From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Dec 23 2000 - 10:23:58 MST
Chris Russo wrote:
>
> At 07:43 -0500 12/23/00, GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> >Uh oh -- I forgot one. "Contact". It may actually be the only OTHER
> >"Science SF" movie ever made, as well as a damned good "Social SF" movie.
> >The opening equence alone is worth the price of admission. (And yes, I know
> >there are a couple of pretty terrible scientific gaffs in "Contact", but they
> >don't go to the heart of the story . . .)
>
> The whole idea of where a society with backwards technology is able
> to replicate fantastically futuristic machines with only a blueprint,
> not even considering all of the manufacturing support needed, turns
> me way off. It would be like sending a circa 600 AD earth society
> the plans for a Pentium IV. I somehow doubt that they could figure
> out the lithography and how to create extraordinarily pure silicon.
Let's not forget that the blueprint was specifically designed to be
replicable by low-tech cultures. You could send a "circa 600 AD earth
society" the plans for a printing press, or even a telephone, or a Babbage
machine.
If not for the fact that they were aliens, they could have just sent Jodie
Foster a DNA sequence. Synthesize the DNA sequence, drop it in a
bacterium, poof, custom proteins... and we all know what that means, don't
we?
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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