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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Do you think scientists would still work on virulent chimera viruses if they had to stake endless torture on the possibility that it is leaked? If they wouldn’t, doesn’t this simply prove that research this risky should never be done?

They probably would not. People would also, however, be unwilling to build dams, invent novel chemicals, or do a whole host of other risky activities. Including writing certain computer programs. Your proposed principle is untenable; it's the precautionary principle in disguise, with a side of Pascal's Mugging.

You are wrong on these counts:

  • Covid is (potentially) infinitely more harmful than a dam collapse. The dam killed 200k, and Covid 6 million and counting.

  • Your go-to an example is one where no one appears to have been placed with responsibility.

  • There’s no evidence that dam-builders are cowards who would not sign off on “I stake limitless torture on my dam not killing 200k people.” This is actually a completely reasonable thing to make them sign and similar principles have been used throughout history. Men still captioned the Titanic despite the expectation they would go down with their ship, and this was a coveted profession. In Japan, men still competed to become officers despite mistakes resulting in ritual suicide. Men still defended their territory from the Persian Empire in the face of certain death. I don’t think good scientists are cowards — I think the best scientists would stake their life on not accidentally killing millions of people.

  • A dam has provable benefits that often result in massively increased productivity, whereas playing around with highly lethal coronaviruses has no sum total benefit. We now need to find a way to use an enhanced virus to save, by the end of the century, 100 million lives. Only this would cancel out the harm that the leak caused.

Sure, I understand imprisoning or even executing people for this kind of negligence. Even expecting people to literally fall on their sword. But the torture shit goes a bit too far. Why allow yourself to be taken alive? Why cooperate? How do you get people to cooperate?

Covid is (potentially) infinitely more harmful than a dam collapse. The dam killed 200k, and Covid 6 million and counting.

Yes, a dam collapse has finite potential, and infectious diseases infinite. But other things do pose existential risk to humans. Or just existential risk in general. And if you believe climatologists, plenty of human activities right now are posing an existential risk to humans.

Your go-to an example is one where no one appears to have been placed with responsibility.

So? We don't live under your principle, so we wouldn't expect that.

There’s no evidence that dam-builders are cowards who would not sign off on “I stake limitless torture on my dam not killing 200k people.”

Even assuming there are such dam-builders, your plan filters for exactly the wrong ones. You're looking for the careful safety-conscious ones, and instead you'll get the fools who don't understand the risk and the arrogant cowboys who believe it will never happen to them.

We now need to find a way to use an enhanced virus to save, by the end of the century, 100 million lives. Only this would cancel out the harm that the leak caused.

100 million? You said COVID killed 6 million. Anyway, your principle didn't consider benefits, only risk.

I wrote 100mil at the end of the century.

In order for GoF to be demonstrably beneficial, to have been a good idea in practice, you will need to make up the 100mil dead by 2100. While it’s not impossible that GoF finds some use with malaria, it will likely be an eternal net negative for developed countries. To justify its existence, you now need GoF benefits to make up for the 1 million American lives lost so far and 16 trillion dollars. Do you think that’s actually going to happen?

It doesn't matter, because your principle considers only risks, not benefits.

You could simply lessen the risk by siting the labs in desolate, remote locations no one ever goes to.

Researchers have to go into and out of labs, and they have to eat and buy clothing and their children have to go to school and so on, and whatever system you set up to try to isolate these activities will be more prone to leakage than the actual BSL prophylactics since they'll take place in a less controlled environment.

Then you just have them marry other researchers and live in seclusion.

What's the big deal ? They'd probably get on fairly well, living in an isolated community with people who are largely similar to you, working towards the same goal seems rather nicer than living a megacity.

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