Comments by "Jeff Huffman" (@tejing2001) on "5 Ways The World Could End - And How We Can Survive It (Feat. Isaac Arthur) | Answers With Joe" video.

  1. What is often overlooked in talking about the grey goo scenario is thermodynamics. The growth would not actually be exponential, at least, not for very long, since heat dissipation limitations would limit the growth to something proportional to the surface area of the transformed matter, not to mention that these tiny machines can only transform nearby material into new machines, and so in the long run most of them would be sitting around with nothing to do, again limiting the rate of conversion to something proportional to the surface area of the transformed matter. It's hard to really imagine this transformation actually traveling at any appreciable velocity, after all, bacteria and fungi basically are grey goo, and they can't spread all that frighteningly fast.
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