Word: myxotricha
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...modest proposal for saving ourselves from nuclear self-destruction. He suggests that we program into the computers that aim our intercontinental missiles the instruction not to fire until we have acquired complete information about one living thing. He even offers as a candidate for this honor a protozoan called Myxotricha paradoxa, which lives in the innermost reaches of Australian termites' digestive tracts...
Thomas' proposal is more difficult than it sounds, for Myxotricha is so complex that he believes that no matter how much information was amassed, any fair-minded computer would request more data before it obeyed the command to shoot...
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