From a scientific standpoint, what would be the stupidest way to solve problems like global warming, poverty, pollution, etc. I have a story about an overpowered tyrant who always thinks he knows everything best and wants to solve such problems to be seen as a "world's savior". But I have limited knowledge on some subjects (especially physics). So, any ideas?
The stupidest way to solve problems is single-handedly whilst distracting everybody else from them with unicorn rabies:- - unicorn rabies is a self-explanatory imaginary disease - it only admits of binary opinions (unicorns do or don't carry rabies) - it's untestable (unicorn rabies can only be disproven with a blood sample) - it offers an infinite variety of expensive remedies (airlift all other creatures away from the unicorns' habitats... scrub all unicorns with aloe vera bleach...) - it requires multidisciplinary study (this is where being a tyrant helps, he can invent the necessary degree courses and professions) - it has an international dimension (the tyrant can divert tax funds to benefit the unicorns of friendly regimes overseas) - it has a fear factor (unicorns are invisible and can do magic - and they carry rabies) So let's say the tyrant wants to solve the very real problem of global pollution. If he wants something done properly he does it himself. Give him a couple of days alone in the rainforest with a sponge and he'll have it fixed nicely - if only everyone wasn't watching. Because if you're going to do miracles, you need privacy. So he has his state psychiatrists (with their devious knowledge of torture techniques and hypnosis) implant the idea of unicorn rabies into a small, susceptible proportion of the world's population. In fifty years' time, nobody will remember pollution, as they hide in their sixty-foot unicorn-proof towers, and the tyrant will be well on the way to solving the problem. Or at least stupidly trying to.
A bunch of posts about political ideology have been deleted - if you want to argue about private vs public - do it in the debate room. This here is where we help people with writing
Changing the standard of poverty to bring everyone down to the base level, by limiting tech and going back to subsistence. It would need to be very draconian.
Global warming you can fix by turning on all the air conditioners in your country. Poverty can be fixed by printing more money and giving it to the people. Pollution can fixed by a media blitz explaining that polluting is anti-government behavior and citizens are encouraged to report neighbors who pollute to the secret police.
I remember a plan in the '80s to fix global cooling that involved shredding used tires and scattering them on glaciers. This would cause the ice to melt by absorbing sunlight. I think that was Time magazine that recommended this fix, but it might have been Discover. I remember reading it. It struck me as stupid, at the time. The worry was about cooling and not warming, but it's the same sentiment from the usual suspects. There were other plans with space mirrors. They would refocus sunlight. Maybe you could turn your space mirrors backwards and reflect the sunlight away. Build a Dyson Sphere around the earth, haha. Open apertures on it like Venetian blinds. That gives you perfect temperature control. That of course leads to the simpler Logan's-Run cities, where people live in utopic pleasure domes cut off from the outside world. Yeah, that's where my brainstorming leads me. Pleasure dome communes. I think that's actually feasible. You allow the earth to readjust while your citizens live like hive insects in their nest cities. Then at the end of the story, someone breaks out of the city (I'm imagining the end of G Lucas's THX-1138 . . . starring Robert Duvall, great movie), and when they look out on what should be Eden, it's just ash. Across the horizon, thousands of cities are sending up great plumes of flith.
I would say you don't need all that much subject matter expertise, because the dumbest way to solve the world's problems is by thinking that there is an easy (or even just one) solution in the first place. A quick google search will probably give you all manner of One Simple Trick-s to solve whatever problem you like, and--for big, global problems like pollution, etc.--none of them will require a lot of scientific knowledge, because they're scams targeting the scientifically illiterate to begin with.
Err, while we're at it, let's nuke Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing, the chain reaction will rid the world of nukes too....and....ensuing nuclear winter will naturally cool this overheating planet. Job done. - Side issue, anyone got a link to first world whinging thread? Unable to unearth it, I need to unload . -
It's on the second or third page in the lounge threads: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/the-first-world-whinging-thread.157337/page-140
I would put most "magical megaprojects" in this category. They are good for theorycrafting and brainstorming, but often have tons and tons of pitfalls that'd make them very bad or even self-destructive. I think Tyrants are especially prone to reaching for these "megaprojects" - I dare say every brain-screwed authoritarian dictator in human history has had an idea for one or two (but we might just pretend to be glad Ludwig II had it; man's fairy-tale fever dream castle is now Bavaria's main tourist attraction). Altantropa is a good example for this; it was an erratic proposal to resolve overpopulation + economic struggles in Europe by constructing a series of huge dams that constrained the Mediterranean sea and opened up new lands for settlement. You can only imagine the longer-lasting effects of a project like that ... and then the potential of a dam breached by human error / terrorist attack. Imagine a proposal/project to reduce global warming or prevent climate change by building a giant carbon-fibre cage around earth with "sail sections" (sorta like a dyson sphere) where a special material can be drawn or projected that limits the reach of certain radiation to Earth, effectively shading it. Now imagine the sheer resources necessary, the issues of relying on such a system, the potential of blocking out the sun for whole sections of Earth, etc.
I think this has been mentioned earlier, but when I first saw this thread, my first thought was how do you define 'dumb' in this context? Ineffective? Causing more damage? Outright asinine from the beginning? If you want it to be downright stupid, you could just use your imagination to come up with anything. If you want it to be something that is dumb in hindsight but had good intentions, you could draw inspiration from some real world examples: Four Pests Campaign The Four Pests Campaign was a campaign during the Mao era to help increase farming yields and overall health, I presume. Rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows were the target, with bounties being offered for some pests. Sparrows were targeted because they eat crops, but there was one problem: sparrows eat a lot of insects too like locusts, and crop yields suffered even more in the absence of sparrows. China suspended the program and ended up having to import sparrows to compensate. This was not a campaign to solve any problems, other than save money, but there is the Flint Water Crisis The city of Flint in central Michigan used to get it's water from the same source as Detroit - the Detroit River and Lake Huron. My summary that follows may not be accurate, but you get the idea. They decided to switch to the Flint River, but they made a few mistakes. A lot of Flint homes used lead pipes. This can be dangerous, but can be mitigating if the water is treated in a way to allow a protective coating to accumulate around the pipes. I think anti-corrosive treatments may also be needed to prevent this coating from deteriorating. It sounds like they did neither. But the problem was even worse, because the Flint River contains a lot more salt due to the fact that roads are salted in Northern States. Roads near Detroit are salted too, but this probably didn't have as big an impact due to the larger volume of their water source and overall dilution (this may not be accurate). In short, a huge health crisis was caused because some officials wanted to save money but didn't consult with the proper experts, or did but just didn't listen to their advice. I'm not sure which it is. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar disasters, but those are two that I first thought of.
No-one mentioned Decree 770? From memory so might need a fact check, but as I recall: Nicolae Chau Chow.. grrr Ceausescu (nice fella) wished to get Romania's birthrate up. So he put a block on contraception. Fast forward a generation and the orphanages were full to bursting with not just actual orphans, but the poor kids of poor parents who gave them up on economic grounds. I think there was a surge of mass unemployment there with the wave of new youngsters being of working age. Word is they got mighty annoyed and overthrew their leader.
Any one of these is fine, but "Causing more damage" would certainly help the most. But to be a little more specific, by "dumb ideas" I mean things that someone might propose when their knowledge of a certain subject is rather infantile. Like "if global warming is a problem, why won't we just stop using heaters?"
Nuke the Earth into an Ice Age to combat Global Warming. Or find a way to set off all the super volcanos to similar effect. While technically not stupid if done correctly, using giant orbital mirrors to reflect the sun away. Though if they get on the wrong orbital path, they could reflect and act like giant magnifying glasses to heat areas to a crisp and/or melt the polar ice caps. Building space habitats that could house more people, and free up land for farming. Downsides include crashing into each other or falling out of orbit. And it would cost much in the way of money, resources and time. Build super structure heat radiators like they use in space, but from the ground out into orbit. If one or two were to 'collapse' it would swat populated areas in the process. He could mandate some new law that all of civilization must live in a subterranean life, contained deep into the earth's crust. Thus eliminating human contamination on the surface. Though that would mean that all the pollution would have to be filtered or everyone would adopt wearing respirators and gasmasks in open communal spaces not sealed off from the pollution trapped within the underground system. And the most absurd but not last: Just send everyone into space outside of a select group on a one way trip. They might get lucky and find somewhere to colonize, but be out of the dictator's hair so to speak, and cut severely down on adding to carbon emissions.
