Fifty teachers/professors with a bit of time on their hands have decided Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is “the science fiction film with the most realistic vision of the future of mankind.” One professor comments, “It is not beyond the realms of possibility that artificial intelligence could turn on its creators.”
Blade Runner was deemed pretty realistic as well as The Andromeda Strain, and that’s not all.
Barry DiGregorio, research Associate for the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, and a member of the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, said: “I have been campaigning against NASA’s plans to bring back samples from Mars as I believe they could possibly endanger the Earth’s biosphere with microbial contamination from the planet.
“In a worst case scenario this could lead to an Andromeda Strain-type situation. My concerns are based on the Viking biology data that were conducted on Mars in 1976. NASA have always opposed the claim that their data found microbial life on Mars, however, two NASA astrobiologists have publicly stated otherwise and I have worked with them to bring attention to their finds.”
I always get suspicious when I read something by “x professors”. Professors are supposed to be really good at their area of expertise. Outside their area of expertise they are not necessarily more competent than an average member of the population. This article uses Albert Einstein as an example.
From the article Ori links to: ‘The celebrated University of London Professor of Psychology H.J. Eysenck put it bluntly. “Scientists,” he wrote, “especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous…”’
A science teacher at my college said the same thing. He said that scientists high education, intelligence, and specialization makes them bad candidates for adminstrative roles or as mediators b/w scientific ideas. They can be very biased, just like many people of lesser intelligence.
Dark Star was my favorite bad sci-fi movie of all time. Blowing up unstable planets to make new solar systems safe for new settlements is obviously where technology is heading. And using existential philosophy to convince a cybernetic explosive device about the reality surrounding itself and that it should listen to you? You need to watch the movie to see how well that works.