Reasons and Ideas to get worked up about

I’ve been busy as of alot, so I haven’t much time to quickly and foolishly throw up my ideas regarding the world. Also, I’ve tried to cut back on any blogging that has political conotations because, quite simply, I dont feel this is the best avenue to do so. However, I’m going to skip my own self-checks for this one.

“Plants” with “leaves” no more efficient than today’s solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous “bacteria” could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop – at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.

Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the “gray goo problem.” Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term “gray goo” emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.

The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.

Reference

Okay, first of all, let’s get all this bullshit out of the way. Are people honestly arguing, that through advances in SCIENCE, humans will create viruses and animals and organisms that will DESTROY the world?!? I use caps in the previous sentence for two reasons. One is to highlight the hysteria and fantasy of people who see such destructive actions as being inevitable. More importantely, I want to show how this is not true. I don’t honestly believe that Darwin is going to get ate by a killer mutant virus in the near future that will destroy the entire Earth. It should be obvious by now, that I am being condensending and dimissive of these claims, because they are as equally irrational as the utopian idea that machines will free humans to a point where work and leisure will be mixed, and there will only be a need for a four hour work day. This last idea was advanced near the Industrial Revolution and it didn’t happen. Science destroying Science? In a micro sense, I can understand the appeal of us vs. them survivalism, but this is not the scope on which the article is talking about, thus speaking about the idea as an inevitable conclusion is reckless at best.

This is the exact same hysteria I see in the present day arguments about global warming. I will not go into the scientific ideas behind global warming, but I will say that I do believe global warming does exist. What I do have a problem with is people running up to me and telling me that my life is in immidiate danger because of global warming. Worst of all, polar bears are drowning! I’ve seen polar bears before. They are big. They can take care of themselves. And if they cant, well then that’s okay too. No, seriously. It’s okay. If any animal is having trouble surviving, that’s not on me. They can adapt, or they can become extinct. I will not rush to defend polar bears because I feel bad about their drownings (read: that is a logical fallacy), and go out of my want to mess with Darwin. That’s illogical. If you accept global warming as real, then you most likely see it as a threat to the ecosystems of the planet. However, most people who talk to me about global warming fail to see that other organisms will step in and fill this void. This is how SCIENCE works. If you think otherwsie (such as the earth being 6000 years old, or global warming being a byproduct of an upcoming alien invasion), then I can’t help you.

There is more to this idea however. Nobody who campaigns against global warming, or is worried about the future robotic overlords, is denying that these technological advancements are inheretly bad. In fact, most if not all (spray on pancakes vs chesse in a can being a good example), of the people out in the world will consider that they are better off now than they were 4 years ago. Of course this is a complicated and loaded question which cant be answered in one sentence and guided by skill sets, the economy, life in general. But technology is a great enabler and offers so many useful and helpful benefits, that it simply pisses me off when I hear simplistic and irrational arguments which fail to see the larger picture of the impact of technology on the world.

-Eddie

Note: the author of the Wired article above is a great fan of technology and hugely important in the development of modern computing, more so than I could ever be. With this consideration in mind, I still disagree with his article.