What was the official story for many top physicists congregating in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project?

moses

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What was the official story for many top physicists congregating in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project?

by moses

3rd Jul 2019

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There is a consensus among most people I know that if top researchers are necessary for the successful development of AGI, then it would be impossible to do in in secrecy, because the world would notice top AI researchers leaving their jobs and congregating at a military facility.

But the US government did pull this off with physicists. How?

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Dr_Manhattan

Jul 03, 2019

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I think it was easier in that era; AFAIK they used conventional secrecy methods (project names, locations, misdirection, need to know, obfuscation) to pull it off. Feynman's "Surely you're joking" and Rhodes "making the atomic bomb" are good sources for some examples (and otherwise recommended)

[-]ESRogs7y260

If ever there was a question with your name on it... ;-)

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[-]Raemon7y50

Hmm. Perhaps a related question is "prior to the Manhattan Project, had there ever been anything like a Manhattan project before?". It seems like quite plausibly the answer was "no, not really", which makes security through obscurity much easier.

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[-]moses7y30

I read Feynman, but I don't think he said anything about how the US government explained the withdrawal of top physicists from public space.

Maybe it was the case that "the US military is using top physicists to do something" was not a secret; it only was a secret what exactly they're working on.

In that case this would not be repeatable either, because "the US military is using top AI researchers to do something" is not quite the same level of vague :)

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