Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The ethics of creating 'nano ethics'

Making the kids (a late) dinner while listening to a Science Friday podcast discussing nanotech. The question of "ethics" came up, and the best example of a nanotech ethics problem one of the guests could come up with was whether one nanotech scientist should report another nanotech scientist for cutting corners on lab safety precautions.

Truth is, that is pretty much all there is to talk about when it comes to nanotech ethics (and this lame example could be used in anytech). All else is speculation based on technology that does not yet exist.

I supposed it would be fun to speculate on whether it'd be ethical to program your nanobots to download an exact replica of your own brain into your neighbor's poodle, but we'll leave it to these new nanotech ethics departments at universities all over the world to deal with those and other hypotheticals. More later.

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