[tryingtogetback]

editorialization of this question on HN is bugging me:

"If I solve integer factorization, will I get killed for breaking cryptography?" reads as "If I solve integer factorization and start actively breaking cryptography (snoop and steal), will I get killed?" - the answer is yes, most likely.

Where the original question in quora is completely different: "If I solve integer factorization, will I get killed because I would have broken cryptography?" - the answer is no (no with "but again, it depends").

[noodles_nomore]

I can't make out any nuance of this kind in the title. I'm curious what kind of association you're drawing it from.

[perl4ever]

Situation (1) has two cases - (a) they know how you are doing it, and (b) they don't.

In (1a) or (2), then why kill the discoverer, because if one person figured it out, someone else will.

I'm not sure this is how everybody does/would think, but it seems common-sense-ish to me. For example, Newton/Leibniz.

[floatingatoll]

Pragmatically, eurekas are rare enough that killing one person with a eureka may well prevent anyone else from solving how they did it, or building on their work, for a very long time.

[setr]

There is the idea of multiple discovery[0] — that they tend to occur simultaneously and independently within a short timespan.

It’s often just time for the discovery to be made, because of all the proceeding work.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery

[perl4ever]

Yes, so if you got a time machine and eliminated Isaac Newton...

A world changing discovery or invention may seem like a unique magical achievement to the average person, but the question is, how likely is it for the second most suited person to accomplish it? Is it likely that there's a huge gap on average?

[floatingatoll]

Would we still have Post-Its if that entire chain of random chance events hadn't happened? This random link from a web search says:

https://www.invent.org/blog/trends-stem/who-invented-post-it...

> tasked with developing new, stronger adhesives. However, the sticky “microspheres” he invented were neither very strong nor permanent

[6 years later]

> a new product development researcher at 3M, was singing one night at church and wondered if he could make a bookmark that would stick to his hymnal but not damage the page after removing it

Yes, in theory, these two events could have been replaced, or even both independently occurred to the same person instead of two — but how much longer might it have taken for that to occur, and why didn't anyone think of it sooner?

Blu Tack was invented in 1968, and that weak adhesive above was invented in 1969, so Blu Tack had their 'weak adhesive' product on the market a decade before 3M had theirs. So, why aren't they called Tack-It Notes?

Technically we could have had Post-Its any time from 1968 onward, but it took until 1974 for wish for a sticky bookmark and to know that a weak adhesive existed. That's the irreplaceable person in this story, and without them, it could have easily been years or decades before someone else considered this.

[perl4ever]

I feel like there's a vague analogy to the birthday paradox, where when you fix one thing and think about other things matching up, the conjunction seems unlikely, but when you stop trying to hold one side still, you can see the probability is much higher.

[floatingatoll]

It’s definitely fuzzy and uncertain, that’s absolutely for sure. I’m confident both cases exist, but not at all about their relative prevalence.