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Comment by cma

16 hours ago

What if we just discovered an alien artifact with the next 200 years of math? I can see arguments to throw it away for safety, who knows if the aliens are getting us to nuke ourselves or whatever, but throw it away so a few hundred/thousand of the most elite thinking humans can have the joy of credit for discovering each thing?

If the argument is that we have discovered 200 years of math in 1 year that we might need to throw out for fear that blindly applying its incomprehensible results will lead us to ruin, then I would say: why not settle for 199 years of math in 1 year which can be verified by our human intellectual reserve that we will train on the remaining 1 year?