Until writing that sentence, I thought that was the EA/rationalist stance, but the “expert,” Anthony Fauci, currently supported gain-of-function research. I now see he hasn’t publicly stated he supports gain-of-function research since at least 2018.
Anthony Fauci’s current position seems to be that if the NHI has a meeting to declare that research in a paper that Fauci mailed his colleagues in a PDF titled “Baric, Shi et al—Nature medicine—SARS Gain of function” isn’t gain of function, it’s not gain of function research.
In such an environment it’s pretty hard to take public statements about whether he supports gain of function research at face value.
Focusing on what opinions Fauci holds in print also ignores his importance of actually directing research funding toward gain of function research within NIAID. As long as that happens, it would make sense to count him as supporting gain of function research.
The main problem with the 1 million versus 7 million idea is that losing 100 versus gaining 200 is nowhere near describing accurate utility to pretty much anyone who doesn’t already have a lot of money.
Perhaps the real lesson is that quantifying something doesn’t make it more accurate; it just moves around which parts you need to get accurate. Doing a calculation with inaccurate numbers is no better than just coming up with an equally inaccurate result without calculation. It’s also easier to make certain kinds of errors in the first place when you’re trying to quantify things and aren’t very good at doing it, even though Scott insists otherwise. Or to just use an overly simplified model without enough humility about your ability to create a useful model.
Doing a calculation doesn’t leave you free to not sanity-check your results either, which is a problem with a lot of rationalist calculations.
Anthony Fauci’s current position seems to be that if the NHI has a meeting to declare that research in a paper that Fauci mailed his colleagues in a PDF titled “Baric, Shi et al—Nature medicine—SARS Gain of function” isn’t gain of function, it’s not gain of function research.
In such an environment it’s pretty hard to take public statements about whether he supports gain of function research at face value.
Focusing on what opinions Fauci holds in print also ignores his importance of actually directing research funding toward gain of function research within NIAID. As long as that happens, it would make sense to count him as supporting gain of function research.
The main problem with the 1 million versus 7 million idea is that losing 100 versus gaining 200 is nowhere near describing accurate utility to pretty much anyone who doesn’t already have a lot of money.
Perhaps the real lesson is that quantifying something doesn’t make it more accurate; it just moves around which parts you need to get accurate. Doing a calculation with inaccurate numbers is no better than just coming up with an equally inaccurate result without calculation. It’s also easier to make certain kinds of errors in the first place when you’re trying to quantify things and aren’t very good at doing it, even though Scott insists otherwise. Or to just use an overly simplified model without enough humility about your ability to create a useful model.
Doing a calculation doesn’t leave you free to not sanity-check your results either, which is a problem with a lot of rationalist calculations.