THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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Shanlee nodded. "So we ran another computation; we added the data of
publication of this prognosis. You know, Merlin can't predict what you
or I would do under given circumstances, but Merlin can handle
large-group behavior with absolute accuracy. If we made public Merlin's
prognosis, the end would come, not in two centuries but in less than
one, and it wouldn't be a slow, peaceful decay; it would be a bomb-type
reaction. Rebellions. Overthrow of Federation authority, and then revolt
and counterrevolt against planetary authority. Division along sectional
or class lines on individual planets. Interplanetary wars; what we
fought the Alliance to prevent. Left in ignorance of the future, people
would go on trying to make do with what they had. But if they found out
that the Federation was doomed, everybody would be trying to snatch what
they could, and end by smashing everything. Left in ignorance, there
might be a planet here and there that would keep enough of the old
civilization to serve, in five or so centuries, as a nucleus for a new
one. Informed in advance of the doom of the Federation, they would all
go down together in the same bloody shambles, and there would be a