5 ms·

Why does nobody fear grey goo? Runaway highly efficient self-repairing materials are the stuff of nightmares?

SilasX 7y ago
Do they have a culture of "know how to disrupt the metabolism before you leave it to grow on its own"?
joe_the_user 7y ago
Because self-organization/self-reproduction is a hard problem that living things have been imperfectly trying to solve for millions of years without the creation "grey goo"? I mean, for a self-reproducing entity, energy is still going to be a limit on motion and energy isn't easily available in the natural environment. All the potential sources of energy require a particular chemical path to be transformed into usable energy and just constructing an entity capable of reproducing itself given specific materials and energy doesn't give you this.
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  Flight is a hard problem that living organisms have been working on for millions of years, yet human engineered systems fly higher, faster, and further. How do you know that human engineered systems can't also be much better at self replication and hence create grey goo?
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    I don't necessarily think that human-engineered gray goo is impossible. But the context is whether gray goo is going to be created accidentally and that seems unlikely. Just self-reproduction is a different problem than breaking down X energy source and moreover, the breakdown of each given source of chemical energy is a different and hard problem (the breakdown of cellulose by bacteria took a long time to evolve, for example). So creating a "breaks down anything" micro-organism (or nanite or whatever) merely by doing a bit of haphazard DNA manipulation doesn't seem like a big danger. If you had human who grasped the broader principles behind micro-engineering and wanted gray-goo, well, then you'd have reason to worry. There's little evidence of this, however.
  - MRD85 7y ago
    Flight by itself isn't something that nature has developed. It has developed self-replicating beings that can fly. Humans are still a long way off self-replicating aircraft.
    - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
      Imagine a airborne spirondella version, designed to float by self-produced methan. The sky would turn dark-green with there clouds, and ocassionally burn.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  We already have a chemical better version of photosynthesis in the labs - if i remember correctly about 3x as effective. A simple runaway assembler with snythetic photosynthesis like a lichen would overgrow natural organisms quite fast.
xiphias2 7y ago
Because they are not smart. Intelligence often wins over simple aggressive behaviour. Also this is why AI is so scary.
- scottie_m 7y ago
  For most of history, and increasingly today the simple aggressive behavior of bacteria, viruses and fungi was uncontested. For all of our intelligence, they still win a lot, and our best efforts are becoming less effective as they adapt. They don’t even have nervous systems, but numbers and a fast reproductive cycle are a bitch. See also: a colony of army ants killing everything in front of them.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    I don't see it happening. In the past they were able to kill more than 50% of humanity. I don't believe something similar will adapt by itself again. We have internet, full body suits, a lot of technology to defend against them.
    - scottie_m 7y ago
      Sure, and yet mosquitoes alone infect over 700m people a year with various diseases, and rack up more than a million deaths each year. I find the Internet is surprisingly ineffective against malaria or dengue too. It’s also true that few people can or would wear a full body suit all day, every day. For god’s sake, we can’t even get everyone to wear a condom, never mind biohazard suits. Still I respect your optimism, however unfounded it seems to me. I think the next really nasty flu will probably disabuse you of it, but I hope I’m wrong.
      - erik_landerholm 7y ago
        He said 50% of humanity, while a million people is a large number to us it’s nowhere near 50% of humanity.

Do they have a culture of "know how to disrupt the metabolism before you leave it to grow on its own"?

Because self-organization/self-reproduction is a hard problem that living things have been imperfectly trying to solve for millions of years without the creation "grey goo"? I mean, for a self-reproducing entity, energy is still going to be a limit on motion and energy isn't easily available in the natural environment. All the potential sources of energy require a particular chemical path to be transformed into usable energy and just constructing an entity capable of reproducing itself given specific materials and energy doesn't give you this.

ALittleLight 7y ago
Flight is a hard problem that living organisms have been working on for millions of years, yet human engineered systems fly higher, faster, and further. How do you know that human engineered systems can't also be much better at self replication and hence create grey goo?
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  I don't necessarily think that human-engineered gray goo is impossible. But the context is whether gray goo is going to be created accidentally and that seems unlikely. Just self-reproduction is a different problem than breaking down X energy source and moreover, the breakdown of each given source of chemical energy is a different and hard problem (the breakdown of cellulose by bacteria took a long time to evolve, for example). So creating a "breaks down anything" micro-organism (or nanite or whatever) merely by doing a bit of haphazard DNA manipulation doesn't seem like a big danger. If you had human who grasped the broader principles behind micro-engineering and wanted gray-goo, well, then you'd have reason to worry. There's little evidence of this, however.
- MRD85 7y ago
  Flight by itself isn't something that nature has developed. It has developed self-replicating beings that can fly. Humans are still a long way off self-replicating aircraft.
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Imagine a airborne spirondella version, designed to float by self-produced methan. The sky would turn dark-green with there clouds, and ocassionally burn.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
We already have a chemical better version of photosynthesis in the labs - if i remember correctly about 3x as effective. A simple runaway assembler with snythetic photosynthesis like a lichen would overgrow natural organisms quite fast.

xiphias2 7y ago

Because they are not smart. Intelligence often wins over simple aggressive behaviour. Also this is why AI is so scary.

scottie_m 7y ago
For most of history, and increasingly today the simple aggressive behavior of bacteria, viruses and fungi was uncontested. For all of our intelligence, they still win a lot, and our best efforts are becoming less effective as they adapt. They don’t even have nervous systems, but numbers and a fast reproductive cycle are a bitch. See also: a colony of army ants killing everything in front of them.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  I don't see it happening. In the past they were able to kill more than 50% of humanity. I don't believe something similar will adapt by itself again. We have internet, full body suits, a lot of technology to defend against them.
  - scottie_m 7y ago
    Sure, and yet mosquitoes alone infect over 700m people a year with various diseases, and rack up more than a million deaths each year. I find the Internet is surprisingly ineffective against malaria or dengue too. It’s also true that few people can or would wear a full body suit all day, every day. For god’s sake, we can’t even get everyone to wear a condom, never mind biohazard suits. Still I respect your optimism, however unfounded it seems to me. I think the next really nasty flu will probably disabuse you of it, but I hope I’m wrong.
    - erik_landerholm 7y ago
      He said 50% of humanity, while a million people is a large number to us it’s nowhere near 50% of humanity.