I think gene-drive mosquito control is in the same boat as nuclear power. It’s perceived as having safety concerns, but the safety concerns can’t be addressed by technological advancement because they’re actually anxieties and misconceptions, not real problems. Laypeople seem to believe that ecosystems are fragile things that will spontaneously turn into wastelands if they’re perturbed, which would mean that removing mosquitoes is risky, and that genomes are dark magic that will trigger zombie invasions if you do anything complicated with them.
The solution to this isn’t progress and thoroughness, it’s courage. Let the idiots believe what they will and do the right thing anyways.
To be more precise, I feel extremely uneasy about modern humans’ ability to think through the actual consequences of acting on complex systems.
And I find myself utterly unpersuaded by “But here’s a detailed model, with empirical backing!”
Like, nutrition is swarmed with this. As just one of a bazillion examples.
The only difference I see in this situation is that something like unilateral action is maybe possible. So just screaming “Tough shit, we’re doing this” and pressing the big red button is more of an option.
Other than that power asymmetry, I don’t get why this mosquito situation is so very different.
So I guess I’m an idiot? Eh.
Help me out here. Why is this case so clear to you? How do you know you’re not basically just “That’s my daughter’s arm”-ing?
Nutrition is a bad example because it’s an area with lots of known unknowns that have close causal connection to human health, and the prior on interventions is bad because the interventions disrupt an existing optimization process that is mostly aligned. That is: random perturbations on human biology are on average bad, because human biology has prior optimization that put it near a local optimum.
The same applies to interventions in economics: they have a high backfire rate because free markets are somewhat-aligned optimization processes.
Perturbations to mosquito biology, on the other hand, are on average good, because mosquito evolution points towards an attractor that’s harmful to humans. And humanity is already spending lots of resources trying to eliminate them, and in the locales where this has been successful it’s been positive.
You say nutrition is just one of a bazillion examples. I disbelieve. I think that once you’ve accounted for the presence of preexisting optimization processes in the environment, ruled out the possibility that you’re dismantling an aligned process, and have a basic understanding of the domain, backfiring becomes rare.
I’m reminded of the old saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
I think it is fundamentally wrong to just go so something for others even if they don’t want it done just because one thinks, or even knows, it is good for them. It’s a very bad precedent to set.
That’s true that it could set a bad precedent. But it also could set a bad precedent to normalize letting millions of people die horribly just to avoid setting a bad precedent. It’s not immediately clear to me which is worse in the very-long-run.
I think there is a rather large gap between saying it’s wrong to force your solution on others to save them from themselves and normalizing letting millions of people die (for whatever reasons).
Work to offer the solutions and let them make their own, informed choice.
As has been noted by some already, it is not even clear that such forced actions are even required. Rushing to act without even bothering to try working with those being helped. That type of heavy-handed help seems completely uncalled for at this stage.
Work to offer the solutions and let them make their own, informed choice.
The problem is that the bureaucrats who make the decision of whether gene drives are allowed aren’t the same people as the ones who are dying from malaria. Every day that you postpone the eradication of malaria by trying to convince bureaucrats, over a thousand people will die from the disease in question. Most of them, many of whom are infants, had no ability to meaningfully affect their political situation.
If suitable biologists can be bought, then yes. I’m not certain how hard that is, though; most biologists are stuck in academic instutitions and ideology which tell them they need an IRB to sign off on their plan, and a lot of IRBs seem to be stuck in an ideology where they can’t do cost-benefit analysis and veto everything. It’s similar to the problem of organizing a COVID-vaccine challenge trial; the default outcome is that you try to find a grantee to do it, and they chicken out and do preliminary studies forever.
The information about how you would do a gene drive seems to be public information. CRISPR is public information. You don’t need a prestigious Western academic. The black market finds doctors who are willing to do all sorts of things like transplanting organs without IRB approval. If you go to Africa, I would be very surprised if you couldn’t bribe any local biologist into doing the experiment in a way where they wouldn’t take public credit for it.
I think gene-drive mosquito control is in the same boat as nuclear power. It’s perceived as having safety concerns, but the safety concerns can’t be addressed by technological advancement because they’re actually anxieties and misconceptions, not real problems. Laypeople seem to believe that ecosystems are fragile things that will spontaneously turn into wastelands if they’re perturbed, which would mean that removing mosquitoes is risky, and that genomes are dark magic that will trigger zombie invasions if you do anything complicated with them.
The solution to this isn’t progress and thoroughness, it’s courage. Let the idiots believe what they will and do the right thing anyways.
I’m one of your aforementioned idiots.
To be more precise, I feel extremely uneasy about modern humans’ ability to think through the actual consequences of acting on complex systems.
And I find myself utterly unpersuaded by “But here’s a detailed model, with empirical backing!”
Like, nutrition is swarmed with this. As just one of a bazillion examples.
The only difference I see in this situation is that something like unilateral action is maybe possible. So just screaming “Tough shit, we’re doing this” and pressing the big red button is more of an option.
Other than that power asymmetry, I don’t get why this mosquito situation is so very different.
So I guess I’m an idiot? Eh.
Help me out here. Why is this case so clear to you? How do you know you’re not basically just “That’s my daughter’s arm”-ing?
Nutrition is a bad example because it’s an area with lots of known unknowns that have close causal connection to human health, and the prior on interventions is bad because the interventions disrupt an existing optimization process that is mostly aligned. That is: random perturbations on human biology are on average bad, because human biology has prior optimization that put it near a local optimum.
The same applies to interventions in economics: they have a high backfire rate because free markets are somewhat-aligned optimization processes.
Perturbations to mosquito biology, on the other hand, are on average good, because mosquito evolution points towards an attractor that’s harmful to humans. And humanity is already spending lots of resources trying to eliminate them, and in the locales where this has been successful it’s been positive.
You say nutrition is just one of a bazillion examples. I disbelieve. I think that once you’ve accounted for the presence of preexisting optimization processes in the environment, ruled out the possibility that you’re dismantling an aligned process, and have a basic understanding of the domain, backfiring becomes rare.
I’m reminded of the old saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
I think it is fundamentally wrong to just go so something for others even if they don’t want it done just because one thinks, or even knows, it is good for them. It’s a very bad precedent to set.
That’s true that it could set a bad precedent. But it also could set a bad precedent to normalize letting millions of people die horribly just to avoid setting a bad precedent. It’s not immediately clear to me which is worse in the very-long-run.
I think there is a rather large gap between saying it’s wrong to force your solution on others to save them from themselves and normalizing letting millions of people die (for whatever reasons).
Work to offer the solutions and let them make their own, informed choice.
As has been noted by some already, it is not even clear that such forced actions are even required. Rushing to act without even bothering to try working with those being helped. That type of heavy-handed help seems completely uncalled for at this stage.
The problem is that the bureaucrats who make the decision of whether gene drives are allowed aren’t the same people as the ones who are dying from malaria. Every day that you postpone the eradication of malaria by trying to convince bureaucrats, over a thousand people will die from the disease in question. Most of them, many of whom are infants, had no ability to meaningfully affect their political situation.
I am reminded of the old saying “don’t let millions of people die because Robert Mugabe told you to”.
Who do you think should have the courage and act? Should a few EA funders just fund a few biologists to do it?
If suitable biologists can be bought, then yes. I’m not certain how hard that is, though; most biologists are stuck in academic instutitions and ideology which tell them they need an IRB to sign off on their plan, and a lot of IRBs seem to be stuck in an ideology where they can’t do cost-benefit analysis and veto everything. It’s similar to the problem of organizing a COVID-vaccine challenge trial; the default outcome is that you try to find a grantee to do it, and they chicken out and do preliminary studies forever.
The information about how you would do a gene drive seems to be public information. CRISPR is public information. You don’t need a prestigious Western academic. The black market finds doctors who are willing to do all sorts of things like transplanting organs without IRB approval. If you go to Africa, I would be very surprised if you couldn’t bribe any local biologist into doing the experiment in a way where they wouldn’t take public credit for it.