Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: wilcox@uwila.cfht.hawaii.edu (D. Wilcox) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Down and Out in Nanoland Message-ID: Date: 12 Jan 91 04:04:50 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 114 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , Hanson@charon.arc.nasa.gov (Robin Hanson) writes: -> "With nanotechnology, most people may be living near the edge of poverty" [much included text deleted -j] -> In the replication age, wealth will increase much faster than the -> number of people, so with reasonable investment instruments, most -> everyone should live much better than now. Wealth may be roughly -> concentrated among the same people it is now, so you and I may live -> very well by today's standards. -> In the replication age, what is wealth? If you can assemble anything that you can think of, buying things becomes much less necessary. You may not have a lot of gold, silver, etc., in the bank, but unless you need a specific substance, most items that a normal person would need can be assembled from sand and sunlight. The asteroids have enough metals, etc., in them to supply the needs of humanity for a long time. What will you trade for needed items? Possibly artwork, books, music, research, and designs for assemblers to create, ie., software. -> In the uploading age things get more complicated. Since uploaded minds -> can be copied at fairly low cost, people can, if they so choose, -> multiply much faster than the rate at which total wealth increases. No -> doubt some people will so choose,... Why would you choose to copy yourself? How do you envision capital being tied up in your body? Why would there be alien and harsh working conditions for humans when you can assembler comfortable places? And again, what is wealth? If you can assemble food, housing, transportation, etc., what more do you really need even if bankrupt? And even if you do copy yourself, those will immediately become seperate identities. You will no longer be directly a part of their thoughts and experiences. -> Of course you or I, or our children, may move from the Replication age -> into the Uploading age with great wealth, and so if we avoid copying we -> may live like kings regardless of all those poor folk around. -> -> But there is the question of where the bulk of the wealth and economy -> will be. It seems plausible to me that the economically most efficient -> way to invest any given capital (i.e. resulting in the largest growth -> rate as an investment), would be to put the bulk of it into making -> copies. A single mind directing a billion dumb nanocray-diggers Wouldn't it be more efficient to make copies of the assemblers to begin with instead of the humans? If I have my replicator replicate itself, I can give a replicator to another different human who will have a different outlook on life, the universe and everything (sorry Douglas Adams). To me this is more efficient than giving copies of myself the same tools. We would all duplicate each others efforts since a copy of myself would presumably want the same things I do, more than someone completely different than me. -> copies. A single mind directing a billion dumb nanocray-diggers dumb nanocray-diggers? :^) -> wouldn't do as well at mining an asteroid as a thousand or million human -> minds with half a billion such diggers.... A fairly simple computer could direct diggers. What is the advantage to having a million minds tied up in directing a mining operation? Substances are fairly easy to distinguish without human intervention now. Most lab analysis is done automatically. When you have nanomachines this will be even more true. -> Yes, some of these copies may live in much faster etc. hardware, and so -> when things go bad for them could maybe sell off the better brain and -> move into a slower/cheaper one. (stuff deleted) What, the sun quits shining? Their replicators fail? :-) That is a nightmare! Imagine, one of your copies ending up running someone's hand calculator and dreaming of when it was a Cray! ;-) ;-) But seriously, how do you envision things going bad? (other stuff deleted) -> There ... that's the argument. So where does it go wrong? It is -> not as precise as I would like it to be, but I figure this is a good -> forum to critique it at this stage. -> I think it goes wrong in assuming that the same economic situations will exist in the era of nanotechnology. IMHO the age of the replicator will cause drastic changes in most of our institutions, hopefully for the better. I don't envision the nanotech future as being such a bleak place. I think it will turn out to be an age of universal exploration. I see it as freeing up an individual from most of todays economic chains. -> Robin Hanson hanson@charon.arc.nasa.gov "Stake Your Reputation" =============================================================================== Dan Wilcox wilcox@cfht.hawaii.edu (808) 885-7944 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tout ce qu'un homme est capable d'imaginer, d'autres hommes seront capable de la realiser. Jules Verne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimers? I don't need to show you no stinking disclaimers! =============================================================================== [Let me step in here because although I was one of the first to demur from Robin's proposition, it is a fairly strong intellectual redoubt and valid criticisms need to be quite subtle. As I mentioned, it is a modern-day Malthusian argument; but it can go Malthus one better. Suppose Dan is right and there's no rational reason to indulge in radical self-copying. The catch is, what if there's one, just one, irrational individual out there who has this urge to spend every cent he can get his hands on, copying himself? Well, guess what, all the copies have the same urge. If the average person copies himself once every 20 years, and the "repro-man" does it once a year, in 34 years half the world's population is copies of "repro-man". Let me add that the urge is *not* rare: most of the people I know take a substantial cut in standard of living over what they could otherwise afford, in order to have children. In evolution, the tendency to reproduce is amplified--that's just the way things work. --JoSH]