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Playing devil's advocate here, I think the danger is accident rather than intention. If there are just a few "evil scientists" tinkering around this worldwide,

by swombat 18y ago

Playing devil's advocate here, I think the danger is accident rather than intention. If there are just a few "evil scientists" tinkering around this worldwide, that's fine... their chances, as you argue, are low... but what if there's a hundred thousand amateurs blundering around in their spare evenings? That surely massively multiplies the likelihood that they come up with something devastating, by accident. And even though the likelihood may still be less than that of a plane crash, it's worth bearing in mind that we're all riding on this plane... I'm not suggesting that these people somehow need to be rounded up or something... I don't think that would work, for a start. But perhaps the subject does deserve some thought. Perhaps biohackers can be provided with free access to secure facilities, expertise and oversight that will enable them to conduct their experiments safely. Sure, that might cost a bit, to build all the infrastructure... but it's less expensive than a Black Plague 2.0, as you call it.

splat 18y ago
One of the problems with present-day technology is that the capability of wiping out the human species is a possibility, even if vanishingly small. It's hard to refute the argument that "The value associated with the destruction of the human race is minus infinity, so the expected value of doing anything that has a nonzero probability of destroying the human race is also minus infinity." But we seem to be comfortable with this existential threat on some level given that we switched on the LHC and we have thousands of nukes ready to destroy every major city on the face of the earth within hours. It all comes down to costs and benefits. If we try to minimize this existential threat by building some sort of infrastructure so that biohackers can conduct their experiments with oversight we're going to lose something. In this case, we'd be losing research that qualified scientists could be doing instead of babysitting people who, on average, probably have no idea what they're doing. Plus, institutionalizing the process seems to me to defeat the purpose of biohacking--using unconventional techniques to solve problems. In the facilities you describe, I'm not sure the biohackers would have the freedom to perform the experiments they want. True, it would significantly reduce the odds of a catastrophic virus leaking to the general population, but it would also reduce the odds that someone discovers some "miracle cure." (Of course, the odds of this happening either way are pretty small, but I'd reckon that the odds of something good coming out of these garage experiments is at least an order of magnitude greater than the odds of anything bad happening.)

by swombat 18y ago

splat 18y ago

One of the problems with present-day technology is that the capability of wiping out the human species is a possibility, even if vanishingly small. It's hard to refute the argument that "The value associated with the destruction of the human race is minus infinity, so the expected value of doing anything that has a nonzero probability of destroying the human race is also minus infinity." But we seem to be comfortable with this existential threat on some level given that we switched on the LHC and we have thousands of nukes ready to destroy every major city on the face of the earth within hours. It all comes down to costs and benefits. If we try to minimize this existential threat by building some sort of infrastructure so that biohackers can conduct their experiments with oversight we're going to lose something. In this case, we'd be losing research that qualified scientists could be doing instead of babysitting people who, on average, probably have no idea what they're doing. Plus, institutionalizing the process seems to me to defeat the purpose of biohacking--using unconventional techniques to solve problems. In the facilities you describe, I'm not sure the biohackers would have the freedom to perform the experiments they want. True, it would significantly reduce the odds of a catastrophic virus leaking to the general population, but it would also reduce the odds that someone discovers some "miracle cure." (Of course, the odds of this happening either way are pretty small, but I'd reckon that the odds of something good coming out of these garage experiments is at least an order of magnitude greater than the odds of anything bad happening.)