Re: How would you save mankind (was Re: What would make you believe?)

Wildepad skrev:
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:04:24 +0100, Jens Egon Nyborg
> <jens.e.nyborg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> Wildepad skrev:
>>> On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:58:45 +0100, Jens Egon Nyborg
>>> <jens.e.nyborg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> Bryan Derksen skrev:
>>>>> Derek Lyons wrote:
>>>>>> Jens Egon Nyborg <jens.e.nyborg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Imagine that you are agent A, hired by someone - anyone - to save
>>>>>>> mankind in a number of paralell timelines. You have access to a
time
>>>>>>> machine that will take you back into the past of these timelines.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What do you do?
>>>>>> Hard to say without knowing exactly what threat we are trying to
>>>>>> defend against or what even we are trying to prevent.
>>>> Thinking about this, I think it becomes more and more clear that you
>>>> must put a lot of research into this.
>>> Research would be long and difficult. The scenario described a series
>>> of wars and plagues that reduced mankind to a thousand people. That
>>> would, it seems to me, mean a complete discontinuity -- all history
>>> lost during survivalist times.
>> Hint: They have a time machine!
> 
> So they pop in without knowing the language, culture, or anything
> else?

Even in your original scenario they needed to learn the language. That
they managed to do so without discovering ways to learn more is
implausible.

Note that their archaeologists should know about television, so just
shove a recording device into a remote area and pick it up 6 months later.

Or as Bryan Derksen suggested just abduct some people for interviews.
Abduct equals save in this situation.

> For most of human history, that would get you burned at the stake.

Witchcraft, i.e. *evil* magic or heresy might get you burned at the
stake. Even Oliver Cromwell would not kill anyone for being a clueless
foreigner (his efforts to save your immortal soul might get *extremely*
annoying, though)

> Today, it would land you in a nut hut.

Oh, yeah. 'Tis a pity about all those foreign speakers in the nut huts.

>> I agree that there will be an element of hit and miss in the first
>> tries, though. And that they will at first act on insufficient
knowledge.
> 
> Yes!
> --