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Delivering an Earth-Shattering Discovery?
An anonymous reader asks: "Just for fun... suppose you've made an Earth-shattering discovery that, when revealed, will cause massive social upheaval. Maybe you've discovered a new energy source or weapon, or figured out how to factor large primes in
seconds, or learned how to time travel back in time and affect the present. Being a nice guy, you decide to warn the world now and give
everybody a few years to prepare before revealing the discovery. How can you absolutely encrypt or otherwise protect your discovery, but guarantee its revealing at a certain future date even if you and everybody you know is long gone? For example, could you bounce an electromagnetic signal describing the discovery off a celestial body several light-years away?"
Didn't this happen already with the discovery of cloning?
The problem solved itself because once the ground-breaking discovery was made, the process of engineering it into a relevant technique that had any practical application took enough years for the discussion and social adjustment required to take place. Not that we're finished with that discussion, and not everyone likes it, but I think we've gotten over the 'future shock' on that one.
--LP
You didn't break the function, you violated a precondition.
Being a nice guy, you decide to warn the world now and give everybody a few years to prepare before revealing the discovery.
This sounds suspiciously similar to "It".
Please, if you actually have something worthy of talking about just say what it is. People who come to me promising a revolution in the future but refuse to talk about what it actually is give me a bad Amway feeling.
Mmmm.. Donuts
For example, if what you discovered was time travel, simply send the damn machine, or better yet, millions of the machine into the future 2 years from now.
If you discover a new energy source, use that energy source to power a device that will reveal that energy source in X amount of time.
(I won't touch discovering a weapon. A weapon is not a discovery, it's an implementation.)
Meanwhile, the very act of warning the world, seriously increases the odds that someone else will duplicate your discovery long before your time is up. After all, the materials you used are all there, the knowledge is all there, what the heck makes you think you're so unique that you're the only person working on the problem or capable of coming up with an answer. Historicly, any discovery is usually a horse race, with multiple groups likely to arrive at the same answer in rapid succession.
No Zen is good zen
You made an implicit assumption that you should reveal this discovery. What about ethics? If your discovery truly will shatter society, should you reveal it and go down in history in infamy, or should you keep your mouth shut and avoid the history books altogether? As wonderful as it is to be famous (or infamous) for a revolutionary new idea, do you really want to be responsible for widespread havoc?
Someone else will eventually have the same idea. Maybe even next week -- see Newton and Leibniz. Perhaps other discoverers, too, will have the good sense to keep their mouths shut. But when eventually one blabs, you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you were not the one who destroyed society.
BTW: Asimov once wrote a story called The Dead Past that explores this theme.
Of course, this is likely to be a moot point. In order to warn people, you've got be to able to convince them that your accomplishment is real. Unfortunately, history shows that once a desirable result is known to be possible, it doesn't take very long for other people to duplicate that result.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Why do you want to leave the world in suspense? How the heck are people going to "prepare" for something when you won't even tell them what it is. Your scenereo sounds something like this:
You make a news annoucement saying "I've discovered a terrible secret, but I won't tell you what it is for 20 years!"
Then 20 years later you finally announce your discovery to people who have forgotten about you.
The reason entire world has forgotten about you is because you sound just like another crackpot trumpeting hidden vauge doom.
Are people going to be "better prepared" in 20 years? Why? I'd say get the truth out in the open when you discover the problem and let society work it out. That or just never ever release your secret if you fear that humanity would not survive (hint: people are pretty resourceful, they're good at suriving).
If you just don't want to be around when people discover your secret, put it in your safe deposit box and forget about it. When you die your heirs will go through the box and be faced with the same dilemma you have. Note: this is the cowards way out.
I read the internet for the articles.
I seriously don't think there's much outside of a major war or the impending destruction of the planet that would really cause massive social upheaval. We lived through 9/11 and in reality, despite the destuction, the fear and the subsequent massive loss of privacy and civil rights, things continue to tick on much the same as always. Despite cries that everything has changed, in reality very little has changed. If we finally were visited by aliens, or if someone finally did catch bigfoot or the lochness monster it'd be news for a few days, and then we'd be back to our everyday concerns. Never underestimate the people's propensity for self-centeredness.
What makes you think that revealing the information at a later date won't cause social choas? How would you know, you would be long dead. There's no guarentee that societly later on will be able to cope with the discovery.
Also note that by releasing the information at a later date, you risk someone else making the same discovery and releasing their findings. If you can do it, you can be sure someone else can do it too, it's only a matter of time
IMHO, you are a coward & too irresponsible to handle such information if you choose to release your discovery at a later date because you do not want be held responsible for the social upheval. At least while you are alive you have some control over the information, but waiting until your dead only means that you've passed the responsiblity to someone else.
(Note: I ramble for a while, but only answer the question fully in the last paragraph) Believe it or not, I've been grinding my brain over this issue many times. For example, let's say you had an ability to put an invisible camera at any arbitrarily chosen point in space and watch what is happening. Not only that, but you could then choose to arbitrarily switch the contents of some space with the contents of another. You could instantly kill murderers and evil-doers world wide. But then, the question is, who should have control over this technology? Should you be the one to own it. Be the benevolent dictator who believes that you somehow will stick to some absolute pure moral ground that wouldn't corrupt your ways? I'm always tempted to think that way, but them I'm reminded by all these examples, mostly in literature, where some single person with ungodly power becomes corrupted automatically. Is this true? I mean, you could pull a Superman and have your little ice palace and help the world in secret. The only other option, then, is to just give it to the public and open up the technology. I think the best options then are only two: horde it completely to yourself or give it up to the world. Even if you horde it and you're being selfish, at least you're not letting it fall into the hands of groups or what not who could do crazy things with it. I think the inventor is one you have the least to worry about. The one with the brains to make the invention and to know exactly what it's about and what it's for, i feel is less likely to mis-use it. Now, if you want to release something with a 2-3 year time-delay, maybe release only a partial solution to the problem and base it on findings that you expect won't be discovered until 2-3 years from now. For example, a while back, you might have figured that sometime, within the next 10-15 years somebody would have figured out how to determine primality in p-time, and then when they did, your solution would be complete. I'm sure there are other theorems that were discovered today that have likely follow-up theorems that will be discovered in two years. I hope this is not another "IT" machine. Sheesh. If it is, just release the damn thing.
Philosophistry
If you discover time travel for example why tell the world? They'd only use it to destroy themselves with.
Theres no point in releasing earth shattering discoveries, the world isnt even ready for computers and nuclear technology.
Everything we invent, they use to destroy the world.
Why invent anything? Every invention brings us one step closer to self destruction.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The "anonymous reader" went and broke the final seal on mighty Cthulhu's undersea prison, and is now stressing out over how to break the news to the world.
On one hand, he could tell us now so we can slowly go insane over the course of the next 10 years, watching that unfathomable horror get out of bed, brush his teeth, read the paper, etc.
On the other hand, he could just wait and let us find out the hard way as Cthulhu emerges in 10 years. We'll instantly go insane, frozen in terror as that ageless beast proceeds to devour us all.
Surely you can see the bind he's in. Please, give him a little respect and take the topic seriously -- none of this "+1 Funny" business.
I'm sory, but i fail to see a case where it would make sense to go to great lengths to keep information hidden until a specific date:
My main point is, that it's hard to announce (and why delay the revelation unless you inform at least someone who can do something in the meantime?) a discovery without revealing the identity of the person (or even worse: group) that discovered it. If he/they visibily go through a lot of trouble to hide the information, then someone will consider the information worthy enough to reproduce it. He has many options:
- ask/bribe/torture the person who discovered (whatever) to reproduce the information, or give out enough details that someone else can reproduce it.
- find out what the line of work of that person was and invest heavily in that direction (virtually noone can make an important discovery today without at least working with someone or refer to other's works (oops all that queries in a scientific database may reveal a pattern))
- find a way to get at the information anyway (maybe it resided on some harddisk that wasn't overwritten 10 times, maybe the method of keeping it secret is flawed)
Also, does it make sense to reveal that information at a fixed date in the future (e.g. bouncing it of a celestial body)? How can you know now what revealing the information might do at that date, and why do you think mankind will then be "ready" for it? revealing information at a fixed date in the future makes only sense for astronomical events (an asteroid will hit earth at it's next pass near the sun (maybe 80 years from now) and you think it's better to spare mankind the upheaval for the next 70 years (but how can you know, maybe we could do something about the asteroid in 40 years from now if only we knew, maybe shooting at it with a strong laser, so gas emissions will alter the course ever so slightly).
For other discoveries it makes even less sense to hide them for a fixed time, since it's impossible to guess, how fast (and whereto) society will evolve, when scientific discoveries will provide us with a good replacement for some technology or other, and, generally speaking, when the time is 'just right'. In that case it'd probably be better to involve some kind of human intervention/judgement to determine when to reveal the discovery.
One way to do that would be to build a (not necessarily secret, depends on the discovery) "society" to guard the information. maybe politicians from different countries, people from international organisations or even corporations. Technically you could give each member (or different groups of members) part of the information which makes only sense when it's all (or a significant number of information pieces) are put together (there are codes that do that for you: e.g. give one part a oneway pad, the other the encrypted information). But that still leaves the problem, that the information might be discovered independantly, somehow cajoled out of the original discoverers, or just 'rediscovered' (it's easier to get funding for a project if you know you will discover something).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
That code's broken. Write in a better language, that allows multiple-value-returns, for a start. Oh, and one that has a "number" type, preferably an extensible one that you can narrow to "primes" - Like CMUCL or Common Lisp, say. Or postscript, for god's sake! Almost anything (other than VB, of course) is better than C.
It's pretty sad noone addressed the real problem here. Let's ignore the nature of the discovery or any other information. It can be some evidence that you want to be released at a certain point, regardless of what happens to you. Now, the real question is, how to store an information so that it remains secret until a specific date, yet cannot be easily destroyed or stolen, and how to guarantee its proper delivery afterwards. Bouncing the signal or any other methods like this are pretty difficult to implement and do not guarantee proper delivery - the signal can be jammed or affected by some other events. Lawyers, locker boxes, etc, are not particularly reliable, your information is still being kept in relatively few copies, depends on the trust you have to relatively few guys, and can be delivered only if those guys are still there and are not forced to take a different action that you wanted them to take.
;-).
Same about crypto messages - there's no guarantee that this or that this data will be cracked at a certain point, it's not really about the CPU speed and Moore's law, it's more about improving algorithms (e.g. djb's research) and computing paradigms (vide quantum computing). Finally, there's no guarantee someone would actually try to crack it AND would decide to publish it (I wouldn't rely on NSA in that matter
So, what is needed is a way to store the message in a secure and reliable way in so many places that it is not feasible to go after every single instance - say, few million computers. Furthermore, the information cannot be simply carried by a worm, because in this case it is quite possible it'll be eradicated before the time comes. Then, at a certain point, the information has to become readable and has to be delivered to each and every "carrier", so that someone would notify a broader audience.
I didn't want to get so far off the topic, but I needed to point out that there actually are some in power who can be trusted.
(I'm specifically thinking of G. W. Bush, here)
These two statements are mutually contradictory.
I'm not an astronomer, so I don't know how acurate the 'bounce a signal off a celestial body' idea is, but here is an idea:
... etc.).
1) Encrypt your data with the highest available encryption standard.
2) Use a key that can be calculated with x ammount of procssing power using Moore's Law (x being a factor of the ammount of time you want the world to wait to decrypt your data after receiving key).
3) Store your data someplace that is not easily accessable (write to clean hard drives, delete data (this is recoverable, as we all know), store drives in secret location or perhaps laying around in the open,
4) Bounce the algorithm for deciphering your key off a celestial body that has the desired distance.
5) Using a much simpler encryption (the only goal of this encryption is to prevent the message from being guessed before it is whole), send a message using the same transmission method as #4 describing the method by which the message in #6 can be received. Actually, you would split this message up into several parts and bounce them off of different celestial bodies...
6)Bounce a message off a celestial body with the desired distance from the earth that contains the location of your data.
Basically, you would have your data locked up someplace, with the highest encryption available. You would use Moore's Law to estimate your maximum time you had until someone decrypts your data. This assumes that they start decrypting as soon as your data is not in your hands. You would then bounce your key-algorithm back to earth with an estimated return time that = the maximum decryption time you already calculated You would then bounce fragments of your transmission-method-message off of celestial bodies. The goal here is to provide little nugetts of data that the rest of humanity can receive periodically (perhaps every year) to know that there really is something coming. Now you would send out a message of the desired celestial body (to be received soon after the encryption key has been calculated) stating where the data itself is stored (keeping in mind how long it would take to retreive that data).
Send all these messages ot as secretly and undetectable as possible. Also try not to reveal your identity.
Next you would tell the world that you have something that you want to share... blah blah blah and that a certain transmission wavelength, frequency, or whatever, should be monitored for yearly (or whenever) updates, in case you die.
Try not to mention your secret to anyone for as long as you live.
I'm sure all kinds of changes could be made to this, but you get the main idea hopefully. One of the key points of this method is to send out all transmissions as secretly as possible BEFORE you alert the world that you are up to anything.
- - I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert. - -