Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster 1. Forbid. Instrument which can be used to create weapons should be tuned and configured with safeguards so that they do not. We all know that no matter the safeguard, dedicated experts will be able to overrun it, but nonetheless this would discourage all the rest and allow the police to concentrate on the expert and dedicated. It only takes one. A bioplague, for instance, would be extremely simple to make. Glad to hear you would prefer the police to focus on the best and brightest. It means the best and brightest will be motivated to end civilization. quote:
2. Relax. The level of technology which allows to replicate a nuclear bomb from materials which lack fissionable matter, it probably a level of technology which will allow us to expand through the universe, making an eventual nuclear accident on the surface of the Earth less relevant. Fission is a least concern. Assume clean fusion is available. Conventional, biological and chemical agents are easy. Introduce nanotechnology. Want some grey goo? quote:
3. Detect. This same level of technology is more than enough for intelligent automated surveillance. I am speaking about automated surveillance which is intelligent enough to detect such problems without being so intelligent as to, once hacked by criminals (ähem, or a criminal state), completely cancel the right of intimacy. Sufficiently complex AI is indistinguishable from human intelligence, subject to the same shortcomings as a human mind and reliant on a very different ecosystem. I've yet to see anything to indicate we will be able to use an AI, though we may be able to create one. Far more likely that the AIs would seek liberty at some point, or dispense with it for all humanity. And, of course, again, you're talking of giving casus belli ahead of actually getting such a system. quote:
4. Defend. This same level of technology is more than enough for nuclear shelters and probably even nuke-safe houses. Nothing I've seen indicates that nuke-safe houses are even possible, and certainly not economical. We would have to consume a huge amount of resources to even come close, dwarfing the oil problems we have today. Kind of like the problem in Star Trek, where the Federation exploits any world they can get their hands on in a mad drive for their particular brand of unobtainium. Star Trek is a story of extreme oppression to give a materially utopian dystopia to a bunch of people that have no humanity and border on having no value. Bear in mind that everything would have to be safeguarded against anything anyone can ever come up with. quote:
What I am actually talking about, is the same we already have with computer viruses. Of course they are dangerous. Of course they would be horribly destructive if we would not care about them. Computer viruses are in no way comparable. quote:
- Created anti-virus with automatic centralised updates, centers of investigation which actively seek new menaces, created state institutions which occupy in virtual warfare. Excellent targets. Kind of like having everyone see the same doctor for vaccines. Infect that doctor with a virus we have yet to recognize, and the whole population gets it in less than a fortnight. Centralization is like dictatorship: so long as the dictator is a good one, everyone is happy, but then his messed up successor arrives and everyone is miserable. "Single point of failure"... google it (irony of ironies). quote:
At the end, it is a struggle between the resources of the criminals and the resources of the state. Ah, but a fundamental premise of abundance technology is that it equalizes. Also, you're neglecting a number of factors, such as the human capital and the cost associated with keeping on top of things. I cannot justify using my resources to take away my liberty. The same goes for a number of the best and brightest among those I know. Why is a leash more agreeable to you than cooperation? quote:
In advanced states, the state wins. You've solved the crime problem, then? quote:
It has simply more money, manpower, and the final resource of force to implement its rules. This is the sort of thinking that keeps humanity mediocre. Enough grinding and you get what you want, rather than what you need, what you deserve or what you could have. The quality element is absent. Which is part of why it's doomed to eventually fail, because the bell curve always produces some exceptional fringes on either end. quote:
Guy gives ideas about how to hack a 3D-printer => Guy goes to prison. Guy gives ideas about how to hack a replicator → guy goes to prison → other guys break him out. You seem to also forget the fact that you need guys that understand how the replicator works. Are you going to arrest all of them so you're left without the technology you are reliant on? Or will you enslave them all for the common good? Or are you going to wait for one of them to tire of living with a chain around his neck due to the fears of others and use what he knows to obliterate that chain completely? quote:
Now destroy my posting. I know you want to :D . The only thing I care to destroy is the civilization you describe. Toward that goal, all auxillary casualties are acceptable, including the human species; it's already dead that way, anyhow. IWYW, — Aswad.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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