Frankly, I never doubt human ingenuity, and I wouldn't be surprised if
Humans are better at making "Deadly" than nature. After all, the
intention of wild viruses isn't to kill, it's to reproduce. Humans can
impose an artificial bias towards death at the expense of reproductive
success, and bioweapons programs in the past have successfully done this.
My argument against all this nonsense is more practical. On the one hand
is the assumption that access to technology naturally leads to creation
of destructive tools, but that's clearly not the case with, for example,
electronics; people don't use electronics skills to make rail guns with
the intention of killing anyone. The only case of an electronics nerd
making anything truly scary, namely a cruise missile chasse and guidance
system, was in the name of proving it could be done. So while the
capacity is all there, and has been for decades, we've never seen it used.
Secondly and in relation to the above, is the assumption that because
haxors make computer viruses all the time, biohackers will make deadly
viruses. Be on the watch, citizen. But, that's nonsense because human
nature weighs the destruction of life far more severely than the
interruption of computer services. Also, most viruses that are
deliberately malign in the modern age are made for profit; to create
botnets useful for spam, or farmed out for computation, or for DDOSing.
People who are creative enough to pursue a hobby or career in science or
engineering a rarely aimless enough to choose violence to solve their
problems. And those who *are* evil enough to use ingenuity to kill are
already well funded: national biowarfare programs are known to exist in
the US, Russia, probably UK/France/Japan etc., and could easily be
active in less predictable states such as Israel, Iran and North Korea.
Fact is; if there's a bioterrorism or biowarfare threat, it's already
been in existence for ten or more years, and amateurs are *not* it.
On 12/03/12 13:10, Pat wrote:
> Technology is a neutral entity and it can be used for good or ill, but
> it is neither good or ill itself. The reason a lot of people fear
> technology is due to media sensation and sometimes lack of
> understanding. Why it may be possible for someone to create a super
> virus it is just as possible and more likely that someone will be
> stabbed with a knife and nearly every house hold in the world has
> knifes. Should we start regulating knifes for fear of people getting
> stabbed? No. What should happen is that there are mechanism in place
> to self police and punish those that will use something for ill.
>
> And as an aside viruses have been evolving for as long as their was
> life on earth and before then. It is an arrogant anthropomorphic
> notion that human will be the ones to create the super virus. I'm not
> saying it is impossible but come on nature has given us smallpox and
> ebola. I think it is healthier to fear them then something that COULD
> happen in the future.
>
> On Mar 10, 1:10 am, Andrew Barney <keen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's been a while since i've seen a serious discussion about this, so i say
>> let us take the opportunity to discuss it. Yeah, sure it's been discussed
>> before and in some ways it is tiring to see the same old fears reappearing
>> over and over, but lets face the reality that it will probably be that way
>> for awhile. There are a few things i see that I'd like to bring up. The
>> first is that i dont think the focus should be solely on amateur
>> scientists. Is there a danger for something bad to happen or someone to
>> abuse their position? Yeah, but the same could be said for thousands of
>> other situations too. I think it's silly be fearful of amateurs creating a
>> hypothetical mutant pathogen, but if your going to worry about it then you
>> should also worry about doctors and other professionals. In my mind there
>> are plenty of various organisms out there that are already dangerous
>> without needing to be engineered or toyed with. Someone sadistic enough and
>> determined enough could probably cause great harm already with what nature
>> has already let out of the bag. Clamping down hard on amateur scientists
>> isn't going to fix that potential problem.
>>
>> Should there be some sort of regulation or oversight in an attempt to
>> create a safer world? I don't know. I personally have mixed views about it
>> since it's such a complex issue. On the one hand there is potential for
>> harm and there is the possibility that some of those dangers might be able
>> to be controlled by some sort of regulation. But do i think that all the
>> dangers can be regulated in this way? No, i highly doubt it. And in some
>> ways i fear the regulations themselves could create bigger problems than
>> having little regulation and promoting an open exchange of information.
>> Yeah there is the thought that too much regulation often stifles creativity
>> and innovation, but also the fact that sometimes making something sound
>> unattainable and deviant is enough to overwhelm the curiosity and
>> determination from those who want to get behind the locked door. The old
>> saying is that locks are only meant to keep honest people honest, and i
>> think the same could be true of regulation. I dont know much about the
>> economics or politics of the illegal drug industry, but i had heard that
>> when some of them became illegal the demand for them increased, and when it
>> got harder to get them through on land it prompted other sneaky
>> circumventions like drug submarines. Maybe i'm going overboard with this
>> analogy, but the point i was trying to make is that huge regulations aren't
>> necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer, and since it's a complex issue it
>> probably deserves quite a bit of discussion and insight.
>>
>> -Andrew
>>
>> On Mar 8, 8:03 pm, Cory Geesaman <c...@geesaman.com> wrote:> On Thursday, March 8, 2012 7:36:44 PM UTC-5, Jason Bobe wrote:
>>
>>>> I think everyone should want to make policy about technology that has a
>>>> basis in practical reality (versus fantasies of what might be real in
>> the
>>>> future). So in the course of discussions like this, people want to know
>>>> what is real today and sometimes that is not always obvious, as the bird
>>>> flu debate very clearly illuminates. This is true in physics too (Are
>>>> teenagers really making yellow cake in their garages today?<
>>
>> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played-fusion?p...>
>> Should
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> we worry or celebrate?).
>>
>>> That article is definitely a scare-piece as well. A Fusor is safe (for
>>> that matter it would be hard to find an example of dangerous physics that
>>> could be performed by an unwitting individual because if you know how to
>> do
>>> something dangerous [and don't kill yourself doing it] you also likely
>> know
>>> how to do it safely and you are going to be a threat to yourself long
>>> before you are to anyone else). Though if you want to look at actual
>>> dangers in physics just look at the LHC: the probability of not producing
>> a
>>> black hole that would destroy the Earth as seen at the start of the
>>> experiment was below 5 Sigma, more likely than their faster than light
>>> results and more likely than any current evidence for the Higgs existing.
>>> It does take a pretty significant undertaking for a physics experiment to
>>> pose a serious threat to anyone, especially when you consider the general
>>> cost of energy and how well you can transmit that energy over a given area
>>> (though I for one would strongly prefer the mental midgets at CERN focus
>> on
>>> precision experimentation at far lower costs than just haphazardly
>> smashing
>>> things together and watching the results - but the predisposition of
>>> retardation might prevent any such experiments from being devised - the
>> LHC
>>> on the whole strikes me as using nukes to determine that hot air rises).
>
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