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The people who thought Trinity was “scaled up” were also wrong. The only reason we stopped making larger nuclear weapons is because they were way, way, way bey
by ethanbond 3y ago
The people who thought Trinity was “scaled up” were also wrong.
The only reason we stopped making larger nuclear weapons is because they were way, way, way beyond useful for anything. There’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists in the physical universe (especially given how tiny and energy efficient the human brain is, we’re definitely nowhere near it) and there’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists on the usefulness of marginally more intelligence. Especially when you’re competing for resources with other nearly-as-intelligent superintelligences.
- kridsdale3 3y agoI think if it had turned out differently, and it had been possible to make an H-Bomb that produced no fallout, they would have continued to scale up. There were lots of plans for using nukes for large-scale engineering projects. - Make a protected harbor from a straight coastline - Get that mountain that's in the way of your railroad flattened - Add a freshwater lake to this plain - Mine an entire vein at once Reality got in the way and we found out that we don't want to be doing that. Maybe if we get practical antimatter bombs we'll revisit those plans.