The Twenty-Kilogram Test

This is a point in the story’s plot where the students’ reactions are critical. Many students at Caltech have endured my questioning them, but there are some subtle tricks to this test that I want to evaluate. To insure fairness, try not to read the comments left by others until you’ve made your own answer.

So: you are on a college campus, or in your car, or sitting on nothing, as you fly through space as described in the story. The Examiner has informed you that you and your fellow students must survive on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti for at least twenty-four years, that you have everything currently on the campuses of Caltech and MIT, and that you will be allowed 20 kg of anything that can be produced on Earth, with some restrictions:

I will not give you anything that you intend to use against other humans or yourself, because that would defeat the purpose of the test. No nerve gases, viruses, or nuclear bombs. I will also not give you any human. … Every other person on both campuses has the same decision. If you find someone else and agree as to what you want, you may pool your mass allocations.

Because I pushed the subjective time to Tau Ceti down to 2 hours, the subjects in the story had only 30 minutes to decide what they wanted. I’ll need to rely on you to police yourselves to that limit, as I am much less capable than the Examiners. So: what do you request?

2007, July 25: Results and a Loophole

I’ve had a fairly large number of responses to the Twenty-Kilogram Test, by email and verbally from the amazingly tolerant student body of Caltech. Some of the more interesting ideas, filtering out the large number of requests for weapons of mass destruction:

Keys to all locks on campus: get into everything. Privacy concern, but useful.

20 kg monofilament fishing line and hooks: reasoned as the easiest way to get a supply of local meat.

Three sets of especially durable wilderness wear: laundry machines won’t be on for a long while.

Modern atl atl and spears: can take down a woolly mammoth, so probably good enough for the zards and pedes I’ve set up.

10 kg fissile uranium, in shielded cage: you and a hundred of your closest friends get this, and you can make a suitably large power plant that would last a century.

The fourth story in the sequence shows a loophole in the Test, which only two people out of the 40 I asked saw. One of them was myself, which is problematic, and casual conversation is not the same as being awakened by an alien and finding yourself flying through interstellar space, but the loophole is catalytic once someone sees it, so I had two out of 1737 Caltech students see it.

To see the loophole, rephrase the 20-kg question: what is most useful, but has the smallest possible mass? The answer may come easier now: information. Several people asked for high-density storage media holding various data, but the Examiners aren’t limited to that. They can impress information directly onto a human brain. Yes, this is only possible in theory and requires outrageously good knowledge of neurochemistry and the particular brain concerned and incredible ability to adjust potential differences, synapses, and neurotransmitter concentrations, but the Examiners have all that so that they can communicate with the Techers and this is, after all, science fiction.

Once people see the loophole, a lot of weird things happen. Medical knowledge comes first, followed by all manner of other things: psychology, languages, literature (I had one subject ask to become Homer), skill with weapons, heightened perception, memory training, practical engineering, car repair. It is fortunate that only a few of the population think of this, or the Test would be completely broken. As it is, I have two characters being outrageously skilled, four being very good, and about forty others with the equivalent of extra doctorates.

I originally allowed this for amusement value, but it added a new dimension to the story: do the Examiners really want the Test to be fair, and if not, why are they running it at all?