X-Message-Number: 7275
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Strawman for Thomas
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 03:18:34 +1100 (EST)

Thomas Donaldson writes,

>So you believe that only the nanotechnology pushed by Drexler et all can
>"save us"? Why don't you find a good book on biochemistry and another on
>biotechnology and curl up with them for a good read before you make such
>a decision.

I'm quite willing to entertain the idea that biotech might result in
great technological advances. Nevertheless, to deploy biotech, we must
overcome the same problems that are presently facing regular
agriculture: stop the accelerating degradation of global arable land,
stop the accelerating decimation of ancillary biota, find a way to
bolster dwindling supplies of fresh water, and develop rational methods
of husbanding our natural resources on global scales.

Even if biotech results in great potential gains in the productivity of
agriculture, these other problems must prevent realisation of this
potential. The massive extent of these problems is detailed in links
from the up-wing page I referred to earlier - I don't propose to
recapitulate that page here.

But in fact I'm not suggesting that only Drexlerian nanotech can fix
problems like these; I'm suggesting that a technology of some equivalent
power must be developed very rapidly, or else nature will deal with
these problems via its usual means.

>Yes, we will need more food and thus more productive farms. Guess what is
>going on there right now? Gene modification and insertion of genes to make
>plants resistant to pests of all kinds. We will need all kinds of things,
>and various scientists are busily getting them. 

Given sufficient time and money, anything is possible; what concerns me
is that conjectures like this are not defined in terms of time and money.
Of course science is working on these problems ... but if it takes twice
as much time and money than we have at our disposal before dieback sets in,
then that won't do us much good. 

>As for population, the
>last figures I read (from SCIENCE, in fact) suggest that the growth rate
>is now falling, EVEN in countries which are very poor whose people lack
>much education (the desire not to see one's children die is not one held
>only by the rich, or those who live in developed countries ... and means 
>of preventing excess births have existed for millenia ... not gentle means,
>such as those we have now, but means, infanticide among them).

Infanticide, as a means of population control, generally only occurs
under two circumstances; the one is when a population is already
starving, and the other is when totalitarian regimes enforce it. But I
don't question that population growth is slowing. In fact, it would be
remarkable if it did not slow as global resources stretch. The question
is whether it will approach a nice asymptote of 12 billion, as per the
UN projections, or whether it will snap back as per the Cornell
projections of Pimentel and co. Since we have no evidence of any
population of any biological creature stabilising to an asymptote when
its resources are stretched to breaking, I can't see that the Cornell
figures are not realistic - and they project a global human population
of 2 billion in 2100.

>And yes, with present 
>technology, we can feed, clothe, and house the expected future population
>of the Earth. 

We can't even feed, clothe and house our present day population. This is
largely due to political idiocies, true, but nothing suggests that these
political idiocies are reduced when resources are stretched; if Africa is
any kind of guide, political idiocy increases in direct proportion to
resource scarcity.

>The arguments really aren't over that, but over just what we
>might have to give up to do so. I doubt very much, however, that we will
>give up technological progress entirely, and eventually the choices will
>become better.

The scenario that scares me is this: around about 2030-2070, global
devastation of ecological resources, along with attendant political
mismanagement, produce a global famine. Billions throughout Asia,
Africa, South America and Western Europe become desperate; many nations
in these regions possess weapons of mass destruction, and, when faced
with extinction, they will not hesitate to employ them, both to extort
resources from the first world and for less rational reasons. The
resultant Plagues and economic disruptions cripple first world
technological capabilities, and engineering progress stops dead.
With the rest of the world barren and toxic, the ecologies of the first
world are hit hard; their economies follow and humanity spirals down into
a new dark age.

I imagine that humanity would eventually recover from this; if any
macrofauna survived, it would be man. But I don't imagine that any
cryonauts would survive it - global technological disruption would do us
in even if the resurgence of feudalism didn't.

Now I'm not suggesting that this scenario is certainly what we're going
to face - it's in line with all of Jay Hanson's observations, but I tend
to think engineering can save us from it. The engineering that I think
shows most promise is indeed nanotech, but perhaps we can use the above
scenario to check out the other possibilities; can you explain how you
think biotech is likely to be deployed so as to prevent a cataclysm like
this?

Peter Merel.


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7275