
Engines of Creation, by K. Eric Drexler (1986) - lachlan-sneff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engines_of_Creation
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scottlocklin
One of the great scams of the late 20th century.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/pt-
barn...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/pt-barnum-
biography-robert-wilson/592780/)

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ZhuanXia
Explain?

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tasty_freeze
His comment is a suggestion to read the linked article, which takes the
position that Drexler wasn't simply too optimistic in his futurism, but
willfully misleading about the technology. Everyone loves a good story, and
Drexler was happy to sell one.

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ZhuanXia
I do not think you read the link. It is not about Drexler, but P. T. Barnum,
which does not seem an apt comparison.

Few would claim molecular assemblers are physically impossible. Drexler made
claims about what was possible under physical law. They are pretty
conservative.

I don’t think he ever pretended to having technology he didn’t have.

I do think Drexler committed the grave sin of writing a book for popular
consumption. He should have published Nanosystems first and waited decades
before writing Engines of Creation.

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scottlocklin
Both books are the sheerest science fiction. Drexlerian "you can't prove I
can't build this" is eternal goal poasting. Yeah, I can't prove someone won't
eventually discover anti-gravity, faster than light travel or little green men
in flying saucers. That doesn't mean serious people should waste even a second
thinking about such nonsense.

Now a days, Drexler seems to make a living opinionating on "hard AI" -similar
level of vaporware. I mean, whiggism is the default national religion of the
US and the West in general, and I guess we need our preachers, but his career
is preposterous, and the ideas he peddles are beyond snake oil.

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ZhuanXia
FTL and antigravity violate physical law. Drexler’s designs just don’t. Point
me to a design in Nanosystems the that is physically impossible to construct.

The point of Nanosystems was to explore what technologies are feasible given
our current understanding of physics at that scale. It turns out there is a
lot of latent potential there.

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scottlocklin
Both FTL and antigravity have about more evidence in their favor (white juday
interferometers, while probably bullshit, are at least _physical_ ) as
nanotech.

