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But the FBI may genuinely be wary of biohackers Obviously, the government has never seen any invention it's not scared of. This goes all the way back to the st

But the FBI may genuinely be wary of biohackers Obviously, the government has never seen any invention it's not scared of. This goes all the way back to the steam engine. Before anyone here dredges out the old tired super virus or gray goo. There's no such thing as gray goo and never will be because you'd have to violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to get it. There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one that gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can also get you.

darien 17y ago
I think it was stephen hawking who said that the only way for humans to ensure their salvation from man-made super viruses in the next 100 years would be to colonize space. Outrageous? Sure, but so is cancer, atomic energy and quatum entanglement.
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  I think that was more of hard sell for space exploration then a warning against super viruses.
steveklabnik 17y ago
> There's no such thing as gray goo and never will be because you'd have to violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to get it. As someone who only heard of "grey goo" very recently, care to explain why this is the case?
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  In one way gray goo already exists. The world is literally covered in tiny nano machines eating and multiplying as fast as they can. And many of them are deadly to us. We call them bacteria and fungi. "grey goo" beyond the natural goo, as often seen in fiction, multiplies and moves so fast as to violate basic laws of physics. For example there's only so much energy stored in stuff that could be eaten.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    Hm, okay. I guess I never took the speed into account.
  - endtime 17y ago
    Does speed really matter? Bacteria only eat certain things, right? If some mutated type of bacteria could consume more kinds of matter, wouldn't it be a threat?
    - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
      Given how long bacteria have been on earth, and how they live from ice to desert to even nucler waste, and how fast they evolve and freely swap DNA, how has not a single one of them already evolved the ability to consume more kinds of matter? Answer: No free lunch, every advantage carries a cost. Any "super" bug we come up with will enter a world with vicious competitors who've been with us since long before the dinosaurs.
      - endtime 17y ago
        I don't really find the argument "It hasn't happened naturally so it could never happen artificially" compelling...
        asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
        Perhaps you may change your mind if you read up on how easily bacteria swap DNA and just how many of them there are and all the places they live and all the things they eat. Or to put it another way, what happened since bacteria have been around? Humans. Humans started out as single celled creatures like bacteria. And if we can get from that to humans, is it not reasonable to assume that bacteria have had the time to figure out how to multiply as fast as possible?
tigerthink 17y ago
>There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one that gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can also get you. It sounds like you're saying that each supervirus mankind creates marginally increases the chance that a Bad Thing will happen. Isn't marginally increasing the chance that a Bad Thing will happen also Bad? Also, how close do you think that HIV and MRSA are to the upper bound on supervirus potency?
- tigerthink 17y ago
  Have you read this book? http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252116171&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385...
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    Ebola kills far too quickly to ever become a pandemic. For a pandemic a virus needs to kill you slowly so you can spread it a lot. Like the 1918 flu.
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  MRSA is pretty close to sending us back in time, a time before penicillin, it wasn't a good time, but obviously we survived. We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. And while the marginal danger may increase with research, the marginal utility will also increase, in fact it will increase faster. We'll discover more cures then diseases. And yes, regulation is a blunt weapon which stops not only the bad, but also the good.
  - tigerthink 17y ago
    >We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. If some asshole creates a contagious HIV, then discovering cures faster than diseases will hardly save us. You get diminishing utility from curing diseases anyway. Say you discover cures for half the world's currently incurable diseases at random. My guess is that our life expectancy would increase by less than a decade. People are still going to age. And I'm not sure the threat of a contagious HIV would ever go away. It'd be hard finding a cure for a disease that wasn't even created yet. My guess is that there's already too much momentum behind this sort of research for us to halt it. Do you think requiring background checks for purchasers of biotech supplies would make the field more or less attractive to a hypothetical evil mastermind?

darien 17y ago

I think it was stephen hawking who said that the only way for humans to ensure their salvation from man-made super viruses in the next 100 years would be to colonize space. Outrageous? Sure, but so is cancer, atomic energy and quatum entanglement.

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
I think that was more of hard sell for space exploration then a warning against super viruses.

steveklabnik 17y ago

> There's no such thing as gray goo and never will be because you'd have to violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to get it. As someone who only heard of "grey goo" very recently, care to explain why this is the case?

asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
In one way gray goo already exists. The world is literally covered in tiny nano machines eating and multiplying as fast as they can. And many of them are deadly to us. We call them bacteria and fungi. "grey goo" beyond the natural goo, as often seen in fiction, multiplies and moves so fast as to violate basic laws of physics. For example there's only so much energy stored in stuff that could be eaten.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Hm, okay. I guess I never took the speed into account.
- endtime 17y ago
  Does speed really matter? Bacteria only eat certain things, right? If some mutated type of bacteria could consume more kinds of matter, wouldn't it be a threat?
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    Given how long bacteria have been on earth, and how they live from ice to desert to even nucler waste, and how fast they evolve and freely swap DNA, how has not a single one of them already evolved the ability to consume more kinds of matter? Answer: No free lunch, every advantage carries a cost. Any "super" bug we come up with will enter a world with vicious competitors who've been with us since long before the dinosaurs.
    - endtime 17y ago
      I don't really find the argument "It hasn't happened naturally so it could never happen artificially" compelling...
      - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
        Perhaps you may change your mind if you read up on how easily bacteria swap DNA and just how many of them there are and all the places they live and all the things they eat. Or to put it another way, what happened since bacteria have been around? Humans. Humans started out as single celled creatures like bacteria. And if we can get from that to humans, is it not reasonable to assume that bacteria have had the time to figure out how to multiply as fast as possible?

tigerthink 17y ago

>There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one that gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can also get you. It sounds like you're saying that each supervirus mankind creates marginally increases the chance that a Bad Thing will happen. Isn't marginally increasing the chance that a Bad Thing will happen also Bad? Also, how close do you think that HIV and MRSA are to the upper bound on supervirus potency?

tigerthink 17y ago
Have you read this book? http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252116171&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385...
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  Ebola kills far too quickly to ever become a pandemic. For a pandemic a virus needs to kill you slowly so you can spread it a lot. Like the 1918 flu.
asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
MRSA is pretty close to sending us back in time, a time before penicillin, it wasn't a good time, but obviously we survived. We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. And while the marginal danger may increase with research, the marginal utility will also increase, in fact it will increase faster. We'll discover more cures then diseases. And yes, regulation is a blunt weapon which stops not only the bad, but also the good.
- tigerthink 17y ago
  >We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're screwed. If some asshole creates a contagious HIV, then discovering cures faster than diseases will hardly save us. You get diminishing utility from curing diseases anyway. Say you discover cures for half the world's currently incurable diseases at random. My guess is that our life expectancy would increase by less than a decade. People are still going to age. And I'm not sure the threat of a contagious HIV would ever go away. It'd be hard finding a cure for a disease that wasn't even created yet. My guess is that there's already too much momentum behind this sort of research for us to halt it. Do you think requiring background checks for purchasers of biotech supplies would make the field more or less attractive to a hypothetical evil mastermind?