Oddbean new post about login | logout I respect the honesty🫡 I don’t even disagree with your thesis that hard times will be ahead - I just think complete extinction is close to completely impossible, especially by our own hands. Maybe a giant meteor could do it, but aside from that, no matter how bad things get I speculate a few genius cockroaches of people will always make it through, somewhere in the world.
After I wrote it I backpedalled in my mind, but didn't bother to correct myself. I think that you are correct - it would be exceedingly hard to kill ALL of the humans on Earth. Hell, I don't even think they can kill all of the mosquitos with that gene drive trick they invented. But I do think that gain-of-function research will never stop, and as time goes on, we will suffer more and more from this kind of thing.
Yes, I agree. There is a lot of darkness in the world currently, and many of our values are out of whack. Some of our smartest people are also paid by the state mafia to do things which actively hurt humanity. We are going to come through it though friend 🫂 people like you and me, and many of the others here must restore some order and morality, first in our personal lives, and then in the world. We have some of the most powerful forces on our side. Hope, human ambition, creativity, strength, perseverance. I’d even go as far as to say that some higher power will guide us towards a better world. The ability to change the world and survive hard times starts with the belief that it can be done.
genetic stuff is becoming easier. 20y ago it took a lot of $$$ and equipment to just sequence a living being.. today there are DIY CRISP kits. soon GoF may be done in smaller labs (even easier if just replicating known previous results). Then, non-state actors, or state actors looking for plausible deniability, may do GoF, and then shit happens, on purpose or not. Even a ban would be hard to enforce.