CryoNet #32805 - #32811

CryoNet - Wed 1 Sep 2010

    #32805: Re: "Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry" [David Stodolsky]
    #32806: Re:Thank you, Kevin Brown, for hosting Cryonet [Dennis]
    #32807: Re: CryoNet #32800 - #32804 [Freeposity]
    #32808: Re: CryoNet #32800 - #32804 [Perry E. Metzger]
    #32809: Re: [LongevityReport] "Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry... [MARK PLUS]
    #32810: nanotech progress [Ettinger]
    #32811: Re allegation of threat [Charles in Arizona]

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Message #32805
Subject: Re: "Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry"
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:32:23 +0200
References: <[email protected]> <05BEC6DD4CB343C49F8ECCDE8272EA96@p4dc>

--Apple-Mail-379--2734138

There are several different levels to be considered. One is the progress of science. That is what the original article was addressing. Another is the politico-religious: will the progress arrive in time to provide my salvation. That is the argument we see in transhumanism, with concepts like the 'singularity'. Techno-rapture is almost as great a threat to cryonics as is the Christian rapture.


dss

David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky







--Apple-Mail-379--2734138

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Message #32806
From: Dennis <[email protected]>
Subject: Re:Thank you, Kevin Brown, for hosting Cryonet
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:35:33 -0400

--_e4c29387-c054-4f87-90cf-2196a63b80ef_


I second Rudi's comments... Thanks Kevin.


Dennis






To Kevin Q. Brown:

Thank you very much for hosting Cryonet, and maintaining archives in a
fairly accessible fashion.

While other cryonics themed bulletin boards have come and gone, Cryonet
remains a fixture.

Indeed, a fixture with a sometimes uneven noise to signal ratio, but a good
forum nonetheless.

Like other components of cryonics and many endeavors in life, hosting
cryonet is probably mostly a rather thankless
job. But, I am appreciative of this forum, and glad that it is here. And
appreciative of most of the posts/ posters as well.

Let's make this a fun, positive, productive day.

Rudi

 		 	   		  
--_e4c29387-c054-4f87-90cf-2196a63b80ef_

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Message #32807
References: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:01:14 -0500
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32800 - #32804
From: Freeposity <[email protected]>

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 4:00 AM, CryoNet <[email protected]> wrote:

Scott Locklin in the comments to his blog post points out:

>Charles Babbage designed something which could have been made with the technology of the time. If Britain had dedicated a significant portion of its GDP and thousands of workers to creating an analytical engine for the next 25 years, and failed to even build a gear for the damn thing, well, then we might have suspected that Mr. Babbage was full of baked beans. 25 years! Do you know how long 25 years is? In 25 years, we went from Von Neumann writing a paper on how to make a digital computer to having freaking Unix and GUI's. In 25 years, we went from biplanes made out of cloth to the SR-71. 25 years is a working lifetime for many people. And there have been hundreds or thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to this "nano  idiocy. Yet, we are not one whit closer to having anythi
 ng remotely resembling a nanotechnology now than we were 25 years ago. If Drexler and his propellor heads wish to comfort themselves with the idea that they are visionaries ahead of their ti
 me; well, I deny it. I maintain that they have picked a delivery date
so far into the future that the day of judgement will never come.
They'll all be comfortably retired by then. How convenient.



I find it interesting that with a simple google search you can find
over 800 consumer products that are nanotech based. Perhaps the author
is working from old data.



-- 
Money isn't speech.
A Corporation isn't a person.
http://www.movetoamend.org/

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Message #32808
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:48:34 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32800 - #32804
References: <[email protected]>

On 31 Aug 2010 09:00:03 -0000 CryoNet <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:41:47 -0700
> Subject: "Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry"
> From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>
> 
> As I've suspected, cryonics organizations might have made an error a
> generation ago by identifying revival scenarios too closely to
> certain technological speculations which haven't born fruit:
> 
> http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/nano-nonsense-25-years-of-charlatanry/

Bull.

I've spent about the last five years of my life studying this field
nearly full time.

Let me start by saying that if nano is impossible, you are impossible,
because you are made of molecular machines. How do you function if
molecular machines can't function?

Let me also say that the characterization of Drexler's thesis is
either the result of someone being unable to read it or the result of
someone who feels like lying to stir up controversy is fun. I would go
into detail, but simply reading Drexler's book puts the lie to almost
everything the guy says -- he spends chapter after chapter going after
every single counterargument anyone can give against the things
working, everything from figuring out the uncertainty in positioning
operations from thermal noise and quantum effects to determining the
failure rate of machinery from radiation damage. He discusses in
excruciating detail everything from the chemistry needed to put
together such machines to how to model designs.

Heck, the blog poster's opener is even a lie, Drexler doesn't even
"invoke the Schroedinger equation" anywhere that I can remember. I'm
not sure he even prints it in the book, though my copy isn't
nearby. Why? Because pretty early on he notes (correctly) that exact
ab initio models are incapable of yielding much information about
nanomachines because finding solutions to the Schroedinger equation
for mesomolecular systems will always be computationally
intractable. (He then spends a long time discussing what sort of
mathematical models you need to use in order to understand the
behavior of such systems.)

Believe whatever you like, however, including that you yourself don't
exist.

So, why hasn't Nanotechnology borne fruit? Because no one is working
on it. That's a slight exaggeration, of course, there are perhaps a
dozen of us working on it, but there need to be thousands in order to
get anywhere. The average Intel microprocessor has several thousand
engineers working on the design, and that's ignoring all the people
that built all the machines needed to make those engineers
productive. Even a simple MNT device is far more complicated than an
Intel Core 2, but there's just about no one doing the work, so of
course we're not getting anywhere.

Sure, there are lots of people taking money for nanotechnology
research -- materials scientists and synthetic organic chemists got a
huge bonanza in funding by relabeling their existing work
"nanotechnology" -- but the number of people who are directly working
on molecular manufacturing is so small the community could be wiped
out in a good car accident.

I'm hoping to have some positive influence on this in the future,
which is part of why I spend my time on the subject.

Let me close with the following litany: the book ("Nanosystems") is
cheap. You can buy it on Amazon used for a few bucks. If you haven't
read it, you have no basis for an opinion on its contents. Let me
repeat that loudly. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT, YOU HAVE NO BASIS FOR AN
OPINION ON THE CONTENTS. You therefore should not say anything more on
the topic until you have read AND UNDERSTOOD the book. (If you read
the book and can't understand it, you have no basis for an opinion
either.)

If you choose to reply on this, I'll be expecting you to state that
you have both read and understood the book and thus have a personal
basis for an opinion, or that you are withholding judgment until you
have read the book and understood it. Any other statement you make
will be evidence for nothing other than the fact that you are capable
of expressing strong opinions on something you have no personal
knowledge of whatsoever.


Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		[email protected]

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Message #32809
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:57:54 -0700
Subject: Re: [LongevityReport] "Nano-nonsense: 25 years of charlatanry...
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

In Cryonet #32803, John de Rivaz writes:

>The world's first car appeared around 1800. A replica built a few years ago
was virtually impossible to control, so articles could have appeared for
nearly 100 years suggesting that "horseless carriages" were an idea that
would never bear fruit. [etc.]

I don't understand the relevance of your examples to Locklin's
critique. The prototypes of the inventions you mention worked, which
shows that they didn't incorporate mistaken assumptions about physics.
Drexler's speculations haven't even gotten to that level yet.

By contrast, look at all the inventions which progressed quickly. For
example, the laser, the weak cousin to science fiction's "death ray,"
went from a laboratory curiosity in 1960 to a powerful and versatile
tool in science, medicine and engineering in just a handful of years
because it exploits correct principles of physics.

>Steam engines appeared two millenia ago - Hero's Engine. Philosophers no doubt made similar remarks about their lack of torque and therefore practicability.

Again, ancient steam engines worked, and under a different set of
conditions the Roman world could have industrialized. Instead the
steam engine had to wait through a succession of civilizations and
dark ages before it became "steam engine time." Assuming that we'll
need a steam engine analogue for revival, but that this technology
won't arrive for 2,000 years or more, do you propose that cryonics
organizations could continue to exist and keep people in suspension
that long and in the face of recurring Mad Max eras?

I detect fallacious sunk costs reasoning in defense of Drexler's
speculations. I have no emotional investment in Drexler's reputation,
and if his ideas suck, we'd do cryonics a disservice by continuing to
invest our money and hopes in them instead of looking for better
ideas.

-- 
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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Message #32810
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:46:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: nanotech progress

I don't have the patience to list the references or expound the results,  
but even a cursory search will reveal many useful developments in  
nanotechnology, and many patents. But even if there was or is over-optimism in  some 
quarters about the pace of progress, that does not affect the iron strength  
of the basic argument. 

The basic argument was made by Nobelist Richard  Feynman around 1959, if I 
remember correctly--that there is no known obstacle to  eventual 
manipulation of individual atoms and molecules. Since the advent of the  scanning 
tunneling microscope. specialists have been able in some cases to push  around 
individual atoms to position them where wanted. 

If you need proof  that more complicated nano machines can exist, you need 
look no further than  thee and me and that there tree and every little louse 
and flea. The bodies of  living things for millions of years have, through 
evolution and accident,  acquired the ability to make and mend their own 
components and reproduce  themselves. There is absolutely no reason why those 
existing bionanotech  machines should be the only ones possible, why nature 
should already have  exhausted all the possibilities. The opposite conclusion 
is compelling--that  man-made nanotech will eventually dwarf the present 
achievements of nature.  

Curtis Henderson used to like the story about the skeptic who said that  
heavier-than-air flying mkachines were impossible--at the same time that a  
pigeon made a deposit on his hat. 

Robert Ettinger

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Message #32811
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:59:24 -0700
Subject: Re allegation of threat
From: Charles in Arizona <[email protected]>

Contrary to Maxim's post, as people who know me well would be aware, I
am not in the habit of making threats, least of all to inhibit speech.
The moderator of the forum concerned has made the following statement
there: "Charles has made complaints, but he has never threatened me."
This is correct.

Charles Platt

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