This suggests an engineered pathogen could have all sorts of interesting coordinated behavior.
natural viruses are evolved for simplicity
selection pressure in natural viruses leads to a tragedy of the commons (burn fast, burn hot)
A common reasoning problem I see is:
“here is a graph of points in the design space we have observed”
EG:pathogens graphed by lethality vs speed of spread
There’s an obvious trendline/curve!
therefore the trendline must represent some fundamental restriction on the design space.
Designs falling outside the existing distribution are impossible.
This is the distribution explored by nature. Nature has other concerns that lead to the distribution you observe. That pathogens have a “lethality vs spread” relationship tells you about the selection pressures selecting for pathogens, not the space of possible designs.
raises finger
realizes I’m about to give advice on creating superpathogens
I’m not going to go into details besides stating two facts:
nature has figured out how to make cellular biology do complicated things
including coordinating behavior across instances of the same base genetic programming
This suggests an engineered pathogen could have all sorts of interesting coordinated behavior.
natural viruses are evolved for simplicity
selection pressure in natural viruses leads to a tragedy of the commons (burn fast, burn hot)
A common reasoning problem I see is:
“here is a graph of points in the design space we have observed”
EG:pathogens graphed by lethality vs speed of spread
There’s an obvious trendline/curve!
therefore the trendline must represent some fundamental restriction on the design space.
Designs falling outside the existing distribution are impossible.
This is the distribution explored by nature. Nature has other concerns that lead to the distribution you observe. That pathogens have a “lethality vs spread” relationship tells you about the selection pressures selecting for pathogens, not the space of possible designs.