> Biology runs on the same physics as anything else
Paper planes and fighter jets run can be modelled by the same physics. That doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. “Nanobots” implies greater degrees of freedom and function than purely biological techniques can manage. (For example, by incorporating digital circuitry and novel materials into the mix.)
Nanomachiens are to small and fast for digital circuits.
As I said, they can include more types of atoms, but that adds little as life already makes use of a wide variety. It’s basic capacity that’s the issue not micro optimizations. Further, depend on a non organic atom and you can’t self replicate without being fed it.
At the smallest scale you can’t for example take a picture, you need to detect stuff by touch and respond before bouncing off while traveling at 50+MPH. Make a vast structure like a cell and movement and energy become major issues.
> Nanomachiens [sic]are to small and fast for digital circuits
“Digital” means a logic model. Not a physical technology. Atomic-scale digital circuitry—completely foreign to life as we know it—is certainly plausible.
Your claim is that anything that can be done at the nanoscale can be done by “editing DNA to make a [protein].” I’m saying the latter is a subset of the former. Given all we have, at this point, is theory, it’s a reasonable point on which to disagree.
I get what you mean by digital, the problem is analog is vastly faster and more compact. Digital essentially reduces the solution space adding overhead. It’s not a technical problem it’s the core tradeoff for going digital.
That’s not to say proteins are as efficient as possible. Just that they are fairly close to the limit of what’s possible at 1 to 100nm. Now start talking micrometers‘s and I can see some things changing.
We’re not yet at nanoscale manufacturing in one of the few domains with the scale and capital to fund its development: microprocessor manufacturing.