Well I was going to say that in some ways I couldn't see the point in robots
when genetic engineering might be a more effective way of creating a self
sustaining slave race. OTOH though machines certainly have their uses they
can go places biological entities can't and perform mindlessly repetitive
tasks without complaint and it is possible to control how much free will a
machine has and if it misbehaves you can simply switch off it's power,
without permanently killing it, they are so turn-off-an'-onable ;)

Reproduction and self repair imply only a knowledge of Engineering
Phsics, they do not imply consiousness or free will. Chlorella is a VN
machine that has neither intelligence or free will. All a VN machine
consists of is a route by which elementary materials, say sunlight and
Moon rock enter at one point, and are sufficient to assemble the
assembly. This is a misconception.

This would seem to be a major problem with the concept of VN machines at
least at present, micro circuitry is particularly susceptible to radiation
contamination and there is no way around that at present using electronics
which doesn't involve making it bigger and heavier. e.g adding extra
circuitry to cope with errors, or adding insulation such as lead.

The space probes up now are not doing too badly. Radiation damage is
not a show stopper, it simply means that the rate of doing damage must
be less than the reproduction/repair rate.

Of course it appears that may already have been done and it may be what the
grey aliens are, which considering they have been seen by millions of people
most of whom describe their appearance in a similar way would seem to
indicate that they actually exist and of course the fact they appear to
remove genetic material from people and indeed farm animals and have been
doing this a long time before human beings had any understanding of the
possible reasons behind this activity i.e genetic engineering and cloning of
their own kind would seem to indicate there is some truth in these sightings.

I watch CSI. My wet dream is shooting at coconuls with a 9mm semi. This
will give all the DNA that is ever needed. This is what I mean, aliens
simply will NOT act in the way reported. This puts the roots of my
doubts in a nutshell.