Following the Flu and Catastrophic Risk in General Wednesday, Apr 29 2009
risks 3:53 pm
The WHO has elevated the pandemic threat level to the second-highest rating. According to CNN this “indicates it fears a pandemic is imminent”.
Also according to CNN, later on Obama will make remarks that the swine flu is “very serious” and the “entire government is taking the utmost precautions”. This is in contrast to recent remarks that said we should have “concern but not alarm”.
I guess one should never have “alarm”, if alarm is defined as irrational emotion, but if “utmost precautions” in the entire government for a “very serious” situation isn’t alarm, what is?
Given the rate at which natural pandemics have historically emerged from the world (about once every 50 years), how could that rate increase when genetic engineering of novel microbes for industrial production purposes becomes commonplace, like Craig Venter wants it to be? Once every 20 years? Every ten? New microbes will be developed, but our immune systems will stay the same. (Unless we develop artificial white blood cells (microbivores) and antibodies, which would be a good idea.)
My answer would be “unknown, but more studies should be funded immediately”, and a tentative, “probably at unacceptable levels in the absence of targeted regulations”.
When the entire galaxy appears to be at stake (if there were aliens in this galaxy they’d be here now, so I’m assuming that mankind is the only species with a chance at colonizing the entire galaxy and making it a nice place to live) on the issue of whether or not mankind survives and makes it off the planet, such matters are important.
Ignoring the fact that humanity has the potential to generate a tremendous amount of positive utility through future space colonization (in the extremely near future by historical standards) in examinations of catastrophic risks would be short-sighted.
There are at least three catastrophic risk categories: biotech, nanotech, AI/robotics, and one additional tentative category (this also came up in conversation with John Hunt), chemtech, the possibility of non-biological self-replicating novel molecules that pose a threat to the ecosystem.
Unfortunately, a comprehensive analysis of the categories of risk can sometimes be counterproductive to attracting attention to the analysis, so at first summary I usually just say, “biotech, nanotech, and AI/robotics”, which all incidentally could provide tremendous benefits for humanity.
Let me repeat the call I made just a few days ago, right before the swine flu was in the news, for a demonstration or experiment of a genetically engineered pandemic virus in a contained facility.
What is currently happening, the spread of a natural pathogen, does not represent the same level of risk as a deliberately engineered one. The state space that natural evolution can probe is actually much smaller than the state space that a bioengineer can probe. You find this out when you look at the historical Russian bioweapons program in a bit more detail.
Between serious risks like the swine flu and non-serious (but not entirely ignorable) risks like the Large Hadron Collider, the public is getting a reintroduction to the idea of catastrophic risk in the post Cold War era. But the Cold War era is a big deal — one would have hoped that it would have primed society at large for thinking about new global catastrophic risks, but it hasn’t.
For more reading on natural influenza, see “The world is teetering on the edge of a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population” by scientists Robert G. Webster and Elizabeth Jane Walker. For engineered pathogens, see “The Knowledge” at MIT’s Technology Review, a profile of Serguei Popov, who was a higher-up in the Russian bioweapons research industry. Even Kofi Annan has made calls to regulate biotechnology in an effort to avert the danger.
In that last link, notice how I linked the Center for Genetics and Society, a Luddite think tank. It is my opinion that such organizations will never get anything done in regulating dangerous technologies because they are fundamentally anti-technology and pro-theology themselves. Their networks are made up primarily of religious folks or Gaia worshippers. For a regulatory push to be effective, it has to come from organizations filled with scientists, such as the Lifeboat Foundation. That’s why we’ve made a fundraising call for a new conference. Studies have shown that positive feelings for either God or science weaken positive feelings for the other, so religious arguments based on “not playing God” or “Human Dignity” will do absolutely nothing to regulate these potentially dangerous technologies. Scientists just laugh at them.
Myself, I’d prefer we relinquish all potentially dangerous technologies until we have successfully implemented human intelligence enhancement (either via AI, brain-computer interfacing, or biological intelligence enhancement). Living in a world where our technological powers increase but our wisdom and empathy doesn’t is fundamentally unsustainable.
Unless people are willfully creating new diseases, I somehow doubt that the problems of plasmid exchange will be made any worse by our introducing new genetic sequences into the wild, when said sequences are less than likely to be optimized towards affecting human populations. I’ve said it more than once before: foreign DNA, much like foreign parasites, are less than likely to be optimized to be able to affect us greatly. Instead of 50 years, we might see 100.
I’m not sure any demonstration in a lab would convince the general public. i think the feeling would be, ‘you rigged it so of course you will get the results you intended’ / ‘that can’t happen in the real world’.
I suppose scientists may take heed though, and that would count for something i would think.
I feel if 100+ (or generally a large number) scientists came out and said ‘bioengineered viruses are are catastrophic risk of which we are unprepared’, as i believe the FAS did with nuclear weapons back in the 40′s, it would be influential both on politics and the public. just some uniform endorsement of a statement regarding the necessity of funding biosecurity moreso, that people could take around and say, ‘look, smart people (scientists) say we are in great danger. this should be taken seriously’.
‘if there were aliens in this galaxy they’d be here now’
The error in your argument is that it supposes that intelligence has developed in the supposed alien planet.
It would be a tragedy for most of the population to die, but a risk of that happening is not an existential risk.
By what causal mechanism do you think a natural pandemic is an existential risk, Michael?
Disruption of human civilization sufficient to delay the intelligence explosion where the delay is not cancelled out by a delay in developments that would end Earth-originating life and intelligence?
I meant to say that a risk of the death of most of the population is not intrinsically an existential risk. It is an existential risk only if there is some causal mechanism such that the probability of the end of Earth-originating life and intelligence given the death of most of the population in a natural pandemic is greater than the probability of the end of Earth-originating life and intelligence given the gigadeaths were averted.
The level of alarm that we are seeing with swine flu illustrates how real-life events cause real-life alarm and action. I think that we are much more prepared with:
– medication and vaccine stockpiles,
– the ability to produce large quantities of vaccine for unique strains,
– surveillance systems to detect early epidemics,
– screening systems to detect infected travelers,
– a pandemic scoring system, etc
because of previous SARS and asian bird flu epidemics. The problem with many existential threats is that we may not get multiple sub-existential warnings. So, perhaps a contained existential threat demonstration is necessary in order to awaken the necessary level of action.
Also, notice that the current epidemic is causing no one to call for regulation, relinquishment, etc of biotech advances. Why not? Because, this epidemic is believed to be of natural origin. That is why all nature of progress is being made in all lines of existential threats with very few precautions. As with North Korea and Iran, progress with clearly dangerous potential is allowed to progress even to the point where the level of technology is clearly dangerous. But it takes specific exemplary events events (e.g. testing a nuke) to create action which is generally minimal in itself (e.g. “Beware our non-binding resolutions”)!
That being said, I think that Zug’s suggestion of a petition of 100+ scientists raising an alarm is valuable. Such a measure doesn’t require funding and can be done sooner than a contained existential event. I think it unlikely that we’d regret raising awareness and alarm by advancing such a petition.
However, I would say that such a petition should contain specific actions and with a deadline. Lifeboat would be the logical organization to determine what these might be. But, if the world’s response was a collective yawn then I think that there needs to be concrete follow-up steps. Offering a prize for the first contained demonstration of a frightening event could itself more dramatically push the need for controls.
It seems to me that one of the important specific actions called for in a petition should be adequate funding for a self-contained biosphere bunker that could support a small group of humans indefinitely. Control actions are good for buying us time but are unlikely to prevent all possible scenarios.
Actually, I would break “serious” into two parts: probable and existential. An LHC accident is not probable (i.e. the Moon is routinely hit by more powerful cosmic rays) but if it were to produce a stable black hole (as seen in this fascinating YouTube video) it would be entirely existential.
Strangely, during the Cold War people were talking about existential risks all the time. But now the buzz de jour is the existential risk posed by global warming which I consider far less certain and far more amenable to technologic accommodation than full-on nuclear war.
People are very confused about what they should truly fear. For example, they have greater fear about an improbable event (i.e. being struck by a huge asteroid) than fearing what I consider more probable such as the production of a self-replicating ecophage chemical. Again, I think that the LB Foundation would do a good service by placing estimates on the likelihood of potentially existential events and the probability that they would actually be existential.
RHollerith > By what causal mechanism do you think a natural pandemic is an existential risk, Michael?
I agree with Richard here. It is actually rather unlikely that a natural pandemic, or its direct consequences would wipe humanity out.
It is far, far more likely that we’d be thrown back to the stone-age. I even think Michael has said the same thing about nuclear war.
Natural pandemics are existential risks in my mind because of the inevitable ensuing chaos which would enable and facilitate a totalitarian take over of the world. people would WANT a strong guy to lead the world back to order, and those who didn’t would be powerless to stop it anyways due to the loss of modern infrastructure/society.
i agree with the specificity idea regarding any alarm that is explicitly raised by scientists/bioscientists. i mean, what actually is an adequate amount of $ for biosecurity? not being involved in the field, i have no idea. i know there are some who say we are at a fine level of safety, and there are some who say we are in grave, inevitable danger. obviously i’d prefer the cautious estimates, but having an exact number of $ for ‘adequacy’ in biosaftey would allow people an easy means of analyzing discrepancy between where we are and where (scientists) think we should be. i mean to say its hard to grasp intangible things like ‘more’ rather than ‘ok 50 billion more, we can do that’.
“if there were aliens in this galaxy they’d be here now”
If post-singularity aliens wanted to investigate Humanity, they could introduce nano-scale monitors into every Human on the planet, and we’d never know about it. Just ’cause we can’t see ‘em, don’t mean they ain’t here. I’m just sayin’…
Richard H., you’ll notice that I never said the word “existential risk” in this post. I said “global catastrophic risk”. This includes pandemics, even if they kill 20% of the population. Humanity operates based on a “hierarchy of needs”. If we are lacking in basic needs due to destruction caused by a plague, we will have little time to work on high-minded pursuits such as the motivational design of artificial intelligences.
Thank you, Michael A., for sharing more about your map of reality.
Let’s not get into an argument about the meaning of your original post, but I do want to clarify a point about your definition of “existential risk”: is something that reduces the probability that Earth-originating life and intelligence will spread to the stars is an existential risk?
Zug (et al)-
There is such a pronouncement (of prominent scientists that genetic engineering risks are now dangerous).
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences commissioned a “Committee on Research Standards and Practices to Prevent the Destructive Application of Biotechnology”. This group unanimously concluded in 2004 that: “these categories represent experiments that are feasible with existing knowledge and technologies or with advances that the Committee could anticipate occurring in the near future.”
The seven capabilities were to:
1. “render a vaccine ineffective”.
2. “confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents”.
3. “enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a pathogen virulent”.
4. “increase transmissibility of a pathogen.”
5. “alter the host range of a pathogen.”
6. “enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection modalities.”
7. “enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin”.
The NAS committee recommended a global voluntary prior review of all research in those listed fields. Their unanimous recommendation has never been implemented.
My related questions continue at http://www.sustainablerights.blogspot.com. Contrary opinions are especially appreciated.