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steven0461 comments on Open Thread, August 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong
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How to make a movable-type printing press. They'll figure out pasteurization and the scientific method on their own eventually, but without a press, they'll lose knowledge almost as fast as they gain it. And as an added bonus, it introduces the concept of mass production.
We don't want them to advance quickly; we want them to advance with a low probability of screwing up permanently.
I don't think screwing up permanently becomes a real concern until the invention of nuclear weapons, and that's such a long ways ahead of the starting point for this exercise that I don't think we can influence how it goes.
Surely we can have nontrivial influence both on variables relating to specific technologies like nukes, and on general variables along the lines of "caution about technology".