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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?"
Hell, I can already do that.
int factorLargePrime( int largePrime ) {
return largePrime;
}
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
Write it down using my handwriting, it'll take them centuries to decipher that...
On the other hand, if you are the guy in his own backyard or garage who has just made a startling discovery about nanotechnology or cold fusion....well, thats not going to happen so don't worry too much about it.
Send it through an AOL mail gateway!
why? What have you done now? Why are you asking such an interesting question whilst chosing to remain anonymous?
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let's put it on the internet!
Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter! And I think I know how.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
... they're still doing those encryption-breaking projects!
that is a really stupid idea. do not, i repeat, do not give the information to an alien race first.
The Segway has already been revealed!
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
on the other hand, perhaps that's a bad idea...
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
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
... "can anyone locate an ask slashdot question lamer than this one?"
I think the answer to this question is "no" but I eargerly await a counterexample.
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.
Leak your information to society's lowest common denominator. Go to middle-of-nowhere-town in Arizona and enlighten some toothless trailer park people about it. Spread the news around the various crankpot ogranizations out there. Nobody credible will believe them or you, but the idea will probably be serialized into bad sci-fi TV shows. Eventually, over half of the population will believe in the idea even though the reputible scientific comunity will refute it. At that point, you'll have given the government long enough for its secret organizations to have established the correct safety nets to handle the problem.
Someone you trust is one of us.
first of all -- nice question.
One thing I want to say is that there are theory abound that important discoveries are always discoverable within a relatively short timeframe of eachother. IIRC the phenomenon is called the critical mass of knowledge or somesuch.
It basically says that when the society (body of knowledge) reaches a certain point -- *IF* one body does not discover this thing, another surely will within a short time. This example is beautifully illustrated with Bell and his telephone -- the fact that two inventors, almost simultaneously thought up the idea.
Some sociologists argue that this is true for even important discoveries -- i.e. if Eienstein really did become a clockmaker, somebody else would probabbly still thought up the theory of relativity anyway. now - admittantly, there is no way to prove this for obvious reasons. However there are compelling reasons to believe this is a phenomenon that does occur in our world (Bell's phone is not the only one. I can't come up with any other solid examples right now -- cuz its Sat morning -- but if you look through the history of science, this actually happens quite a bit).
It is possible that it is due to the speed at which science is advancing today. science advance fast = new discovery are made in short time between eachother. and since often these things need to be found consecutively (tech-tree style), it almost guarantees the *necessity* of a certain technology's discovery at a certain time.
A ancedotal evidence that would prove interesting, just for fun -- is that China had paper money (paper in general!) / printing / fireworks long before europe; somewhat refuting this theory but also may indicate that it does not work so well for societies that are completely different and far apart with no communication. but it is very possible that paper making, say, arrived in two ancient china-man/woman's head within a couple years of eachother.
how does this apply to the ask-slashdot in question? well if it is not obvious by now -- it means that you might as well just release it now before Dr. Evil's scientists find out about it. (or, use it to take over the world yourself. whatever)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
an Earth-Shattering Discovery
Look, it's the Vogons, isn't it?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
If you password protect it on an NT 4.0 server running IIS and don't publish what the server is, well, give it a few months and someone will discover it.
To extend the length of time, put it on a more obscure network. Maybe put it on IPv6 with no IPv4 address...
At any rate, in a few days of discovery, script kiddies around the world will be working hard to show their talents on your machine. A few weeks later a PDF version will show up on alt.binaries.e-books.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
(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
Ron Rivest (The "R" in RSA) wrote a paper on time locked crypto, which sounds like what you want. But really, what are the chances you have an earth shattering discovery to reveal if you can't even use Google?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Build a gigantic secret base under an island somewhere. Equip with bad 70's decor, absurd super-weapons, henchmen, girls in swimsuits that inexplicably produce large caliber handguns when required, speed boats, hilicopters, and so forth. Put security cameras everywhere, and pay a midget or a guy with claws or something to monitor them. Obtain an absurd exotic pet, like a singing tapir or a farting oscilot. Train said pet to run errands about the island. Develop some mildly disturbing hobby, interest or passtime, such as bobbing for bat guano or hunting opera singers with a crossbow. The secret plans themselves, of course, should be encoded somehow in a fantastically ugly peice of fo-futurostic art. Where else?
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
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.
Since this is just for fun, let's do some calculations. It's been a while for me, so forgive me if my math goes astray.
Let's suppose there were a convenient target, MirrorWorld, roughly 1 light-year away. We send our message by pulsing a high-powered laser toward the spot where MirrorWorld will be one year from now.
Ideally laser beams are tightly collimated, but even the best ones spread a bit. Let's suppose that the beam we use starts out about a millimeter wide, with a spread of 1 nanometer (10E-9 meters) for every meter of travel.
Now a beam of light travels about 9.5E15 meters/year, so by the time our beam hits MirrorWorld, it will be 9.5E6 meters (plus one millimeter) wide. That's not so bad - only about 75% the width of the planet earth.
Now, of course all our calculations were perfect, our execution flawless, and nothing unexpected happened to distort the curvature of space, so our beam will hit MirrorWorld dead center. Also, MirrorWorld is, a perfectly flat, perfectly reflecting surface, perfectly oriented to reflect all of the incident energy of our laser back to the position where the earth will be two years after we fired the beam without any loss and without increasing the rate of spread.
Of course, the beam continues to spread at it's original rate. After 2 years total travel, the energy in the orignal pulses would be spread across a beam about 1.9E+7 meters across. That works out to about 1.1E15 square meters of surface area by the time the beam hits the lens/antenna that we placed just outside the atmosphere (to avoid losses). If the lens is a perfect collector of energy, 1 square meter in size, we will receive 8.8E-16 joules for every joule transmitted in the original pulses.
Now, a table found here suggests that a ton of Uranium-235, used as fuel, contains about 7.4E16 joules. So if you burned a ton of U-235 per pulse, and your reactor and laser were 100% efficent, you could received 65.12 joules per pulse per square meter of receiving lens/antenna.
Maybe you don't need a ton of U-235 per pulse. Maybe your lens can be very large and your receiver very sensitive. Still, it's worth noting that, according to this site the total combined production of U-235 by the US and USSR was only 1950 tons. That's 1950 bits of information or less, depending on your coding... so try not to be too wordy.
The above discussion took the long way around, just for fun, but you can dismiss this idea more quickly and easily by simply asking "where in the sky do I look to see a heavenly body (outside of this solar system) reflecting the light from the Sun?". If the answer is "nowhere", then there probably isn't any way for you to reflect a signal either.
I think I'll post this anonymously, in case I did something really stupid. Enjoy!
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
Well I'm coming very late to this discussion but it's something I've thought about before. Many posters have pointed out that any breakthrough discovery is unlikely to be 10 or 20 years away from the rest of the scientific community, especially if you give a credible clue that the discovery exists to be made.
However one exception to this rule occurs to me. If you were to somehow develop advanced Artificial Intelligence that was thousands of times more intelligent than a human you could use this to solve a huge number of technical and scientific problems. If you could control the AI completely and safely (big if) it would be possible to develop technologies that would supress discovery of the same technique anywhere else in the world. How? One way would be development of advanced self-replicant nanotechnology that would allow you to surveil the entire Earth and subtly divert research efforts getting too close to your crucial discovery. Computers would mysteriously fail here and there, experiments would fail, etc. No one could detect your actions because, by definition, they don't have the detection technology.
Sounds crazy, I know. But all the rules go out the window if you assume the existance of a loyal machine that can think thousands or millions of times faster than we can. We'd all like to think it would be us to discover this first in our basements or something. In reality it's far more likely to be the NSA. Scary.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
I have discovered a truly marvelous method, which the margin of this Slashdot posting is too narrow to contain.
-- Terry
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.
Funny you shouild mention that. That's exactly what you're going to do in 5 years when you do invent time travel. Except then I will wait two years, take one of the machines back, steal your prototype, and bring it back to me last week, at which point I will announce that I have just invented it...