Well we cold generalize this approach and go beyond feeding them true facts.
“What sentence would cause the denizens of future dark ages to pull themselves out their hole?”
Then we send them some crazy basilisk that drives them to invent all sorts of math and theory in the course of trying to crack it. Maybe the Riemann hypothesis or Fermat’s last theorem.
If they were a future of LW users that may work, but a person at the average intelligence level doesn’t understand either of those. To ensure future understanding of complex ideas, it is (I believe) best to start with something simple that enables them to derive the complexities for themselves.
I can think of some effective religious basilisks, but I’m pretty sure they’re too close to those which have already been forbidden from being posted here.
Well we cold generalize this approach and go beyond feeding them true facts.
“What sentence would cause the denizens of future dark ages to pull themselves out their hole?”
Then we send them some crazy basilisk that drives them to invent all sorts of math and theory in the course of trying to crack it. Maybe the Riemann hypothesis or Fermat’s last theorem.
If they were a future of LW users that may work, but a person at the average intelligence level doesn’t understand either of those. To ensure future understanding of complex ideas, it is (I believe) best to start with something simple that enables them to derive the complexities for themselves.
I can think of some effective religious basilisks, but I’m pretty sure they’re too close to those which have already been forbidden from being posted here.