jasoncrawford

Progress links and short notes, 2025-03-18

Progress links and short notes, 2025-03-10

Progress links and short notes, 2025-03-03

Progress links and short notes, 2025-02-17

The fu­ture of hu­man­ity is in management

Links and short notes, 2025-01-26: At­las Shrugged and the ir­re­place­able founder, pump­ing sta­tions and civic pride, and thoughts on the eve of AGI

Links and short notes, 2025-01-20

How sci-fi can have drama with­out dystopia or doomerism

Progress links and short notes, 2025-01-13

• jasoncrawfordJan 2, 2025, 8:45 PM

  3 points

  1

  in reply to: Purplehermann’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  Yes, they would not be made from mirror components!

• jasoncrawfordJan 2, 2025, 8:28 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Purplehermann’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  Synthetic cells aren’t inherently dangerous if they’re not mirror cells (and aren’t dangerous pathogens of course).

The Roots of Progress 2024 in review

Progress links and short notes, 2024-12-27: Clini­cal trial abun­dance, grid-scale fu­sion, per­mit­ting vs. com­pli­ance, cross­word ma­nia, and more

• jasoncrawfordDec 23, 2024, 3:11 PM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  Failure to detect other life in the universe is only really evidence against advanced intelligent civilizations, I think. The universe could easily be absolutely teeming with bacterial life.

  Re “take steps to stop it”, I was replying to @Purplehermann

A progress policy agenda

• jasoncrawfordDec 18, 2024, 2:13 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Roger Scott’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  The asymmetric advantage of bacteria is that they can invade your body but not vice versa.

Progress links and short notes, 2024-12-16

• jasoncrawfordDec 16, 2024, 2:53 PM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  I think until recently, most scientists assumed that mirror bacteria would (a) not be able to replicate well in an environment without many matching-chirality nutrients, and/​or (b) would be caught by the immune system. It’s only recently that a group of scientists got more concerned and did a more in-depth investigation of the question.

• jasoncrawfordDec 15, 2024, 12:55 AM

  10 points

  0

  in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  Yes, antibodies could adapt to mirror pathogens. The concern is that the system which generates antibodies wouldn’t be strongly triggered. The Science article says: “For example, experiments show that mirror proteins resist cleavage into peptides for antigen presentation and do not reliably trigger important adaptive immune responses such as the production of antibodies (11, 12).”

• jasoncrawfordDec 13, 2024, 2:12 PM

  23 points

  14

  in reply to: Purplehermann’s comment on: Biolog­i­cal risk from the mir­ror world

  Given that mirror life hasn’t arisen independently on Earth in ~4B years, I don’t think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future. Either abiogenesis is extremely rare, or when new life does arise naturally, it is so weak that it is outcompeted by more evolved life.

  I agree that this is a risk from any extraterrestrial life we might encounter.