Saturday, March 09, 2013

[pdsmnpkz] Hastening the second apocalypse

Humanity destroys itself by one of the many options available.  There will be survivors.

Exactly what life is like for those survivors building and living in a new civilization depends critically on what information survives this first apocalypse.  And I think mere individuals now can significantly affect it: simply record the information you want to have survive on a durable material, make many copies, and distribute it around the world.

The ultimate troll preserves details on how to make powerful weapons, hastening the second civilization's self-destruction, or at least making life unpleasant for an entire future civilization.  Everyone else is back in the stone age, while you have a machine gun.

Another trollish act would be to preserve a technology whose dangers are far from obvious (perhaps taking generations to discover, and very difficult to undo the harm), but not record those dangers.  What are some examples?

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