A small question: why do you feel mirror bacteria in particular is more threatening than other synthetic biology risks?
I agree mirror bacteria is very dangerous, but the level of resources and technology needed to create them seems higher than other synthetic biology. It’s not just adding genes, but almost creating a self replicating system from the bottom up.
Hi, that is an excellent question! First, is there a place in my post that I indicate it is more threatening?
Second, and to answer your question: I actually have not spent much time thinking about the relative risk from various types of biological catastrophes. Kevin Esvelt have previously drawn up 2 different categories of bio catastrophes he calls Wildfire (fast spreading) and Stealth (pre- or a-symptomatic spread). In his last paper I think he put numbers on it. I have seen no numbers on risks from mirror bio, but comment from a while ago on Metaculus does mention it and the subsequent forecast was high. Then there might also be scenarios we do not know about yet—it seems engineering biology could open several, weird ways things could go wrong.
Also, you are completely right that there is no imminent urgency—it would take time to developed the required science and infrastructure to enable dangerous mirror bio to be developed. However, I was encouraged to start work on defenses already as a proper resilience response would have to involve governments that are known to sometimes take a lot of time to consider action. Also, if small-scale work can be done on testing and improving the shelters, we would be in a much better position if the future does not go as we hope. Does that make sense? On the timing of this intervention, I am actually quite unsure so if you or someone else see some significant challenges here I would be keen to hear other perspectives. Lastly, this area is laden with infohazards so there is likely to be significant knowledge that most of the public does not have access to, but that might motivate certain decision makers to move at what seems like arbitrary times.
As I tried highlighting in the post, the reason I worked on this particular intervention was more about my skillset. To defend against Wildfire you would mainly rely on PPE and the Stealth you would have to rely much more on early detection such as the Nucleic Acid Observatory’s work. Thankfully work is well underway to build resilience against these two other types of biological threats.
Please let me know if this did not fully address your question? Thanks for engaging with this!
I have a bad habit of making a comment before reading the post...
At first glance I thought these shelters should apply to all kinds of biological threats so I wondered why the title refers to mirror bacteria, and I asked the question.
Now I think I see the reason. Mirror bacteria might be not only deadly, but persists in the environment even if no one is around, while other biological threats probably spread from person to person, so shelters are more relevant to mirror bacteria.
A small question: why do you feel mirror bacteria in particular is more threatening than other synthetic biology risks?
I agree mirror bacteria is very dangerous, but the level of resources and technology needed to create them seems higher than other synthetic biology. It’s not just adding genes, but almost creating a self replicating system from the bottom up.
Hi, that is an excellent question! First, is there a place in my post that I indicate it is more threatening?
Second, and to answer your question: I actually have not spent much time thinking about the relative risk from various types of biological catastrophes. Kevin Esvelt have previously drawn up 2 different categories of bio catastrophes he calls Wildfire (fast spreading) and Stealth (pre- or a-symptomatic spread). In his last paper I think he put numbers on it. I have seen no numbers on risks from mirror bio, but comment from a while ago on Metaculus does mention it and the subsequent forecast was high. Then there might also be scenarios we do not know about yet—it seems engineering biology could open several, weird ways things could go wrong.
Also, you are completely right that there is no imminent urgency—it would take time to developed the required science and infrastructure to enable dangerous mirror bio to be developed. However, I was encouraged to start work on defenses already as a proper resilience response would have to involve governments that are known to sometimes take a lot of time to consider action. Also, if small-scale work can be done on testing and improving the shelters, we would be in a much better position if the future does not go as we hope. Does that make sense? On the timing of this intervention, I am actually quite unsure so if you or someone else see some significant challenges here I would be keen to hear other perspectives. Lastly, this area is laden with infohazards so there is likely to be significant knowledge that most of the public does not have access to, but that might motivate certain decision makers to move at what seems like arbitrary times.
As I tried highlighting in the post, the reason I worked on this particular intervention was more about my skillset. To defend against Wildfire you would mainly rely on PPE and the Stealth you would have to rely much more on early detection such as the Nucleic Acid Observatory’s work. Thankfully work is well underway to build resilience against these two other types of biological threats.
Please let me know if this did not fully address your question? Thanks for engaging with this!
Thank you for the thorough response.
I have a bad habit of making a comment before reading the post...
At first glance I thought these shelters should apply to all kinds of biological threats so I wondered why the title refers to mirror bacteria, and I asked the question.
Now I think I see the reason. Mirror bacteria might be not only deadly, but persists in the environment even if no one is around, while other biological threats probably spread from person to person, so shelters are more relevant to mirror bacteria.