Re: Why the interest in really big primes? Re: new confuser

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Jun 13 2003 - 23:22:40 MDT

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    Brett Paatsch wrote:
    > Spike wrote:
    >
    >>My notion is that a long list of Mersenne primes could
    >>be used as a gentle deterrence or a weapon of peace for
    >>any extraterrestrial civilizations we might contact. If
    >>we reveal our many resources, ET might be tempted to
    >>come here and devour same.
    >>
    >>But if we transmit a long list of Mersenne primes, (the
    >>same in any base, in any corner of the universe) we
    >>demonstrate that not only are we a clever species, we have
    >>computer resources to simply waste on foolishness.
    >
    > Ah the classic "we speak softly but carry a long list of
    > Mersenne primes" deterrent. Very cunning.

    Think of a little child, enthusiastically waving a crayon drawing... 

    -- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

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