Subject: bill joy is hooey
a biologist's resp. to > By Bill Joy, Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A29
Notes from India: Some of the President's highest level science policy
makers converged here during his visit in April. In discussions with
their Indian counterparts, Bill Joy's ideas kept surfacing, so I finally
looked up his original longer article on Wired's website. Sorry
everyone, but it's balogna, sheer hubris.
Little nanobots taking over the world. With apologies to any physicist
and other "hard" scientist who might read this, non-biologists often err
in this direction. For example, one promise from nanotechnologists is
that they'll make little robots that can swim through our bloodstream to
seek out and eliminate cancer cells. In the real world, they would have
the same problem our immune system has in distinguishing neoplastic from
normal cells, the needle from the hay.
It's techno-hype, neither the first nor the last. Used with discretion,
it keeps the research grant money flowing to mostly worthy causes. In
Bill Joy's hands, it just feeds into the lastest popular
techno-fear-mongering.
Bill Joy thinks self-replicating gizmos are just around the corner. But
non-biological self-assembling devices that can operate in real-world
conditions are a very very long way off.
Of course, we have already developed self-assembling or self-replicating
widgets that work under very special conditions with specially supplied
parts. These include computer viruses (like the love bug that did $10
billion dollars damage to the world economy this spring), and enzymes
that can catalyze their own formation.
But a Von Neumann device that could exist on its own in the outside
world and make copies of itself from whatever material is at hand is
incredibly far-fetched. (I'll grant Joy one thing: if the time ever
does come, I hope they're not developed on Earth; somewhere off-planet
would be best, where they could refine rare metals or volatiles to be
harvested later).
The simplest model for a self-replicating device, the "Universal
Constructor," was developed on paper by Von Neumann back in the 1940s.
It requires a manipulator arm which can assemble literally anything,
including itself, from a supply of parts. It also needs a power source
and a "brain," which he called the Universal Computer. These are very
different and complicated things, but the constructor would have to make
all three in order to truly copy itself.
Under any conditions I can imagine, simply limiting the supply of parts
would limit replication. If they're not specialized parts, but common
atoms or molecules from the surrounding environment, then nanoscale
molecular positioning and "tip chemistry" would require a vacuum and/or
other special environmental conditions unlikely to exist outside a
laboratory.
Not very robust this grey goo, and not likely to escape. It doesn't
sound very threatening to us carbon-based life forms, or even to the
machines we depend upon.
In B-movies, crazy scientists whip up nanobots every day, which always
escape and threaten to take over the world. In the real world, Joy's
ideas would make me laugh if they weren't being taken so seriously by so
many people.
His original article in Wired was rambling, repetitive and alarmist. He
never proved his central premise. He assumed the risks, and went on
from there. In reading it, I felt the same irony as when I first
watched Jurassic Park, all that high-tech computer animation harnessed
to deliver an anti-technology message. Hm.
It's misdirected alarm. Self-replication already exists, honed by
evolution over four billion years. But let's get real. Today, there is
far more risk and demonstrable damage from the introduction of
non-indigenous "natural" critters into the wrong environments than from
introducing GMOs anywhere.
Meanwhile, the danger from biological weapons is very real. Here, at
least, I share Joy's concern, but there's nothing original in his
doomsaying. Preston and others in the popular press, and Lederburg and
others with academic and Government credentials all sounded the alarm on
BW threats several years ago.
There are probably enough viral and bacterial self-replicators out there
in various laboratory freezers--forgotten at the bottom, or
intentionally bioengineered--to scare the hell out of me. In the face
of that threat, I wouldn't waste time imagining fanciful nanobots that
could turn all our toys (and us) into gray goo.
Old-fashioned self-replication, making babies as my wife and I have just
recently done, is strange and wonderful enough.
--Charles A. Gardner, Ph.D.
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G O O D M O R N I N G S I L I C O N V A L L E Y
Last updated: MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2000, 8:30 AM
By John Paczkowski
E-mail mr at jpaczkowski@sjmercury.com
[snip -DBM]
Who're you callin' "new and useful composition of matter"?
My mention in Friday's column of a Canadian patent issued
for a genetically-modified mouse and subsequent suggestion
that such a patent was "somewhat unsettling" elicited no
small number of affirmations and more than a few
dissenting opinions. Clearly the issue of genetic
engineering is a contentious one, deserving of a bit more
exegesis. While I don't feel GMSV is the proper forum for
a lengthy rumination on the topic, I do think there are
occasions when the column might benefit from the inclusion
of some of the salient thoughts and opinions that find
their way into my in-box. So today as an experiment, I'm
concluding GMSV with a brief exchange I had this weekend
on the topic of genetic engineering. I trust that you'll
let me know whether or not I was right to do so.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/reports/gmsv/backups/morn08042000.htm
mailto:jpaczkowski@sjmercury.com
John,
It does depress me when a shrewd columnist such as yourself
refers to the oncomouse patent as "disturbing." I would
like to suggest that this is a disservice to the many
people who suffer from diseases (Parkinson's, for
instance) which are genetic in origin.
In the era of Copernicus, many people found it disturbing
to think that the Earth might not be at the center of the
universe. In the era of Darwin, many people found it
disturbing to think that species, including our own, were
not created as-is by God. People were disturbed because
these discoveries made human beings seem less "special."
Still, most of us have accepted this view of the world, and
I would suggest that respect for human life has increased,
rather than diminished. (Where was Amnesty International
during the Spanish Inquisition?)
I would like to think that the chemical view of life can
prevail, just as the previous revisions of our
self-assessment prevailed. The difference is that today,
government has far more power--possibly sufficient to
throttle research or regulate it out of existence. This
would be a tragedy, since the patentability of new genetic
combinations is a powerful incentive for pharmaceutical
companies to develop techniques that will eradicate birth
defects and many hereditary diseases.
Living things are, of course, "special" in the sense that
their complexity is beautiful. But let's be clear about
this: The special quality of living things is PURELY a
matter of complexity. We're fooling ourselves if we
imagine there is some "life force" (an idea that was
conclusively discredited in biology about a century ago).
If there is a soul or spirit, then that too must be a
function of complexity.
There should be nothing disturbing about patenting a new
complex chemical, especially if it has the potential to
alleviate so much human suffering.
In fact I would go further and suggest that a
well-intentioned columnist who perpetuates the idea that
living things are "too special to be patented" is actually
helping, just a little bit, to endanger valuable research
by increasing the risk of backlash; and the more powerful
this backlash becomes, the more human suffering will be
perpetuated by depriving people of future medicines.
--Charles Platt
Senior Writer, Wired magazine (but the views above are just
mine).
Charles:
Thanks for this.
Points well taken -- all of them. Now allow me to clarify
mine. What I find disturbing about this announcement --
and my subsequent realization that the oncomouse had
already been patented in the U.S. a few years ago -- is
what I described in the item as "free market genetic
experimentation". While I realize that patentability of
new chemical therapies is what drives the pharmaceutical
industry to pursue research that might someday eradicate
birth defects and hereditary disease, I do find the
implications of identifying the patentability of _life_ as
a source of revenue to be somewhat unsettling. That
genetic engineering is certain to effect profound changes
in the quality of our lives is cause for rejoicing. That
it aligns the development of life with an economic metric
and not an evolutionary one may well be cause for concern.
Still, you are right to question my shoot-from-the-hip use
of the word "disturbing", and my failure to further
clarify an item that would certainly have benefited from a
bit more exposition.
Best and take good care,
John Paczkowski
Good Morning Silicon Valley
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[Subscription information for John's newsletter seems to be at
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-- Scott (hma5_5@hotmail.com), August 08, 2000