[extropy-chat] Recipe for Destruction - Joy/Kurzweil NYTimes Op-Ed

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 01:28:21AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote:

> There's truth in that. Now how do we avoid encouraging governments to ban
> certain forms of knowledge? One way is to discourage the sort of
> irresponsible behavior that makes people start thinking a ban is needed;
> publishing the 1918 flu genome would qualify as grossly irresponsible on
> that basis alone, quite apart from its potential use as a weapon. (Yes there
> is some value there in not making such things public: remember the principle
> of defense in depth.) I think the best way to handle this would be for the
> scientific community to start proving they can be trusted with this sort of
> information, that we don't need a legally imposed ban.

You're on the best way to end science R&D as we know it.
 
> But the call for a Manhattan Project to create defenses against viral
> diseases is a damn good idea. Unlike its namesake, it would save lives every
> year even in the complete absence of any human enemies.

If it's lives you're after, and you want maximal return on your investment,
then you could start here: 

	http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Population/Disease.asp

Of course, these are not Westerner lives, and hence almost worthless.
You can't pull a profit helping poor people.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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