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Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42403886
Since that thread didn't make the front page, we'll merge those comments hither. Interested readers may want to look at both articles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not talking about a targeted weapon, we're talking about accidentally unleashing an unstoppable global pandemic. If only China is risking that, the odds are better for everyone.
Why wouldn't they make it into a targeted weapon? Us humans turn everything else into a weapon.
If they somehow survive of course.
Some scientists in the Manhattan Project worried that the first nuclear test could trigger a chain reaction that would annihilate the earth. These fears were unfounded. (Granted, atmospheric nuclear weapons testing has its own set of subtle consequences that are gradually becoming more well known.)
Sure, but it's good to prove that one out before pressing the button.
Did Star Trek not already warn us about this one?
Not that I recall — closest I can think of would either be TOS evil twin made from antimatter, the mirror universe in general, or Nelix' coffee. But I have seen it as a short story about how the world ends, some synthetic bacteria that was meant to be reversed chirality for safety, but eventually it went wild and could eat everything without itself being eaten by anything.
This is it: https://laprade.blog/your-dietbet-destroyed-the-world
How about we make mirror prions that affect/infect mirror bacteria, but are inert to us? It becomes a targeted therapy.
Why not create mirror viruses to infect these mirror bacteria? And mirror predators to consume the mirror bacteria. Or compound microbes that can eat both mirror bacteria and regular bacteria, so that we can deploy them before we create mirror bacteria. For example, there is already a bacterium that can eat L-sugar, which is a mirror of regular sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-Glucose Once the mirror creature i…
"No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
I don’t understand why the innate immune response wouldn’t default to attacking an organism made of chiral molecules, since it attacks anything it doesn’t recognise. And while the adaptive immune response might not immediately recognise a novel organism, is there something that would prevent it ever adapting?
I’m sure it would attack it, and it likely would even succeed. The problem is the chiral molecules would be difficult to clean up. You’d have this anti-life bacteria torn to pieces, yes, but then the pieces get stuck everywhere and potentially jam things. Personally—not a biologist—it doesn’t feel like a huge risk, given we accept threats such as microplastics which do much the same thing. However, it’s a completely…
I'm confident if we had seen microplastics coming when we first started using plastics, science at least would have tried to prevent their use becoming as widespread as it has.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How does a research ban even work? It seems to me that at some point someone is going to research it; This is a function of how easy it is to do the banned thing, how easy it is to detect when it is being researched and what are the benefits of researching it. Imagine as an example that we live in a world where there are no firearms, and we decide to ban their research and development. All three factors would be ag…
That's a great framework for assessing it, thank you! It seems to me that to a degree nuclear weapons show some of the problems with a research ban. I think that it's possible that nuclear weapons are proliferating just very slowly. The problem seems to be that once someone engages in forbidden research, then their rivals feel the need to as well. E.g. we allowed China to get a nuclear weapon so India decided they ne…
The full report is here: "Technical Report on Mirror Bacteria: Feasibility and Risks" https://purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036 The premise reminds me of the "Rifters" trilogy by biologist and science fiction author Peter Watts. In it, an archaic deep sea microorganism "ßehemoth" that outcompetes all other kingdoms of life is brought to the surface and wreaks global havoc as it spreads. https://www.rifters.com/maelstrom/…