Who are you accusing of jumping to this conclusion? The Lifeboat people? Or the person you originally responded to?

Neither one said we _will_ have nanotech, they both just said it was a possibility, and that if there is, there's the chance it could become extremely dangerous. (I read the posters comment as "A possible flaw is... that nanotech will be available," ie a possiblity, not a definite thing)

Arguing that nanotechnology can mean any number of things is meaningless. They've specified what type of nanotech they're worried about, the kind that could be turned into grey goo. Clearly they're not worried about the entire world being electroplated ;)

The only thing i'd argue with is the assumption by the poster your responded to that if nanotech is developed, the lifeboat will be intercepted by near lights speed nanotech probes and therefore any disaster that happens to earth will happen to the lifeboat:

A: I suspect that the ability to create grey goo will occur before near light speed or beyond light speed travel is developed, so if a disaster happens, it's likely to happen before that point.

B: Even if it does happen afterwards, or the nanobots take a longer time catching up at sublight speeds, it's not likely the particular nanobots that are a threat will end up in space probes unless someone is intentionally trying to destroy all human life. The risk of grey goo is that it could be created by accident in an experiment, or be manufactured by (very, VERY insane) terrorists in a small lab. However building it with a time delay function and launching it into space would require both a lot of planning and a lot of resources.

C: As mentioned on the Lifeboat site, it's a lot easier to maintain security over a small area than a large one. Creating an active nanobot defense over the entire earth would be almost impossible, creating one in a spaceship/colony would be many orders of magnitude easier.

This kind of thing is a pretty typical response for a person who hears their questioning of a belief system questioned.

We could keep this up all day! :)

I don't know who said that first, but I read it here on Slashdot. I like Vinge's fiction, but the Singularity thing strikes me as an apocalyptic/transcendent/eschatological scenario for people who can't stomach the Book of Revelation.

What is also nonsensical about the singularity idea is it divorces scientific advancement from those responsible for producing it: humans. There is not an exponentially increasing number of scientists to keep up with the supposedly exponentially increasing level of tech and knowledge. You CAN'T get the amount of scientific advancement in a day that you get in a year unless there is a corresponding increase in the number of scientists doing the work AND they give up on the workday and go hellbent 24/7.

Naw. Science advances only as quickly as humans can do the grunt work. The rate of advancement has a rate wall that cannot be exceeded dependent on 1) number of scientists in each field, 2) the rate they can ingest and gain understanding of other's works and actually process the information into something useable - the larger the body of work, the longer it takes to reach understanding because there is so much more to take in), 3) productive hours in a day, 4) funding (science isn't free - it gets more and more expensive all the time, depending on the area).

I'm certain I'm leaving things out but science doesn't do itself. It is a human activity limited by the limits of the tool conducting it.

Captain: Make it slow.

i dont know if, or how much things will change in the future, but as it stands right now we seem to be on the path to self destruction, or at least earth destruction.

Within a 100 light-year radius, that will probably be five or ten.

I'd rather have one generation starship than a dozen LEO space stations.

If you have a space elevator [...] and the ground point of the elevator becomes un-teathered (e.g. no longer attached to earth) what happens?

Inevitably some group is going to oppose the elevator and attempt to use force to bring it down. Just look at the animal rights groups that blow up labs conducting animal research.

Why is it inevitable that someone will oppose a space elevator? I don't know of anyone who thinks that such a construction would be unethical, the way that many people think certain animal research is. The comparison doesn't seem to connect.

What you'd need to worry about more is anyone who saw it as a symbol of the US/Western Civilization/Whatever group some terrorists have a grudge again. I don't think the 9/11 terrorists thought that the WTC was inherently bad for being a very tall building or something like that.

What you'd need to worry about more is anyone who saw it as a symbol of the US/Western Civilization/Whatever group some terrorists have a grudge again. I don't think the 9/11 terrorists thought that the WTC was inherently bad for being a very tall building or something like that.

Note that the anchor point (the place it's built above) has to be on the equator as well.

There'd be quite a few oscillations: there'd be a natural oscillatory mode depending on the actual length of the elevator cable. These could be damped, however, so no, there doesn't NEED to be oscillations

I've seen a proposal for an elevator on Mars that was carefully oscillated to avoid the regular passage of an inconvenient moon.

since an elevator would be tethered, does this affect the minimum stable height?

that's what we've got deflector dishes for

I say we just offload all the extremists and morons onto Mars. We'll call it the "Get Off Of Our Planet" (GOOOP) project.

Just because an atmosphere is not breathable doesn't mean it does not exist. Take a seedy nightclub or pub as an example. Just because the cigarette smoke, BO and other such cruft makes it absolutely unbarable to breath doesn't make it a vacume.

Mars' atmosphere is mainly CO2 with a little N2 floating around so it would just be like a paper bag that has been breathed into and from for a while but with a little more CO2.

I guess you are right that someone would die after landing on Mars because it has no breathable oxygen. However they would live longer than you thought because they would not pop like one would on a planet totally devoid of atmosphere (at least not as fast). The temperature would not be as extreme either. I guess if you packed George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Areial Sharon, Yasser Arafat and anyone who supports these people into the rocket with a few scuba sets, some warm angora sweaters and some strong Burbon (for staying warm on the cold martian nights) they could form nice friendly community until they either run out of burbon/oxygen or renounce violence and we can fly them back home.

Come to think about it that is a pretty cool idea.

That depends, if there were less scuba sets than people it could get very interesting very fast.

Besides, the atmosphere on mars is very very thin, much lower than at the top of everest if I remmeber correctly. The problem with really low air presure (ignoring the lack of any o2) is that your lungs start to leak water ending in what is effectively drowning. Even with an o2 supply climbers effectively start dying once the air gets two thin. Exactly how long you could last in the open on mars with an o2 supply I couldn't tell you but I'm not sure I'd like to find out.

Well, if you gonna do it, you should do it with style! ;-)

I say we just offload all the extremists and morons onto Mars....That should help the longevity of the human race, although I can't speak for the "Mars colonists"

His mars colonists are lonely exiles, bored stiff and blasting their minds out on drugs to try to recall some better life (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch). They read old [read: 50s and earlier] pulp sci-fi about planetary exploration because it's so much more fun then their own experience (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). There's no glory. There's just a love and a longing for the earth, and a desire for the right to return to it.

It's certainly possible that humanity could destroy itself and/or the world with any one of hundreds of new technologies, but the odds are worse than they were in the days of the Cuban missile crisis, and we pulled through that one. Maybe you should check the Doomsday Clock [thebulletin.org] next time, folks.

Sci-fi's are often uncannily accurate at predicting the future.

Uhm. Jules Verne, yes, he did predict things that did happen - well, submarines, and we did go to the moon. We didn't go to the center of the earth. I don't care about Googling for his other books right now.

Then we get to HG Wells... Wars with aliens, time machines, anti gravity, ...

Since then... None of the 20th century SF seems to have gotten the world around the year 2000 right. Cell phones are everywhere, personal computing is cheap and used for games, there's the Internet, and maybe we'll even finish the current space station in ten years. There is some cloning and biotech and we use it for medicine. There have been a few terrorist attacks, and now the whole world is obsessed with them.

Now what did SF tell us... Rockets! Space colonies! World War Three! One World Government! Aliens! FTL travel! And of course, flying cars.

My first guess is that SF has been performing less (at predicting the future) than you would expect of pure chance. But there have been great books :-)

Since then... None of the 20th century SF seems to have gotten the world around the year 2000 right.

Read some of John Brunner's work, notably Stand on Zanzibar [scifi.com] and The Shockwave Rider [scifi.com]. Written in the 60s and 70s, it's scary how well they seem to be predicting the early 21st century.

• A world divided into regional coalitions that combine in shifting alliances. The portrayal of other cultures in simplistic black-and-white terms. Government efforts to downplay our previous relations with our current "friends" and "enemies".
• Perpetual war, mostly in far-away places, to divert attention from domestic problems. Lotteries and content-free televised entertainment to do the same.
• An anti-knowledge, anti-scientific mindset in popular culture and government, where knowledge and understanding are replaced by doctrinal belief systems.
• Increasing economic stratification in society, with institutions of power cooperating to place their inter-related self-interest over the common good.
• Popular music based entirely on rhythmic patterns, with no melody. Yes, in 1948 Orwell predicted rap.

Or perhaps it would just be the system of propulsion, which just happens to obliterate whatever we happened to be around at the time as part of day to day operations :)

Either that, or hope that when we go bye-bye, the next smart Earth race brings us back Jurassic Park style in hopes there's a storm and we escape our cages.

Why not shoot our DNA off into space...

C.F. "The Great Space Fuck" by Kurt Vonnegut? :-)

I'm not sure running away is the right answer, but I would be cautious in calling the technological singularity a "good thing." Those who are a product of it will likely consider it one, but those of us who precipitate it likely will not, and will long for the "good old days" from before the singularity.

Anyway, the guy in the article isn't afraid of the singularity, as such, he's afraid of the dangers that might arise (accidentally or through terrorism): grey goo from nanotech, killer diseases from bioengineering, Terminators from AI, and so forth. The singularity will simply accelerate development of these technologies (and hopefully, ones to counter the dangers, too).

> Huh, I'm not sure it's a GOOD thing. Isn't the idea that it's an unpredictable thing? As I understand it,
>the theory is that beyond the technological singularity, human society (if it even exists)
>will be radically transformed. So, as a person born before the singularity, I probably wouldn't like it.

The reason this singularity is bad (according to the lifeboat people) is that it will cause several inventions that we will not be able to handle correctly. More importantly they talk about 'gray goo', a kind of nano-robot that instantly eats all living organisms and would kill of the entire planet once it is invented. The lifeboat people claim that this grey goo will be invented BEFORE we are able to cope with it. Additionally they also talk about artifical black holes and other calamities that will be invented before mankind is capable of properly controlling that stuff.

Greetings,