[ExI] How to build a happier brain

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] How to build a happier brain

 

>.Einstein must have felt great on the day he discovered General Relativity,
but it took him 10 years and was such hard work that he lost 40 pounds and
it nearly killed him. John Clark

I should say so.  Since he had already discovered ten years previously that
E=MC^2, those 40 pounds mass would be the equivalent of about 1.6
quintillion joules, or the energy of about 400 million tons of TNT.   Edward
Teller was a child of 8 years at the time Einstein discovered General
Relativity, surely in his early intellectually formative years.  Teller is
thought to have coined the term "mega-death."  By Teller's calculus that 40
pounds of mass lost by Einstein, if converted to energy and effectively
distributed, would produce approximately 2000 mega-deaths, which is not far
off from the population of the world at that time.  Einstein's 40 pounds
could have destroyed humanity down to nearly the last radioactive gasp, so
it is no wonder it nearly slew him.

Someone made a comment here about Teller being the inspiration for Kubric's
Dr. Strangelove.  The notion was that Teller must have been completely
insane to promote the development of a hydrogen bomb, when the radioactive
ash from the Uranium and Plutonium bombs had scarcely settled, but it
occurred to me that he was not only sane, he was right.  When Alfred Nobel
invented dynamite, he thought it would end all war, because it would just be
too dangerous; wrong.  The same argument was made with the atom bomb, but
wrong again, for note that it was used a second time.  But eventually a bomb
too large to ever use was invented, Teller's horrifying brain child, the
mega-death inducing hydrogen bomb.

Now, what was it we were discussing?  Oh yes, how to build a happier brain.

spike

 

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