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From: alan@rnms1.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy(0000))
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Life And Death
Message-ID: <8904180627.AA19460@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 23 Mar 89 22:08:00 GMT
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In article <8903230412.AA09033@athos.rutgers.edu< colwell@mfci.UUCP (Robert Colwell) writes:
<Bach's contemporaries thought his music was
<mediocre.  And IBM thought they'd only ever sell 7 computers.  I agree,
<prognostication is not an easy nor a sure endeavor.  Look at the other
<side -- von Neumann thought we'd have an intelligent computer long 
<before, and he thought it would use self-modifying code.  Technological
<over-optimism is just as possible as pessimism.

Good point.  On the other hand, have you watched any episodes of the original
Star Trek recently?  In some ways, the science and technology the show
envisioned is already beginning to seem less than 24th century--if not
downright old-fashioned.

The clear trend is that short term forecasts are over-optimistic while
long-term ones are overly pessimistic.  But progress is not always steady.
It explodes suddenly from time to time, then languishes for years, decades,
even centuries.  So even short-term forecasts can be too pessimistic and
long term ones too optimistic.

It's true that some of the most important scientific advances of the twentieth
century have revealed what cannot be done instead of (or in addition to) new 
capabilities.  But even the speed of light limitiation was part of a larger 
discovery that did expand the horizons of the possible.

<>If we can not build machines that are just as intelligent as the human
<>brain, then human brains are magic.  I do not believe in magic.
<
<Magic is just another word for something we do not understand.  It
<remains to be seen whether we can use our tool of rationality to tackle
<every problem.  I personally don't think we can; it doesn't work on
<social problems or the meaning of life, for instance.  And when you
<start talking about living forever I think those kinds of problems
<suddenly become very important.

Forever is an awfully long time.  I want to live as long as possible--or at 
least until I change my mind.

Any sufficiently advanced magic will look like technology to the uninitiated.
Or is it the other way around? :-).  

Seriously, though, anyone who argues that intelligence can be evolved but
not designed has a lot of explaining to do.  First of all, reverse engineering
is a lot easier than de novo design.  As a last resort, intelligence could be
created--deliberately evolved--using evolutionary mechanisms and techniques.

However, I will not gainsay the point that rationality--no matter the scale--may
not be sufficient for tackling all problems.  Will we be able to reason out
how natural law came to be?  Perhaps we will have to evolve some sort of
super-rationality, which is qualitatively different from our present
intelligence, in order to make headway against some of these problems.
We have infinitely more intelligence than an atom, because an atom has
zero.  Perhaps there is some other quality that we totally lack, but which
it is possible to have, that would open up whole new worlds for us.

<><>Moreover, I shudder to think of a world run by very very old people.  Even
<><>given the magic technology to keep the body motor running, how do you
<><>deal with the mental hardening of the arteries that always seems to 
<><>accompany the flow of years?  
<>
<><>And isn't such an outcome {domination by the old} inevitable, based as it is 
<><>on human nature, which isn't (as far as I know) susceptible to a 
<><>technological cure?
<>
<>We will never EVOLVE solutions to these problems if we don't try.  Letting
<>the assumption that these are insolvable problems prevent us from even
<>trying guarantees failure.
<
<But, Alan, with this rejoinder you seem to be implying that I'm advocating
<something that I most assuredly do not.  I agree with you -- saying that
<a coming technology may have some down sides does not stop that technology
<from coming, nor should it.  I've just never seen any technology that didn't
<have both good and bad sides to it, and I thought there were a few bad that 
<weren't getting their fair hearing, especially since (I believe) we may
<find them, in the end, to be among the most intractable.

Phrased that way, I agree with you.  I simply wish to make a clear distinction
between "problems known to be unsolvable" and "problems not known to be
solvable."



Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL.
Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne.  They do not speak for me. 
__American Investment Deficiency Syndrome => No resistance to foreign invasion.
Motto: If nanomachines will be able to reconstruct you, YOU AREN'T DEAD YET.