if they study the relevant literature real hard, they too can create deadly pandemics in their basement with kidnapped feral cats.
Here’s a question:
Question A: Suppose that a person really really wants to create a novel strain of measles that is bio-engineered to be resistant to the current measles vaccine. This person has high but not extreme intelligence and conscientiousness, and has a high school biology education, and has 6 months to spend, and has a budget of $10,000, and has access to typical community college biology laboratory equipment. What’s the probability that they succeed?
I feel extremely strongly that the answer right now is “≈0%”. That’s based for example on this podcast interview with one of the world experts on those kinds of questions.
What do you think the answer to Question A is?
If you agree with me that the answer right now is “≈0%”, then I have a follow-up question:
Question B: Suppose I give you a magic wand. If you wave the wand, it will instantaneously change the answer to Question A to be “90%”. Would you wave that wand or not?
(My answer is “obviously no”.)
There was a clear danger, the public was alerted, the public was unhappy, changes were made, research was directed into narrower, safer channels, and society went back to doing its thing.
I’m strongly in favor of telling the public what gain-of-function research is and why they should care about its occurrence.
I’m strongly opposed to empowering millions of normal members of the public to do gain-of-function research in their garages.
Do you see the difference?
If you’re confused by the biology example, here’s a physics one:
I’m strongly in favor of telling the public what uranium enrichment is and why they should care about its occurrence.
I’m strongly opposed to empowering millions of normal members of the public to enrich uranium in their garages [all the way to weapons-grade, at kilogram scale, using only car parts and household chemicals].
Hm, perhaps you have convinced me that I am omitting something important from my description of my mental models. I don’t think my internal mental models are as deeply messed up as our disagreements about these topics suggest they would be. But maybe they are?
I would indeed wave a slightly different magic wand, which is labeled “every government on Earth knows what gain-of-function research is and how to do it, if they didn’t already, but my government gets first crack at it for as long as they like and will ask for”. But that is a fundamentally different wand than the one you were asking about.
So probably the disconnect in emphasis comes down to my unusual political beliefs and the resulting wild divergence in political priorities.
Here’s a question:
Question A: Suppose that a person really really wants to create a novel strain of measles that is bio-engineered to be resistant to the current measles vaccine. This person has high but not extreme intelligence and conscientiousness, and has a high school biology education, and has 6 months to spend, and has a budget of $10,000, and has access to typical community college biology laboratory equipment. What’s the probability that they succeed?
I feel extremely strongly that the answer right now is “≈0%”. That’s based for example on this podcast interview with one of the world experts on those kinds of questions.
What do you think the answer to Question A is?
If you agree with me that the answer right now is “≈0%”, then I have a follow-up question:
Question B: Suppose I give you a magic wand. If you wave the wand, it will instantaneously change the answer to Question A to be “90%”. Would you wave that wand or not?
(My answer is “obviously no”.)
I’m strongly in favor of telling the public what gain-of-function research is and why they should care about its occurrence.
I’m strongly opposed to empowering millions of normal members of the public to do gain-of-function research in their garages.
Do you see the difference?
If you’re confused by the biology example, here’s a physics one:
I’m strongly in favor of telling the public what uranium enrichment is and why they should care about its occurrence.
I’m strongly opposed to empowering millions of normal members of the public to enrich uranium in their garages [all the way to weapons-grade, at kilogram scale, using only car parts and household chemicals].
Hm, perhaps you have convinced me that I am omitting something important from my description of my mental models. I don’t think my internal mental models are as deeply messed up as our disagreements about these topics suggest they would be. But maybe they are?
I would indeed wave a slightly different magic wand, which is labeled “every government on Earth knows what gain-of-function research is and how to do it, if they didn’t already, but my government gets first crack at it for as long as they like and will ask for”. But that is a fundamentally different wand than the one you were asking about.
So probably the disconnect in emphasis comes down to my unusual political beliefs and the resulting wild divergence in political priorities.
This last wand being approximately the bargain the Oppenheimer struck with the American government in running the Manhattan Project.