X-Message-Number: 11450 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: nanotechnology will not solve overpopulation Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 21:54:40 +1100 (EST) Hi everyone! To Bryan Hall: Basically, I agree that if we can get teachers to address the issues involved with cryonics we'd improve our situation with students. However nanotechnology will not of itself solve all problems and should not be presented as if it would. I would agree that we should be able to have much less polluting technology in the future, by one means or another (this is already happening now, without any specific nanotechnology but lots of technology). But overpopulation is different. Everyone wants a certain amount of physical room not just to live in but to move around in. Sure, we would be able someday to make people feel satisfied with much less room, but that's cheating (and besides, even that does not need nanotechnology. Just the right kind of schooling/propaganda/mind control when people are growing up). Whether spaceships, space habitats, and terraforming are to be considered forms of nanotechnology seems to me a moot point. However they seem to me also to be the only means by which we might make more room, at least in our present Solar System. Very long lives (essentially immortality) would allow us to happily go off and colonize other star systems, without also believing that we'll never see again those we leave behind. If you mean that we could all go off and live in some kind of virtual reality, you are welcome to do this yourself but should know that many people would not like that idea at all. There's something about Reality that attracts people. As for implementing birth control, we have an almost adequate technology to do that now (except for pills for men, and side effects). The problem comes when we get to the issue of APPLYING that technology, something no better technology is likely to solve. Rights and education for women, though, does seem to help a lot in countries with a high birth rate, but can run into obvious political problems. I am saying this not because I am against nanotechnology (how can I be against it! With biotechnology we've already gone very far along that path) but merely pointing out that other things are also needed. And if we really tried to convince teachers that nanotechnology WOULD solve those problems, we'd find ourselves laughed off the stage. And they would go on describing cryonics as before. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11450