RE: Another tedious hypothetical

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 13:40:44 -0700

Rich writes

> Another hypothetical. In 1939, let's say, a writer comes up with a sci-fi
> story, which is published the next year. It involves (let's say) a uranium
> bomb and a "beryllium target" in the Arizona desert that might blow up and
> cause problems for everyone. His main character is a fellow he decides to
> name "Silard." Two other characters he names "Korzybski" and "Lenz." Two
> cities are named in the story: Manhattan and Chicago. Along about the
> same time, in 1939 an out-of-work scientist named Leo Szilard is crossing a
> street in London (no, he doesn't know the sci fi writer.) Four years later
> Leo Szilard will be working with a guy named George Kistiakowski---whose
> job it is to fashion a lens configuration for the explosives surrounding a
> nuclear core for the first atomic bomb---code named, the Manhattan
> Project. Some of the other scientists, Enrico Fermi, for example, are from
> Chicago (where the first man-made nuclear pile was constructed---under the
> amphitheater.)
>
> (A correction---the first nuclear test, was named, of course, Trinity, not
> "The Manhattan Project." And the core of the device, which Oppenheimer
> called "the gadget" was about the size of a grapefruit. -RM)
>
> Now, pick one:
> 1. All a Big Coincidence Proving Nothing (ABCPN)
> 2. The writer obviously was privy to state secrets
     and should have been arrested.
> 3. Suggests precognition of a very strange and weird sort.
> 4. Might fit a QM many worlds model and should be investigated further.
> 5. I have no clue how to even address something like this.
>
> Any takers?

I'll go for 1, all a big coincidence. Firstly, it should be taken
as the default hypothesis. Second, in my opinion no reliable evidence
has ever surfaced that points to precognition, or points to a science
theory that is an elaboration of QM/GR. In fact, numerous claims of
something new are regularly debunked by skeptics, and have picked up
the name (rightly, in my opinion) of pseudo-science.

In world war II, the FBI did question one man who published a story
involving atomic theory or atomic bombs that had some eerie similarities
to what was top secret. But they determined that it was just coincidence.
I'd be lying if I claimed to be unaffected by that report.

Lee
Received on Sun Jun 05 2005 - 16:59:15 PDT