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I gave up hope around the time of the pandemic. If the powers that be can't even do simple, obvious things right like 'don't engineer bioweapons and release them' then there's no chance that they can manage complicated, sophisticated feats like preventing hostile superintelligences or extreme power concentration.
These systems and people struggled with 'let's not nuke eachother into oblivion', possibly the simplest coordination challenge.
If it was about secret bioweapon research in order to DOMINATE THE WORLD, this whole ordeal would have at least some grim tragic dignity.
It is not. It is science working as intended, scientists working on their publications, grinding up their citation scores and metrics.
All in the open and still going on. Few thousands at most are playing Russian roulette with the whole human race, for some shitty papers no one will ever read.
AND HUMAN RACE IS FINE WITH IT.
Yes, I share your blackpill.
On the other hand, this situation had been going for a long time. Remember 1977 flu when 20 year old virus strain suddenly appeared somewhere in Northern China, spread all over the world and carried away few hundred thousands nobodies?
It was clear to the professional virologist community what was going on, but they kept ther silence in proper spirit of omerta both in West and East. Admirable devotion.
Wow, I never heard about the 1977 flu this whole time. And I thought I had built an information diet that would expose me to this kind of forbidden knowledge.
No processed information sources, only raw conspiracies? ;-)
This knowledge was never "forbidden" or classified, just shared (not very loudly) only among professional community that could be trusted to keep it for themselves.
Not encouraging sign for the future.
1977 oopsie: hundreds of thousands dead
2019 oopsie: tens of millions dead
2061 oopsie: ???
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Why would this be forbidden? It was just a flu. Did something weird happen around it? I didn't see anything strange when clicking on the link. I say this as someone who thinks that covid was a gain of function lab leak.
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