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

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