Good point. Given that past is prologue, perhaps the Manhattan Project is illustrative.
Just before the Trinity test in NM, physicists made bets on the outcome. The lowball was a ‘fizzle’ – insufficient fission to produce a chain reaction.
At the other end of the spectrum were a few who feared that the atmosphere would be set aflame. It is notable that their fears were not dismissed as an impossibility. No one could be absolutely certain.
I sometimes wonder what was running through the minds of those few as the countdown went to zero.
you didn’t really answer my question. Not sure I should bother to respond. So getting everyone to agree on a thermostat setting is kind of a ridiculous premise. Getting the world to agree that we need to cut/reduce/eliminate green house gasses? Well I think it’s achievable. Certainly hope it is.
It’s literally the only sort of climate action that can be done unilaterally. No agreement necessary. It’s also the only thing that can work at this point.
That’s a semantic distinction mostly, but it’s part of PKDs ruminations which inspired the movie. What most people think of as a digital computer these days is a binary switching system, but computers don’t need to be binary. I think it isn’t a stretch at all to think of organisms as autonomous molecular computers. As an autonomous molecular computer with a tenuous “persona”, I find it easy to suppose that all intelligence is, to an extent, artificial.
