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You could deal with them that way, sure. But every other person after them will learn not to divulge it and take the best offer from other countries (submission

by 0x_rs 4y ago

You could deal with them that way, sure. But every other person after them will learn not to divulge it and take the best offer from other countries (submission mentions offers from France and Pakistan for Phillips) and give it to them, because you're not going to reach a worldwide consensus on "let's get rid of every person that develops X theoretical doomsday device" and others will want that edge. This seems so shortsighted it'd do well together with the vitrum flexile story. Just like engineers after WWII, during and after the Cold War, you'd want to give them a comfortable position using their talent for something more productive than developing military-purposes missiles. I'd be more worried about biochemical warfare anyway, I'm surprised there hasn't been any major attack with water supply as a vector.

Xx25 4y ago
Why bother with water supply when you can use the air flow :(
midoridensha 4y ago
>This seems so shortsighted it'd do well together with the vitrum flexile story. Just like engineers after WWII, during and after the Cold War, you'd want to give them a comfortable position using their talent for something more productive than developing military-purposes missiles. This isn't like that situation at all. The WWII scientists could build bombs, but not easily: it isn't easy to get your hands on enriched uranium or plutonium at all. It seems like very few people can understand me here, so let me try to re-iterate: I'm proposing a situation where anyone able of operating a smartphone is able to download the information to build a planet-busting doomsday bomb, and build it in his living room using readily-available, common, everyday tools and materials. Once the knowledge is out there (thanks to the internet, which also didn't exist back then), you can't really squelch it. And you can't restrict the tools or materials needed because they're common. The only thing that was missing was the knowledge of physics needed to put them together. For a somewhat similar story, look at Harry Turtledove's sci-fi story "The Road Not Taken", where some slightly dim-witted aliens attack Earth using medieval cannon-type technology, and hilariously lose, but were able to get here because they discovered some overlooked but simple branch of physics we somehow missed, which allowed them to easily achieve FTL transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor...

by 0x_rs 4y ago

Xx25 4y ago

Why bother with water supply when you can use the air flow :(

midoridensha 4y ago

>This seems so shortsighted it'd do well together with the vitrum flexile story. Just like engineers after WWII, during and after the Cold War, you'd want to give them a comfortable position using their talent for something more productive than developing military-purposes missiles. This isn't like that situation at all. The WWII scientists could build bombs, but not easily: it isn't easy to get your hands on enriched uranium or plutonium at all. It seems like very few people can understand me here, so let me try to re-iterate: I'm proposing a situation where anyone able of operating a smartphone is able to download the information to build a planet-busting doomsday bomb, and build it in his living room using readily-available, common, everyday tools and materials. Once the knowledge is out there (thanks to the internet, which also didn't exist back then), you can't really squelch it. And you can't restrict the tools or materials needed because they're common. The only thing that was missing was the knowledge of physics needed to put them together. For a somewhat similar story, look at Harry Turtledove's sci-fi story "The Road Not Taken", where some slightly dim-witted aliens attack Earth using medieval cannon-type technology, and hilariously lose, but were able to get here because they discovered some overlooked but simple branch of physics we somehow missed, which allowed them to easily achieve FTL transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor...