21–30 of 64 posts
I don't worry about easy nukes but I do worry about easy viruses, especially now that we've seen what a pandemic can do. Virus construction is only going to become easier over time, and at some point, you could imagine any run of the mill biochem lab capable of "printing" a new strain of some infectious disease.
Activating tin-foil hat Maybe Covid was 'printed'...?
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-still-hasn-t-...
Making nuclear weapons isn't that hard any more. It used to take entire cities of factories to enrich uranium. Now it takes a facility about the size of a WalMart SuperCenter. URENCO's enrichment plants are about that size.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If COVID originated from bats or whatever, then the reason we don’t see multiple viruses going around simultaneously is because animal–human crossover, though it certainly does happen, happens more rarely than that. If COVID is a virus of whatever origin that escaped from a Chinese lab (only mentioning this because it’s a popular theory among ordinary netizens and the WHO expressly didn’t rule it out, though it calle…
> even the WHO has said this theoretically remains a possibility, while not thought the most likely Try "extremely unlikely" instead. More like they can't rule it out with absolute certainty, but not a particularly reasonable hypothesis. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55996728
"Extremely unlikely" is quite the overstatement.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
Now life is another matter (no pun intended). The article tends to confuse the two. It seems fairly unlikely that we would be able to eradicate any form of life on this planet.
If there's life then there is no reason to think something interesting and new couldn't come out of it.
On a side note, it also seems highly unlikely that a nuclear weapon will never be detonated by accident or by mistake at some point in the future. There have been many close calls and that we know about and probably many more that were kept secret. So the "black ball" has been out of the bag for quite a while.
What if a meteor hits now? Solar flare strong enough to take out electronics? Some country deciding tactical nuke warfare is acceptable? A supervolcano?
How many simultaneous catastrophes can current civilization survive?
Only definite conclusion is that Isaac Asimov will not go out of fashion soon.
I trust in our ability to cope and adapt. Civilisations have collapsed before, and will collapse again. We've been around as an identifiable species for 100,000 years, that's a couple of Ice Ages and at least one point where we were down to a few hundred individuals. Trying to control every eventuality and predict everything will be as destructive as the disasters the article talks about. Instead of shoring up contro…
Civilizations have collapsed before... but none of those were nuclear-armed, global civilizations that have produced more artifact matter than there is biomass on the planet[1]. Our civilization is epic... and when we collapse it will be equally epic, so I'm wouldn't bet that the whole "it has happened before and will happen again" thing really applies here.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-made-stuff-...
The tragedy is the growing consensus that the world is going to shit and it's our fault. Even worse is that all this technology, social media, and so on isn't even making us more happy or fulfilled. Yet, most just sit on their hands not doing much at all. Content to eek out what comfort and pleasure we can get now and try our best to ignore the knowledge that devastation awaits us. It's amazing that in tens of thousa…
I trust in our ability to cope and adapt. Civilisations have collapsed before, and will collapse again. We've been around as an identifiable species for 100,000 years, that's a couple of Ice Ages and at least one point where we were down to a few hundred individuals. Trying to control every eventuality and predict everything will be as destructive as the disasters the article talks about. Instead of shoring up contro…
> Civilisations have collapsed before, and will collapse again. Civilizations have collapsed before... but none of those were nuclear-armed, global civilizations that have produced more artifact matter than there is biomass on the planet[1]. Our civilization is epic... and when we collapse it will be equally epic, so I'm wouldn't bet that the whole "it has happened before and will happen again" thing really applies h…
It's hard not to throw your hands up in the air and say "Well, if it turns out there's a black ball then I guess humanity just wasn't meant to make it" when the only realistic defense against the apocalyptic risidual is a as-yet hypothetical totally effective panopticon surveillance. Moreover, as the essay says; collective action problems have thusfar been total shitshows, even though the stakes are crazy high. Yeah,…
The tragedy is the growing consensus that the world is going to shit and it's our fault. Even worse is that all this technology, social media, and so on isn't even making us more happy or fulfilled. Yet, most just sit on their hands not doing much at all. Content to eek out what comfort and pleasure we can get now and try our best to ignore the knowledge that devastation awaits us. It's amazing that in tens of thousa…
So support and join the people who are pushing for that shift. There are very powerful actors working hard to keep dissenters silent and impotent. Lots of people in this forum regularly disparage social justice efforts.