[ExI] Synthetic biology and the proactionary principle in The Economist

Natasha Vita-More natasha at natasha.cc
Mon May 24 01:01:54 UTC 2010


Thanks Bryan. 


Natasha Vita-More

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Bishop
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2010 4:35 PM
To: diybio at googlegroups.com; ExI chat list; kanzure at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [ExI] Synthetic biology and the proactionary principle in
TheEconomist

On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Tristan Eversole wrote:
> My argument against the proactionary principle would be grounded in 
> the observation that we are headed towards a world in which we are 
> good at genetics and horrendously lousy at ecology; in other words, a 
> world in which we are great at creating organisms and awful at 
> figuring out how they will interact.

But here's the crux of the problem: you can attempt to clamp down, regulate
regulate regulate, and pray that the laws will pop out of their pages in the
books and slash down anyone (or anything- even
natural) that goes against our wishes; or, we can work on ways to help us
ensure that we're just as good at ecology, reliability, systems engineering,
and making sure the human species does not catastrophically vanish in the
night.

However, such issues are broader and more comprehensive than just looking at
synthetic biology, and need to be addressed in that same sort of broader
context, but I haven't been able to find such avenues yet. Any hints?
Anyone?

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507
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