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Calibrating the Universal Assembler: the programmable organismOur starting point is the idea of a self-contained entity that can make "anything," including copies of itself. In this section it is assumed that the entity makes things by means of replicating atomic-level machinery. As a first step towards calibration of this idea, try comparing it with other processes that are similar in some ways:
Here we have replicating entities using atomic mechanisms to produce certain effects. However, this is a long way from what we want. A cedar tree can make something, plus copies of itself. It can't make any kind of wood, let alone anything in general. What we want is a general purpose, programmable system. The following hypothetical projects are a closer calibration:
Now we have gotten a very good calibration. What I have just described is almost isomorphic to the assembler that can make anything, including more assemblers. If you ponder these projects slowly enough to get them in focus, you can get an excellent idea of what is going to be involved in an assembler. However, we still don't have quite what we want. A general purpose, programmable tree can make any kind of wood, plus copies of itself, but that's still a long way from making anything in general. For a full calibration of a universal assembler, we have to take one more step: we have to combine all these things into one system. How much would you have to know about ants, their society, their genome, etc., before you could make them programmable and able to build structures to spec? How long would this take? Whatever the answer is, designing an assembler will require about the same time, because it amounts to the same thing. Nanites may not physically resemble ants, but they will have a genome that will be comparable to the genome of an ant, and their society will be as complex as an ant colony. Creating nanites is isomorphic to creating programmable ants. Everything that has to be done in one case has to be done in the other. Likewise for all the other projects on the list. What would be involved in creating a general purpose energy-generating organism? How long would this take? Creating an assembler will take that long, too, because you will have to do something that amounts to the same thing. You will have to find ways to generate all kinds of energy at the atomic level, and incorporate these mechanisms into replicating entities. Your task is isomorphic to the biologist's task. However, your task requires another step that the biologist doesn't have to worry about: instead of modifying existing organisms and their cellular machinery to make materials, generate electricity, and so forth, you are going to use atomic machinery invented de novo, based on Eric Drexler's diamondoid constructors and replicators. You have to invent the new machinery before you can even start working on higher-level projects such as programmable ants and trees. Thus, to create a universal assembler, you have to do everything the biologists have to do in the projects listed above, plus design a new kind of replicating entity, and all the necessary atomic machinery. After you have designed the new atomic machinery -- which is going to be as complex as biochemistry -- you still have a long, long way to go.
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