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

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