Nanosantalogical Feasibility

Over on infeasible.org's endlessly amusing (in a good way) "Refuting Transhumanism" blog, Eric Drexler was described by the author in a post from a couple of days ago as having "proudly claimed that no one has ever disproved his ideas on molecular nanotechnology and that this means that his ideas are feasible."

I wish that a link to this specific claim had been provided if such a thing exists. But be that as it may, if it is true that Drexler actually seriously made an argument of the form cited in the complaint, then that appears to be an awfully straightforward example of the fallacy ad ignorantiam (sorry to be a pedant), mistaking the lack of a refutation as a substantiation of a claim, and I daresay even partisans for Drexlerian nanotechnology would strongly prefer arguments of his that aren't fallacious in this way.

I enjoyed reading Drexler's Engines of Creation back in the mid-eighties, right when it was published and when I was still something of a kid. To this day I may well personally find Eric Drexler's ideas more worthy of serious consideration in some respects than infeasible's author does. But I do share his perfectly proper disdain for the handwaving of technophiliacs in what I call the Nanosantalogical Variation of Superlative Technology Discourse.

Friend of Blog Michael Anissimov posted a comment to infeasible's post, asking the author, "Can you explain how the existence of living organisms doesn't validate Drexler's ideas? All he is really talking about are artificial, programmable ribosomes." Needless to say, I can't speak for the blogger, but I did have a response, and one that seemed helpful as a way of getting at what I mean by Superlative Technology Discourse more particularly.

In the posted quote (presumably) authored or paraphrased by Drexler, he obviously isn't claiming that the existence of living organisms means that the era of nanotechnology (in the "robust" Drexlerian sense of human specified and controlled, replicative molecular manufacturing) has already arrived, does he? That's surely the force of the "artificial" in Michael's own formulation of his question. And the gap between actually existing organisms and desired Drexlerian nanotechnologies is of course the same gap that distinguishes this analogy from a valid deduction. This obviously doesn't mean the analogy hasn't anything to recommend it, just that the analogy can't bear the weight with which Superlative Technology Discourse in its Nanosantalogical Variation would want to freight it.

I must say I do think it is interesting how technophiliacs often seem to treat philosophical arguments by analogy that properly function to illuminate incredibly broad theses as if they likewise constitute arguments demonstrating practical viability, or even inevitability, or even the technodevelopmental imminence of some superlative technology they are enthused about at the moment.

Thus polemicists for the Strong Program of Artificial Intelligence regularly seem to leap from the reasonable enough philosophical notion that [1] if human consciousness is not supernatural then it should be susceptible in principle to instrumentally adequate scientifically warranted description, to the radically different idea that [2] within 20 years (a time-frame thus far always deferred yet curiously never revoked with each failure of the prediction) human beings will have overcome all the practical, theoretical, and sociocultural hurdles that currently frustrate ongoing projects to create artificial intelligence.

As with the gap between living organisms and Drexlerian nanotech (not to mention the fantasies of a circumvention of the deep and abiding barriers to utopian, often literally libertopian, construals of a post-political abundance that characterize too much nanosantalogical discourse), hype-notized handwavers tend to discover that the historical, infrastructural, sociocultural complexities, as well as the caveats that tend to freight real-world lab results, all radically frustrate the superlative formulations that might seem logically compatible with general thought experiments and proofs of concept.

(For those who are interested in these things: Other variations of Superlative Technology Discourse include, in my view, the Singularitarian Variation, the Immortalist Variation, and the Technocratic Variation. These Variations of Superlative Technology Discourse are very much not to be confused with reasonable and urgently needed technoprogressive stakeholder discourses on actual and emerging quandaries of nanoscale toxicity, actual and emerging quandaries of molecular biotechnology, actual and emerging quandaries of network and software security, actual and emerging quandaries of genetic, prosthetic, cognitive, and longevity medicine, actual and emerging quandaries of accountability of elected representatives to warranted scientific consensus, and so on. The differences between Superlative Technology Discourses and Technoprogressive Discourses are complicated to analyze, but, honestly, pretty easy to spot. Some rules of thumb: Precisely to the contrary of Superlative Technology Discourses, Technoprogressive Discourses tend to [1] resist transcendental formulations, [2] emphasize the concrete social and historical contexts of technoscientific change, [3] stress the existence of a diversity of stakeholders to technoscientific research and development [4] as well as the priority of democratic institutions and accountable processes to ensure the proper regulation of and fairest distribution of the costs, risks, and benefits of technoscientific changes, [5] reflect the caveats of actual experimental science, and [6] provide little support or inducement for the formation of personal sub(cult)ural identifications with particular technodevelopmental forecasts, scenarios, or fetishized technologies, either existing or projected, nor for the curiously marginalizing and defensive membership organizations that seem to arise from such abstract identifications.)