What would happen if Grey Goo (self-replicating nanobots) got out of control?

[peadar1987]

4 hours ago, pincushionman said:

Yes they do. The whole food chain is just an extreme version of "eat whatever is enough like itself to work."

And the energy problem really is super important. Even the author who first introduced the gray goo concept andmitted the whole thing became rather silly once that was pointed out to him. It would be at best (worst?) just another organism in the competing-for-resources pool, and I think we can all agree that "ordinary" life is already very, very good at that game.

Yep, especially as most people assume that "grey goo" goes around consuming everything and making it into more grey goo. That requires manipulation of chemical bonds, breaking down molecules and using their constituent atoms as feedstock, which takes a tremendous amount of energy.

Worst case scenario is probably that a nanomachine is developed that can survive and reproduce using materials found in biological tissue. In which case you'd be better off genetically engineering a virus or bacterium to do the same job. Genetically engineered superviruses are scary, but not as apocalyptic as grey goo.

[KerikBalm]

I don't see any reason to think that grey goo could do much more than the current form of uncontrolled self replicating machines.

Its not going to turn the entire planet into grey good, but it could cause widespread disease... so counter-grey goo would be needed like grey-goo-iphages and "good grey goo" that co-exists with current biology without being pathogenic, and willl help keep out pathogenic grey-goo

[Atlas2342]

The question is, is the Kraken with us or against us?

[fredinno]

7 hours ago, Atlas2342 said:

The question is, is the Kraken with us or against us?

[GeneralVeers]

The statement that "only X deals in absolutes" is itself an absolute.

Guess what, folks! The prequel trilogy made Kenobi out to be a hypocrite.

This is why I hated the prequel trilogy, and why I haven't seen FA and don't plan to. DO NOT MESS WITH CLASSIC LITERATURE. (yes, Star Wars is classic literature, and a century from now in our schools, they'll be teaching Star Wars instead of Shakespeare!)

(yes, that was off topic, and also this comment that the above was off topic is also off topic, and......you know what, this is just giving me a headache......)

[ModZero]

On 21 March 2016 at 7:20 PM, KAL 9000 said:

Go bacteria! Saving our lives from Grey Goo!

You wouldn't be so cheerful if you realised it means that *we are the grey goo*.

[KAL 9000]

5 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

The statement that "only X deals in absolutes" is itself an absolute.

Guess what, folks! The prequel trilogy made Kenobi out to be a hypocrite.

This is why I hated the prequel trilogy, and why I haven't seen FA and don't plan to. DO NOT MESS WITH CLASSIC LITERATURE. (yes, Star Wars is classic literature, and a century from now in our schools, they'll be teaching Star Wars instead of Shakespeare!)

(yes, that was off topic, and also this comment that the above was off topic is also off topic, and......you know what, this is just giving me a headache......)

FA was actually very true to the originals, and you're probably right about 100 years from now. Star Wars is much better than Shakespeare.

[HebaruSan]

9 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

This is why I hated the prequel trilogy, and why I haven't seen FA and don't plan to.

I skipped Ep 3, but I'll probably see 7. People I trust said it was better.

9 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

DO NOT MESS WITH CLASSIC LITERATURE. (yes, Star Wars is classic literature, and a century from now in our schools, they'll be teaching Star Wars instead of Shakespeare!)

I think they already are, partly thanks to those Joseph Campbell commentaries.

http://uncw.edu/gls/starwarsgls592.htm

http://www.starwarsintheclassroom.com/

To cut up your sentences a bit, I'd also note that messing with Shakespeare is a fairly common pastime. Modernizing, sci fi settings, other cultures, etc. Be careful what you wish for when calling Star Wars a classic!

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/jun/01/the-10-best-modern-takes-shakespeare-film

[fredinno]

12 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

The statement that "only X deals in absolutes" is itself an absolute.

Guess what, folks! The prequel trilogy made Kenobi out to be a hypocrite.

This is why I hated the prequel trilogy, and why I haven't seen FA and don't plan to. DO NOT MESS WITH CLASSIC LITERATURE. (yes, Star Wars is classic literature, and a century from now in our schools, they'll be teaching Star Wars instead of Shakespeare!)

(yes, that was off topic, and also this comment that the above was off topic is also off topic, and......you know what, this is just giving me a headache......)

"Guess what, folks! The prequel trilogy made Kenobi out to be a hypocrite."

Yeah, and that was the point. It was showing how the Jedi were often hypocrites and had fallen to the dark side in the clone wars (and before).

And either way, classic literature is always messed with at some point.

And yes, this is off-topic.

6 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

FA was actually very true to the originals, and you're probably right about 100 years from now. Star Wars is much better than Shakespeare.

FA was too true to the originals. It's one thing to make a movie true to the originals, but it's another thing entirely to make a movie a 90% copy of ANH (which is was TFA is. The prequels had bad stuff in them too, but TFA felt like it was made in a conference room.

"Hmm, what's going to liquid the least people off and make as many people on the internets happy?"

^That might sound good, but it meant they basically shaved off almost all of the originality of TFA, and made it feel as if there was no story left to be told, and they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.

Also, Rey was way too perfect of a character, and good at literally everything.

Also, Phasma was a miserable failure of an attempt to create a Boba Fett 3.0.

But Tr-8R was epic.

And the movie was fine otherwise.

[GeneralVeers]

7 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

FA was actually very true to the originals

Hell, a friend of mine says FA is the originals. His exact words: "it was like Star Wars all over again". And I'm inclined to agree, from what I know of FA: you've got Tatooine all over again (I'm sure "Jakku" was merely a typo), you've got the droid carrying the secret plans/map, you've got the Bad Guy dressed in black and wearing a mask and sporting a spooky voice (which, I'm sorry, DOES NOT hold the merest candle to James Earl Jones), you've got the Bigger Bad Guy working behind the scenes and pulling the strings (and who in this particular case has a name that makes him sound like he escaped from the Harry Potter franchise), you've got The Superweapon, which the above-mentioned friend (and I'm inclined to agree with him here too) described as "total cheese", and finally you've got the same idiot construction specialists who after thirty years still have not figured out how to fix these basic design flaws that allow X-Wing fighters to fly right up to the central cores of superweapons and drop proton torpedoes on them. Seriously, why were those people not fired??

 

8 hours ago, ModZero said:

You wouldn't be so cheerful if you realised it means that *we are the grey goo*.

We're not. We're not turning everything else into grey goo. We're turning some of it into cars and skyscrapers and blue jeans and beef jerky and pizza and Internet chat forums. Unlike the grey goo, we humans are actually productive. Well, sometimes.

(seeing as how I'm not being very productive while sitting here typing this)

 

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Also, Phasma was a miserable failure of an attempt to create a Boba Fett 3.0.

Brainstorm! Seeing as how Phasma is a "she", why didn't they simply call her "Boba-ette"???

Edited March 23, 2016 by GeneralVeers