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From: pierce@cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Worst-case scenario
Message-ID: <Apr.18.23.07.59.1991.22952@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 19 Apr 91 03:08:01 GMT
Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 40
Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu

In article <Apr.12.16.18.42.1991.7352@athos.rutgers.edu> the moderator
writes:

>[This is an extremely poorly posed problem.

I am sorry that my neglect to explicitly mention the assumptions
caused difficulty and confusion in understanding the problem I posed,
and would be more than happy to make any clarifications that are
still needed.

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The major assumptions I had in mind when posing the problem:

The criminal does not command hordes of minions to apply his device 
The criminal has a normal human lifespan 
The criminal cannot count on the deliberate cooperation of humans
    in their own destruction
The criminal's murderous psychosis is not shared by millions of others
    and thus the criminal must act alone or with the cooperation of 
    some small band of followers
If the device can be created secretly, then the criminal may use 
    surprise. If the device could not be created secretly, then
    the criminal may not use surprise. 

Moreover,

An answer that would be unacceptable as the response to any other
engineering design problem is unacceptable here; in particular,
the answer must describe a mechanism, not simply reduce the
requirements statement to a more refined requirements statement.  For
example, "combine AIDS and the common cold" is not a suitable answer,
whereas a technical description of *how* you would combine them is.

The device is not required to be provably 100% effective on paper
or to work perfectly on the first field test.

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-- Brad