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