[ExI] The post-antibiotic era

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-11-20 21:10, BillK wrote:
> The author is an award-winning reporter on epidemics. She has written
> a book on MRSA.
> She knows her subject.

She is a journalist, for heavens sake.

Maybe a good one. But as arguments from authority goes, it is rather 
bad. Meanwhile I have based my views on actual meetings with researchers 
and insurers. Part of my *job* is to track global risk and think about it.

Note that my point isn't that antibiotics resistance is a trivial 
matter: it isn't. But it seems that people tend to end up thinking that 
their particular nasty problem is the End of the World. There are 
*plenty* of ongoing tough problems more (or at least rational) effort 
should be going into - nuclear weapon safety, pandemics, couplings 
between the food and energy system, climate change, invasive species, 
digital freedom, underdevelopment of vaccines, Eroom's law, demographic 
trouble, massive digital insecurity, bioweapons, priority setting 
itself... antibiotics resistance is on the list, but it may not be the top.

What annoys me with the media references that have been mentioned in 
this thread is the shrill doomsayer tone. Maybe the writers think that 
is a good way of getting people off their couches to *do* something. 
After all, it worked for nuclear weapons... I mean climate change... I 
mean cybersecurity... actually, I think it *only* worked for the Y2K 
bug. Which is an interesting data point.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University