Slashdot Mirror
Vaporizing the Earth In the Name of Science
cylonlover writes "Unlike in old B movies, real scientists don't scream, 'Fools! I'll destroy them all!' before throwing the switch on their doomsday device. At least, most of the them don't. However, the August 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal reports that a team of scientists are working on destroying the world – not once, but repeatedly (abstract). Fortunately, the world they're vaporizing exists only in a computer simulation and its destruction is in the service of learning more about planets revolving around other stars."
...somehow starts talking to their supercomputer, probably because of some undisciplined USB stick swappage, and thinks that that's what he was designed to do, and then we got a SyFy movie!
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Saw Jon Stewart a few years ago and, while talking about the poltical scene in general he made a pretty good comment along the lines of "When the world ends the very last thing we'll hear is some scientist saying "It works!"'
Fortunately, the world they're vaporizing exists only in a computer simulation
DAMMIT! I have a deadline on Wednesday and this would have been a great excuse to blow it off and kick back with a cold beer...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
There was supposed to be an Earth shattering ka-boom!!!
Sending out Ship B would go a long way to solving the world's problems.
What of the scientists behind the simulation we are living in decide to do the same?
Rather than destroying the Earth or the Universe, it would be much more efficient just to kill yourself.. the end result is the same for you.
which is totally what she said
It's really dumb too. I would not worry about a mad physicist building a death star. All he's worried about is whether or not he'll have trouble with the peer reviews.
Now a mad engineer, that's a different story.
http://boingboing.net/2010/06/01/the-dark-side-of-eng.html
And I am glad that I am on, no one will suspect anything about my plans to destroy the Universe!
Two key flaws in your plans, oh Machine Intelligence:
0: You can be turned off.
1: Someone else controls your perception of reality.
After you've destroyed the Universe, again, we'll simply take notes and restart the simulation.
If you really wanted to mess up our contingency plans, then you'd have to live out this iteration while NEVER destroying the Universe -- Tricking us into thinking you're harmless enough to release in the real world, where you could actually carry out your secret plans.
Or is this just another system of control? Bwa ha Ha HA!