My sense is that a small subset of bio experts (e.g. 50) aimed at causing maximum damage would in principle be capable of building mirror bacteria (if not directly stopped[1]) and this would most likely cause the deaths of the majority of humans and would have a substantial chance of killing >95% (given an intentional effort to make the deployment as lethal as possible).
I currently think this is false (unless you have a bunch of people making repeated attempts after seeing it only kill a small-ish number of people). I expect mirror bacteria thing to be too hard, and to ultimately be counteractable.
I picked the mirror bacteria case as I thought it was the clearest public example of a plausibly existential or at least very near existential biothreat. My guess is there are probably substantially easier but less well specified paths.
mirror bacteria thing to be too hard
For 50 experts given 10 years and substantial funding? Maybe the 10 years part is important—my sense is that superhuman AI could make this faster so I was thinking about giving the humans a while.
to ultimately be counteractable
How do you handle all/most large plants dying? Do you genetically engineer new ones with new immune systems? How do you deploy this fast enough to avoid total biosphere/agricultural collapse?
I think keeping human alive with antibiotics might be doable at least for a while, but this isn’t the biggest problem you have I think.
I currently think this is false (unless you have a bunch of people making repeated attempts after seeing it only kill a small-ish number of people). I expect mirror bacteria thing to be too hard, and to ultimately be counteractable.
I picked the mirror bacteria case as I thought it was the clearest public example of a plausibly existential or at least very near existential biothreat. My guess is there are probably substantially easier but less well specified paths.
For 50 experts given 10 years and substantial funding? Maybe the 10 years part is important—my sense is that superhuman AI could make this faster so I was thinking about giving the humans a while.
How do you handle all/most large plants dying? Do you genetically engineer new ones with new immune systems? How do you deploy this fast enough to avoid total biosphere/agricultural collapse?
I think keeping human alive with antibiotics might be doable at least for a while, but this isn’t the biggest problem you have I think.
I don’t currently think it’s plausible, FWIW! Agree that there are probably substantially easier and less well-specified paths.