Sublime Oblivion Forums

1. 

   Martin
   Member
   Posted 8 months ago #
   

   @A. Karlin
   I understand, that you intended to write "no longer" in your remarks regarding "grey goo".

   Well, obviously no longer, if one want to consider making some output of consumer end products by nanofactory working on very sophisticated raw materials not available in natural environment.
   However if one want to do geoengineering by nanotech means, he must release to environment nanobots which are able to:
   1. survive there.
   2. replicate in the wild. That is the only way to secure enormous numbers necessary to do geoengineering project.
   3. do something useful like CO2 capture from atmosphere to lower temperatures.

   Such nanobots will in fact become to be a sort of life form and become to be subjected to mutation and natural selection process.
   No way around that problem.
   Hence a risk of gray goo scenario.

   And heck, what if replication of these nanobots were actually limited by CO2 availability in the air?
   You would not get global scale "gray goo" but you could easily wipe out nearly all CO2, and terminated plant life (and food chain) by the same.

   Somehow I think that release of replicating nanobots to the wild will prove to be our final invention.
   The question is, will we prove so stupid to actually proceed with that or not?

   There is much discussion about possibilities of containment of deliberately released gray goo, but the arguments that it could be done are weak. I could point out countless pitfalls in such strategies, if anyone bother to wish to discuss it with me (I was in the past working in academia on so called "molecular switch", which is a quite related subject to artificial replicators).
   In any case here is one of many academic discussions of the problem presented in the form digestible for public:
   http://lifeboat.com/ex/global.ecophagy
   You will surely notice there that nanobots applicable in possible geoengineering projects are inherently overlapping with grey goo type of replicators.
   So I doubt that anyone sane would deliberately meddle with these and release them into wild.

2. 

   Anatoly Karlin
   Sublime Lord
   Posted 8 months ago #
   

   @Martin,

   I would greatly appreciate your insights on this matter - please feel free to start a new post. And thanks for the link, which I'll make sure to read. For now, two comments:

   1. I've never understood the concepts behind using nanobots to clean up greenhouse gases. They'd need to somehow fly up to them, catch them, and break them apart? That would require quite a lot of energy and intelligence (given that CO2 is inert), right?
   2. I don't see why they would necessarily have to be replicators. You could create a lot of them using the top-down method (very expensive, granted), and if they're extremely efficient they can feasibly do the job without replication?

3. 

   T. Greer
   Member
   Posted 8 months ago #
   

   Eventual collapse of exponential growth model in physically constrained world is a mathematical certainty.

   This is true. But perhaps you will see my point better if I provide you with another true statement:

   Eventual collapse of exponential growth model in physically constrained solar system is a mathematical certainty.

   The sun, like this Earth, has only a limited amount of resources. It is a mathematical certainty that one day these resources will run dry. This is a physical, real world problem that has no solutions, not even in theory.

   Forgive me for not staying awake at night in fear of this certainty.

4. 

   Martin
   Member
   Posted 8 months ago #
   

   @A. Karlin
   

   I've never understood the concepts behind using nanobots to clean up greenhouse gases. They'd need to somehow fly up to them, catch them, and break them apart? That would require quite a lot of energy and intelligence (given that CO2 is inert), right?

   
   In principle it may well be possible to create replicating nanobots which are in form of an air floating dust built of only four basic chemical elements (C, H, O, N), which are all available from air (carbon would come out of greenhouse gases like CO2 or CH4) and energy required to proceed with chemical tasks related to replication (and greenhouse gas removal) would come out of solar light.
   Nanobots would use carbon based greenhouse gases to provide building material necessary to replicate themselves and nice exponential scheme entailing removal of greenhouse gases (which would be converted to *mass* of replicating nanobots) would unfold.

   Unfortunately such a scheme, once started would be impossible to stop.
   Virtually all atmospheric CO2 available would be consumed and converted into nanobot dust.
   Plants would fail to secure CO2 feedstock and food chain would end up terminated in the process.

   I don't see why they would necessarily have to be replicators. You could create a lot of them using the top-down method (very expensive, granted), and if they're extremely efficient they can feasibly do the job without replication?

   
   Expenses of building of required numbers of nanobots by top down method would prove prohibitive.
   Such nanobots would convert CO2 into some form of diamondoid structures which would be washed out of air say by rain, but these structures would not be replicating in any manner.
   Grey goo would be out of question in such circumstances but entire adventure would be hopelessly expensive to implement.

   So, as I have stated before, to make process of CO2 removal cheap we would need to make nanobots which are dangerously related to gray goo type of replicators.
   I can imagine some safety devices incorporated to such replicators (to prevent them running uncontrollable amok) but one must understand that such micromachines would in reality have all properties of highly competitive life forms.
   Any life forms released to environment will invariably face prospect of mutation and natural selection of the fittest mutants, so initially inserted safety devices could easily cease to function in some successful "mutants".
   At this point we are facing terminal gray goo event with termination of food chain.

   @T. Greer
   

   The sun, like this Earth, has only a limited amount of resources. It is a mathematical certainty that one day these resources will run dry. This is a physical, real world problem that has no solutions, not even in theory.

   Forgive me for not staying awake at night in fear of this certainty.

   
   It is best to concentrate on Earth based resources.
   We are not flying anywhere and I am not aware of any projects of building pipelines from Titan either.
   On the top of it so called Dyson's spheres are fantastic objects inhabiting fantastic Solar Systems, but unfortunately they are unlikely to the extreme to exist in physical Universe.
   Ever thought about Fermi's Paradox?

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