[ExI] CRISPR and Gene Drives

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2015-11-20 12:41, BillK wrote:
> When you are in the middle of an extinction event I doubt if "robust" 
> is the term I would use.

If one believes ecosystems are delicately balanced, then either one has 
to just give up since humans have touched every ecosystem (with maybe 
the exception of the lithoautotrophs in the crust) and they will all be 
disrupted (fatalism), or assume that the only sensible approach is to 
keep humans away from nature totally (not doable). If one recognizes 
that they have limits, both soft and hard, that they adapt and change, 
then one can start thinking about how to avoid making the exinction 
event too bad.

Robustness is not invulnerability.

Your gut flora is stable against incursions from other microorganisms 
and weird food up to a point, and even after a food poisoning it tends 
to return to its previous microecology. In fact, it often stays constant 
across a lifetime (which is why probiotics have trouble working). But it 
can be wiped out with antibiotics, and fecal transplants do work under 
some conditions.

Same thing for ecosystems. We are learning how to engineer them, and 
maybe we can even figure out how to integrate our economic incentives 
with them. Of course, constructing robust economies is another fun topic 
(I would argue that a capitalist economy, with all the booms and busts, 
is actually pretty similar to a real ecosystem - they are pretty dynamic 
too).

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