I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it seems to me like the idea of coordinating with “outsiders” or placing trust or hope in judgement of “outsiders” has been a bit of taboo here, and that arguments that outsiders are dumb or wrong or can’t be trusted will reliably get a lot of cheering in the form of Karma.
No, you’re misunderstanding John Wentworth’s comment and then applying that straw man to the rest of less wrong based on the comment’s upvote total. It’s not that laypeople’s can’t understand the dangers inherent in engineered viruses, and that leads to governments continuing to finance and leak them. You can probably convince your Uber driver that lab leaks are bad, too. It’s a lack of ability to translate that understanding into positive regulatory and legal outcomes, instead of completely net negative ones.
No, you’re misunderstanding John Wentworth’s comment and then applying that straw man to the rest of less wrong based on the comment’s upvote total. It’s not that laypeople’s can’t understand the dangers inherent in engineered viruses, and that leads to governments continuing to finance and leak them. You can probably convince your Uber driver that lab leaks are bad, too. It’s a lack of ability to translate that understanding into positive regulatory and legal outcomes, instead of completely net negative ones.