From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 22:47:23 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> I forgot to mention that the civilizations of that era, (namely circa
> 10^-2,100,000) had dark legends of a much, much earlier time, where
> God-like entities evidently existed who seemed to be able to alter some
> of the laws of physics at will. Like, say the God- like ones (using
> your correction) appeared to have existed between
> 10^-42.99999999998103006917 and 10^-42.99999999998103006801, which,
> while it seems rather a short time indeed, was incredibly long
> subjectively because of the enormous speed of their thought processes.
> :-P
It looks like the Physics Wars ended with the speed of light and the
cooling of the universe destroying all the participants. And now we,
their descendants, are trapped in the sucky universe they created. I
don't know whether Sauron won that war, or whether no one at all won, but
it's clearly a cautionary tale we should all take to heart.
** LORD OF THE RINGS, REVISED EDITION **
Elendil to Isildur: "Throw in the ring! Throw it in!"
Isildur: "Don't wanna. It's mine. I'll never - AAAUUUUUUGGHHH..."
Elendil (calls down): "That's why *I* didn't pick it up, you moron."
Elendil, walking away: "I bet that saved someone a LOT of trouble a few
years down the line."
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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