Re: [silk] More from Bill Joy

[Eugene Leitl <Eugene.Leitl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Arsalan Zaidi wrote:

> Bill Joy
> >I think a scientific
> >organization that has a good code of conduct can police its own behavior to
> >a large extent--certainly to a large enough extent--to reduce the risk
>
> I really don't think this approach will be successful. The people who wish
> to do as they please aren't really going to lay down and say sorry when a
> bunch of goateed PhDs wag their fingers disapprovingly at them.

Most of the technologies are relatively high-threshold. It's relatively
difficult to build a superhuman AI or a free-environment selfrep capable
nanosystem in total isolation, without information exchange to your peers.
By the time this will become doable the world will be a very different
place already. In some respects, less vulnerable, and be it due to larger
diversity and wider distribution (more eggs spread over more baskets).

> Do you know how easy it is to engineer a new disease? Follow these 4 easy
> steps...
>
> 1) Get yourself a known pathogen. E.g. Malaria. (good luck trying to keep
> this one out of peoples hands!)
>
> 2) Get yourself an X-Ray machine (easy to obtain and easy to build)
>
> 3) place infected petri dishes under X-Ray machine and zap.
>
> 4) Test for increased pathogenic potential.
>
> Lather Rinse Repeat.

This is a low efficiency process you described. Things become much harder
when you engineer pathogens at the molecular level in a more controlled
fashion than brute force mutagenesis and functional screening.

However, that was not my point. Engineering pathogens is fundamentally
noncontrollable, so you have to work at the infrastructure for realtime
screening and containment. Aerosol sniffers, pathogen DNA screening both
in vitro and in vivo, realtime reporting and deployment of curfews and
personal sterile seals are doable, albeit expensive and nonquantitative
strategies. Sure you're fucked if you have to control animal vectors
(mosquito was a good, albeit climatically limited example), but we're
talking about a long-running global holocaulst programme, or isolated acts
of biological terrorism in areas of high host concentration and
promiscuity.

Once you realize that pathogen engineering is noncontainable, you shift
your countermeasure focus to other areas. Pathogen umbrella is one of the
easiest problems, unfortunately.

> With a couple of million individual microorganisms per dish, it won't be
> long before you get some interesting results.
>
> Face it. There is *no* way this can be stopped.

Absolutely not. Luckily, just having a killer is not sufficient for a
kill.

> And what are we going to do? Have commitees decide who is 'worthy' to aquire
> knowledge about a certain subject or apply that knowledge? Can you really
> trust a bunch of oldies intersted in preserving the status quo ? The cure
> seems worse than the disease.

I'm interested in quiet, pragmatic solutions to the problems. I don't
think the establishment is quite up to the task, but nor is the general
populace. Roughly spoken, they haven't got a clue, and even if, they're
missing basical capabilities in rational risk assessment.