[ExI] john nash, was: RE: Uploading Swindle (was Re: Finally!)

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj



>.philosophical doubts about the legitimacy of defining uploading as
"survival" will soon become extinct or restricted to the tinfoil-hat fringe.
-- Stefano Vaj

 

What if.  there really is some kind of EM signal penetrating our brains
(designed by aliens to make us crazy) that is somehow reflected by metal
foil.  Then the foil-hat people would be the only ones not made crazy by the
signal, but they were already crazy to start with.  But what if the crazies
anticipated this whole scheme, so that the foil hat fringe were never crazy
to start with?  {8-]  

 

Relax, Stafano, I don't have a foil hat.  {8^D

 

The recent declassification of John Nash's work on encryption made me think
of this.  I took out the book A Beautiful Mind by Nasar.  She was completely
unaware of the encryption work of course, but knows of Nash's paranoia and
delusional schizophrenia.  Perhaps the NSA recognized the guy had mental
problems and used it to keep him quiet on cryptology.  Those of us who ask
the kinds of what-ifs in the first paragraph are tempted to ask, what if.
the government, in its wartime zeal, slipped Nash a little something, a
chemical perhaps, to heighten his mental illness?  Perhaps they
intentionally worked on his paranoia, made it worse, as a means of
controlling him.  Would the US government do something like that under any
circumstances?

 

spike

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