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pleasetrimyourpubes t1_jdsqtfe wrote

Reply to comment by FrermitTheKog in Drexler–Smalley debate on molecular nanotechnology by jsalsman

Drexler was selling sensational science fiction books as fact and Smalley was just skeptical of it. The idea of industrial nano technology operating outside of the confines of organic chemistry is and always will be science fiction, particularly the self-replicating kind. Drexlers machines and concepts were so far beyond the realm of physical nature that it's a shame Smalley didn't get to live a few years longer to really rebut Drexler. In the end Drexler at least conceded Grey Goo couldn't happen accidentally and would have to be engineered (though I would posit that even if you engineered it it would die as soon as it stripped the atmosphere away or hit lava; again due to the physical constraints nanosystems must exist in).

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FrermitTheKog t1_jdsri87 wrote

The protein folding idea he originally proposed seems a lot more plausible now, but yes, it was all just speculation back then. AI suddenly seeming to escape from it's long relegation to sci-fi back to reality did make me wonder whether nanotech will have it's day again though.

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jsalsman OP t1_jdssd3b wrote

Grey goo needs energy input. Mere ambient temperature or even strong sunlight isn't enough to tear apart chemical bonds of ordinary matter of any kind and put it back together as a replica. It's a thermodynamic fairy tale.

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pleasetrimyourpubes t1_jdstlhg wrote

The whole concept originated with a Feynman thought experiment about exponential growth. He never posed it as a real thing just if a small thing replicated a lot it would take over a planet in a seemingly short doubling. There are so many environmental factors that would destroy this self replicating system and many of them are physical limitations of reality. Yet throughout the 90s we had sensationalist stories about how grey goo was just around the corner.

I see similar sensationalism about the nature of intelligence and the current growth of AI systems and am just enjoying being alive to witness it. It's going to get so much better in such a short period of time and all the basilisks in the world aren't going to come fill our nightmares.

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DarkCeldori t1_jdtj2v2 wrote

Dumb grey goo is likely hard to engineer, as itd indeed need energy harvesting machines as parts of its design.

But asi goo has fusion fission fossil + super efficient solar geothermal and wind.

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jsalsman OP t1_jdtjtsi wrote

"asi"?

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DarkCeldori t1_jdtkmc0 wrote

Artificial super intelligence which would presumably move to nanomachine substrate that is immortal unlike current computer hardware which breaks down.

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pleasetrimyourpubes t1_jdusbm7 wrote

What scale are you talking here? I can see hive replication and industry being built. But that is not what I think of when I think "goo". I don't see some kind of Gaia style super nano hivemind. Surviving at the nano scale requires virtually all your capability as an organic system. I could see seed AI being propagated through an organic system, but it would be dumb, like an egg floating around, and wouldn't be able to hatch until certain criteria is met.

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DarkCeldori t1_jdvfa32 wrote

Cells are pretty powerful. Remember there are organisms with dozens of times the genetic code size of humans. So a lot can be coded in the genome.

An asi can design multicellular machinery that is unevolvable and immune to all known existing pathogens. While being able to breakdown all known biological life and human infrastructure. The cellular machinery can interact with inorganic computing substrate that controls and guides it. It can have energy harvesters and resource harvesters that keep the replication machinery churning at peak efficiency.

It could produce carbon nanostructured military equipment controlled by asi in large amounts, quickly exceeding all known militaries combined.

It would be the ultimate lifeform. The merging of information technology with biology.

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skob17 t1_jduoy1p wrote

Pink Goo might do that. There are microbes that break down plastics, oil etc. But replication would be much slower I guess.

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DarkCeldori t1_jdtimwo wrote

But what pray tell are the limits of organic chemistry? Extremophiles abound. It was once believed the components of certain types of rocket fuel were so reactive theyd cause cells to explode and couldnt be used by biology. Yet with special organelles even these super reactive compounds were manufactured by cells.

There is no telling to the limits of synthetic biology especially when you venture into the realm of the unevolvable.

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