

If you had "strong nanotechnology", i.e. Drexler style molecular
manufacturing, leaving the planet would not be that hard.

Perry



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