linkdink

With occupational safety, just like anything else, you can hire professionals and set whatever objectives and deadlines your budget allows. Companies that embrace it get much better and faster results than companies that resist it.

Maybe it will lead to treating the oceans as more of an actively managed resource. So that's one possibly positive thing that could partially offset the inevitable negatives.

Personally, I'm also really interested in learning more about human prehistory because much of it was coastal and now submerged.

So there's no benefit to collaborating because of distances and time scales. A system of machines is plausible, so there's a non-zero risk of encountering something like that. Civilizations decide to hide because only bad things could happen if they don't. And now you have a dark forest. The hunter doesn't have to exist. The prey just has to be fearful.

I thought those were all-in-one nanobot things?

Is that really an old story? There's usually no memory allocation after initial startup in safety- and mission-critical systems. Rolling over past the max value of an integer data type is a thing though, and they do reboot for that.

Still a strawman because I didn't say sci fi replicators. You could make an automated system that travels, mines, and manufactures. Like a 3D printer that prints copies of itself. That's not unbelievable.

Replicator machines could outlive their creators. Then maybe most civilizations think it's safer not to risk being discovered by one, just in case it exists. That seems reasonable and doable.

The DFH doesn't claim that the aliens would be "god-like" per your definition. They just have a first-strike capability and motive to use it. Could be a low risk-tolerance for coexisting with other aliens. Or something else. Either way, you don't have to suspend disbelief because you're arguing with a strawman you created.

By keeping up with capabilities, features, and compatibility. The algorithm doesn't become wrong, but it and the implementation do get surpassed in utility.

The line sounded funnier to me in the less pedantic way.

> The Mercury-4 is the culmination of years of research

I'm imagining some researcher after years of investment and experimentation eventually accidentally discovering the solution: "you mean it just shuts _itself_ off?!?!".

That's something that mechanics books do a lot better than EE books, as far as I've seen.