Accelerating Future

“The main thing that stands between the human species and the creation of a supervirus is a sense of responsibility among individual biologists.”
– Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer, page 227

From a 2002 article by Danny Penman in The Guardian:

“A few months’ work in a makeshift laboratory is all it would take to produce a biological weapon that could kill hundreds of millions of people.

The scientific information is freely available and the raw materials easily sourced. The only difficult part would be mastering the necessary scientific skills, and they are taught on most biology degree courses.

One of the simplest ways of constructing a biological weapon would be to engineer an existing human disease and to make it even more lethal. Something as simple as the flu virus, when engineered with the gene for botulinum toxin, could wipe out a significant part of the human race. A low dose of this toxin is the main ingredient in cosmetic botox injections.

The genetic sequence for the toxin is freely available. This sequence could then be uploaded to a commonly available gene synthesizer, which would churn out millions of copies of the gene in a few hours. The flu virus would then be grown in the presence of this newly synthesized gene. As the virus reproduced, a few of the virus particles would absorb the gene. With a bit of luck, the budding terrorist would have produced a new biological weapon.”

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Human beings are inherently vulnerable to a significant number of lethal compounds. Given a highly contagious biological vector to distribute these compounds, the potential outcome is grim. Given adequate tools, knowledge, and time, groups could manufacture several such viruses and release them simultaneously in different areas, thwarting quarantine and antidote efforts. Governments know this — hence the Biological Weapons Convention. Bio-weapons are off-limits for warfare at the international level, but such rules might break down in the case of a large enough war, and will not be respected by rogue parties.

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DARPA gave it to them:

“RICHARDSON, Texas, Oct. 2 — Zyvex Labs today announced the award of a $9.7M program funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and Texas’ ETF (Emerging Technology Fund). The goal of this effort is to develop a new manufacturing technique that enables “Tip-Based Nanofabrication” to accelerate the transition of nanotechnology from the laboratory to commercial products. Starting with the construction of ‘one-at-a-time’ atomically precise, ‘quantum dot’ nanotech-based products in volume at practical production rates and costs. Harnessing this capability will position the United States and Texas with the fundamental technology to develop next-generation quantum dot applications for military and commercial applications such as advanced communications, metrology, and quantum computers. The spin-off nanomanufacturing capabilities from that early application will result in revolutionary nanotech products in follow-on development.”

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In my opinion, current advocates of molecular nanotechnology (MNT) aren’t doing enough to address the risks. Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute advocates an open source physical security model, which is helpful, but should be accompanied by more specific recommendations to form a seed around which further ideas can accrete. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has laid out the technological specs of MNT and called for more discussion, but has provided little in the way of concrete recommendations. Ray Kurzweil seems to just think that everything will pretty much automatically turn out fine.

Nanofactories (manufacturing units based on MNT) will need to have extensive, unhackable built-in safeguards in order to be safe. If they can be hacked and these hacked nanofactories cannot be recovered, that could be very bad (significantly worse that terrorists getting weapons-grade uranium). That’s a phrase I’d like MNT advocates to repeat publicly: “terrorists or tyrants getting their hands on unlocked nanofactories would be far worse than weapons-grade uranium”. Unlocked (or poorly regulated) nanofactories would be able to build devices that enrich uranium many times more effectively than current centrifuge technology. That’s somewhat of a problem, unless we plan to gather up all the uranium on the planet and keep it locked up in vaults.

If unhackable nanofactories cannot be built, then to push ahead on the technology would be irresponsible. Mainstream “experts” will be saying this in 5-15 years, but I’m saying it now.

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It’s important to realize the obvious: that every human problem, every malady, every concern, every evil, is at root simply a suboptimal arrangement of atoms and molecules. If this sounds quasi-spiritual, it’s because it is — for millennia, pre-scientific humans have attributed all ills to various agents — the gods, magicians, and other humans. This is because these ills demand an explanation, and we didn’t have a plausible one, so we made it up. Now, at least in the abstract, we have a concrete, very likely correct answer: suboptimal atomic arrangements.

This realization is neither trivial nor too broad to be useless. If your problems are caused by the gods (that some people sadly still believe in…), then to solve them, you either need to give up, on engage in rituals (prayer, sacrifice, etc.) that have an empirical impact of precisely zero. The ultimate promise is that the gods or God will come at the end of time to make everything better. Unfortunately (?) for us, that will never happen.

The alternative is to slash all spirits from your worldview and model the world as a game board where all the pieces are humans. This too isn’t quite correct, as many who avoid the error of deification of Nature fall right into the trap of the fundamental attribution error, where everything that goes right or wrong becomes some human’s fault or credit. The attribution error is absolutely omnipresent in politics, because invoking it also invokes human political emotions that a leader can easily use to manipulate everyone who has never heard of the error. Since this is practically everyone, it’s politically rational to exploit it to its fullest, and a self-reinforcing feedback loop of error is created. Excuse me, but there are a lot of relevant forces in this world besides deliberate human choice. The shared biases of all human beings come to mind, as do biological realities such as the existence of malaria, and economic realities such as centralized manufacturing.

One sidenote on the notion that “all ills are caused by suboptimal atomic arrangements”. People will have different definitions of what is suboptimal, that is patently obvious. That doesn’t change the fact the subjective personal ills are caused by suboptimal atomic rearrangements, or that there’s a huge space in the center of the Venn diagram of shared humans goals that is specified by certain specific atomic arrangements. Simply because we can’t specify all these arrangements doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Despite my recognition of a physicalist basis to all problems, I do not advocate a universal convergence towards One True Atomic Pattern or other such absolutist nonsense. I simply wish us to recognize that all shared human problems can be ultimately diagnosed and remedied using the scientific method plus remedial effort: use tests to determine the suboptimal atomic arrangements, then devise engineering solutions to rearrange current arrangements into a more optimal state. This holds true for mental phenomena as well as phenomena in the external world — my brain is “the external world” for others and it is entirely physical. Those who advocate an aphysical basis for consciousness are making the same mystical mistakes that our ancestors have yawn-inducingly made for thousands of years. I am special even if my consciousness has a purely physical basis.

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It really does exist!

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