I notice I feel some opposition to this, mostly on the grounds that messing with nature tends to end rather poorly for us. Nature is trillions of deeply interconnected dimensions doing who-knows-what at every layer; there is a small chance that release of these gene drives could be an x-risk. So do we take a guaranteed 600,000 dead every year, or an x% chance of accidentally wiping out all life on Earth? What value of x is acceptably low?
I notice I feel some opposition to this, mostly on the grounds that messing with nature tends to end rather poorly for us. Nature is trillions of deeply interconnected dimensions doing who-knows-what at every layer; there is a small chance that release of these gene drives could be an x-risk. So do we take a guaranteed 600,000 dead every year, or an x% chance of accidentally wiping out all life on Earth? What value of x is acceptably low?
Human lifespan is a lot longer since we started messing with nature, it’s on average going well for us.
A transposon that moves to a species that has no defenses against it can already create a gene drive that wipes out a species in a natural way.
In the wild, we have ecosystems made out of very many species so that eliminating a single one does not wipe out all life on earth.
>there is a small chance that release of these gene drives could be an x-risk
I disagree (or, at least, I believe that mosquitoes are more of an x-risk than gene drives, although both are extremely small)