4 ms·

aside from bad actors, i think that safe guards could prove effective. synthetic organisms would have no natural predators, but the would also have no natural

• b112 4y ago
  Yet if wrong, what then? What if it is a mold or fungus which eats crops, yet was designed to be resilient? And cannot be killed without killing the plant? Now you have a year or two, as it spreads, until starvarion causes total societal collapes, wars, dead, destruction. And meanwhile all grasses around the world die, photosynthesis drops, animals, insects, and plants are dying off. The problem is, any solution which hopes to contain, can mutate out. Cross-species genetic transfer is a thing. Mutation is a thing. Expecting what you make, as a biological organism, to work as you wish is... not sensible. Compared to programming languages, biological processes allow for change. Yet we can barely make secure code, and are endlessly surprised at our own lack fo security, and bugs, and issues in code due to unforeseen circumstances. If you came to me and said you can make perfect code, make it secure, and bug free, I'd laugh and laugh until I wondered if I should fire you for incompetence. And working with genetics, and with entirely new orgamisims, is more complex that the largest of codebases. And at release, into the wild, there aee no issue trackers, no patches, no fixes. It's shipped and gone. To me, your comment highlights how unready we are.
  • kcartlidge 4y ago
    > And at release, into the wild, there are no issue trackers, no patches, no fixes. It's shipped and gone. Very much this.