X-Message-Number: 32814
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 08:05:28 -0700
Subject: [Perry Metzger] Re: Cryonet #32800
From: MARK PLUS <>


>Let me start by saying that if nano is impossible, you are impossible, because 
you are made of molecular machines. How do you function if molecular machines 
can't function?

Yes, and the existence of the Hula-Hoop shows that a sufficiently
advanced civilization could build Larry Niven's Ringworld.

You'll have to try harder than that.

The "molecular machines" in biology don't incorporate principles from
macroscopic mechanical engineering, because those principles don't
work on that scale. Locklin and other critics like Richard Smalley,
Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, have pointed that out to the
Drexlerologists, but apparently to no effect on the True Believers.


>Sure, there are lots of people taking money for nanotechnology research -- 
materials scientists and synthetic organic chemists got a huge bonanza in 
funding by relabeling their existing work
"nanotechnology" -- but the number of people who are directly working
on molecular  manufacturing is so small the community could be wiped
out in a good car accident.

Drexlerologists have had a quarter century to make their case for more
people and more funding, in an era when other dubious ideas like
"green energy" don't seem to have trouble finding resources. What does
that say about Drexlerology's reputation? In the absence of tangible
results, you can play the can-rattling "Neglected Visionary" game for
only so long before you lose status, as Nikola Tesla discovered later
in his life.

As a rule of thumb, it seems to me that a new technology can progress
quickly if it exploits the correct principles of physics from the
beginning, something that I have yet to see demonstrated in
Drexlerology.

I get the impression that Drexler went out of his way to associate his
speculations with cryonics in the 1980's, when he didn't have to. From
hindsight he probably didn't do us a favor. Cryonicists' uncritical
embrace of Drexlerology (with the notable exception of Thomas
Donaldson) have led us down a blind alley for the last 25 years. If
Drexler had ignored cryonics instead, we might have had the
opportunity to do more constructive thinking about revival scenarios.

As an aside, I probably should have anticipated the level of passion I
would generate by bringing up this subject, given my layman's
knowledge of Terror Management Theory. Many cryonicists have become
dependent on Drexlerology for their anxiety buffers, so it upsets them
when someone inside the tribe, so to speak, exposes them to mortality
salience by questioning Drexlerology's validity.


-- 
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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