X-Message-Number: 19000
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 09:49:17 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #18990 - #18998

HI everyone!

This is a comment for Natasha Vita-More, with a little for Bob Ettinger:

When you speak of someone who comes up with things that can go wrong,
you should not simply assume that they are pessimistic. The real question
is what can be done to deal with them; if we don't know they exist, then
we'll do nothing about them and end up in a worse state than if we look
at them explicitly. To believe that we'll never achieve perfection
hardly means that we cannot improve ourselves continually. 

Nor, for that matter, can we divide the things that can go wrong into
nice classes of a finite number each of which we can make nanorobots to
fix ... or cure, depending on what you want to say. Radiation sickness
caused SYMPTOMS which many doctors had already seen in other contexts,
but its cause was not the same. Prion disease, as mentioned by Dr Hughes,
gives one more example. Errors in the nanorobots themselves  will cause
added problems; I will not repeat myself on that point.

We don't even need any malignity to run into such problems. Errors alone
can become quite serious.

		Best wishes and long long life to all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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