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Reminded me of Cyberiad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad "The Highest Possible Level of Development civiliz
by thesz 15y ago
Reminded me of Cyberiad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad
"The Highest Possible Level of Development civilization. A gravely injured hermit comes to Trurl's house and tells Trurl of Klapaucius's adventure: Klapaucius wanders across an old robot, who tells him that he has logically deduced the existence of a civilization that reached the highest possible level of development (hence "HPLD"). He has inferred the existence of such a civilization by figuring that if there are different stages of development, there will be one that is the highest. He was then faced with a problem of identifying that one; as he noted, everyone claimed that theirs was the HPLD. Upon much research and thought, he decided that the only way to find it is by looking for a "wonder", i.e. something that has no rational explanation. Eventually Klapaucius discovers one such wonder: a star in the shape of a cube, orbited by a planet also shaped like a cube with the huge letters HPLD written on it."
Now I know how it is like, to be one of HPLD.
- diminish 15y agogood point referring this; `You may want your planet to be cubical. Just about every other force in the universe wants it round.`
- arethuza 15y agoHighest Possible Level of Development sounds like a Culture ship name and a cubical planet something a Culture ship might do as a practical joke.
- arctangent 15y ago"Minimum Viable Product" would also make for a great Culture ship name :-) You probably know about this already but for the benefit of others I will post this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Culture_setting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Culture_se...
- dprice1 15y agoFWIW, The Cyberiad, a collection of related stories, is a great read for hackers. I come back to it every few years. Trurl, attempting to build a machine to write poetry: http://books.google.com/books?id=kWElP9YZkzQC&lpg=PA44&ots=-M8P05nnf5&dq=cyberiad%20simulate%20the%20universe&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=kWElP9YZkzQC&lpg=PA44&#...