I recently had a conversation with Christine Peterson and she pointed out the same thing. Imagine! A materials engineer who forgot that there was nitrogen in the air!
After some thinking, I also believe that nitrogen deficiency in Africa is not the concern that I indicated it was in the paper. I also agree that with sufficiently advanced technology (even when that technology is limited by physical laws), one should be able to overcome any geographical constraint in principle. This is Lesswrong and, thus, I must say that I was wrong about this.
Given that we can construct APM factories anywhere—something we likely can do once APM tech is achieved (though I suspect international interests would want to keep the APM tech used to create APM factories relatively inaccessible)--and that they can be maintained (again, something that APM can also ensure happens), I don’t imagine geography being an issue. Thus, I don’t really expect geography to be an issue.
I’m now much more confident that APM will lead to dramatic economic improvements in the places where we most care about them. There are still some practical considerations (i.e. ensuring the accessibility of people/machines capable of trouble-shooting the factories are everywhere the factories are) but these considerations are readily achievable.
I recently had a conversation with Christine Peterson and she pointed out the same thing. Imagine! A materials engineer who forgot that there was nitrogen in the air!
After some thinking, I also believe that nitrogen deficiency in Africa is not the concern that I indicated it was in the paper. I also agree that with sufficiently advanced technology (even when that technology is limited by physical laws), one should be able to overcome any geographical constraint in principle. This is Lesswrong and, thus, I must say that I was wrong about this.
Given that we can construct APM factories anywhere—something we likely can do once APM tech is achieved (though I suspect international interests would want to keep the APM tech used to create APM factories relatively inaccessible)--and that they can be maintained (again, something that APM can also ensure happens), I don’t imagine geography being an issue. Thus, I don’t really expect geography to be an issue.
I’m now much more confident that APM will lead to dramatic economic improvements in the places where we most care about them. There are still some practical considerations (i.e. ensuring the accessibility of people/machines capable of trouble-shooting the factories are everywhere the factories are) but these considerations are readily achievable.