At 9:25 PM -0800 2/26/99, Spike Jones wrote:
>Earlier I posted the notion that Mersenne primes might be used to
>impress extraterrestrial civilizations. After thinking it thru, I think we
>can make a stronger arguement than that: Mersenne primes might
>be the *best* yardstick to *prove* a certain level of technological
>achievement, perhaps the most logical yardstick.
Except that it might have an unintended effect. Suppose we send out a list
of Mersenne primes, and the receiving civilization realizes from the list
that we do not know the Theorem of Myxlptlk, which, as every young
Golurdian knows, gives an explicit formula for all Mersenne primes. So they
immediately come over here and harvest our brains, which are tasty only
within a certain range of intelligence.
mark
________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
