From: Joel Peter William Pitt (joel.pitt@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 19:22:53 MDT
On 10/18/05, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
> Szilard and Rabi together voted not to publish, and Fermi felt obliged
> to go along with the majority. As a direct result, the German A-bomb
> project did not realize that graphite was an effective neutron
> moderator, and went with the less efficient alternative of heavy water.
> This is one of the major reasons that Germany's A-bomb project, which
> got started before the Allies, did not achieve a chain reaction before
> the end of the war.
>
Of course, despite who you think were the good guys and who were bad - this
didn't prevent nuclear weapons being used did it? And with the current
reputation of the United States I'd rather they didn't have exclusive access
to the information.
I agree that, from a US National Security angle, releasing the genome was
stupid.
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