Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hao!gatech!hubcap!beede
From: beede@hubcap.UUCP (Mike Beede)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Engines of Creation: Nanotechnology
Message-ID: <827@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 31 Dec 87 17:55:03 GMT
References: <1315@sugar.UUCP>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 30

in article <1315@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) says:
} 
} In article <636@elxsi.UUCP>, merkle@beatnix.UUCP (Ralph Merkle) writes:
}> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
}> >Even Drexler is uneasy about the "Grey Goo".
}> 
}> Just destroy anything that is not identifiable as 'friend'.  That's
}> the principal the immune system uses, and it seems to work okay most of
}> the time.
} 
} Great job. Your grey goo detector sounds just like the sort of thing to run
} wild and turn you into grey goo. These tiny little machines are going to be
} real susceptible to radiation... so what happens when a carbon-14 in your
} little sliding rod state machine decays and your nanomachine "immune system"
} suddenly forgets that your red blood cells are "friends".

I suppose one solution would be for them to also destroy anything that
was nearly like themselves, but different (e.g., if there are 100,000
components, then if 99,900 < N < 100,000 of them are identical, try to
destroy the booger).  If we have some estimates of mutation rate, we can
derive a probability distribution for a harmful mutant's prospering.
Surrounded by huge numbers of correctly-functioning detectors, it seems at
first glance that the survival of a nasty strain could be made arbitrarily
small.  Of course, if the mutation involved just destroying everything, the
``good'' detectors might be too slow on the draw to do anything.  Sounds like
a Western...
-- 
Mike Beede                      
Computer Science Dept.          UUCP: . . . !hubcap!beede
Clemson University              INET: beede@hubcap.clemson.edu
Clemson SC 29634-1906           YOUR DIME: (803)656-{2845,3444}