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> What we really need for such a statement is concrete physical evidence that a virus is simply incapable of having such facilities. A major focus of the artic

> What we really need for such a statement is concrete physical evidence that a virus is simply incapable of having such facilities. A major focus of the article is about the fundamental tradeoffs in how viruses operate. Was that not enough for you?

mikestylz 7d ago
It is not, because we should not expect a manufactured technology to behave exactly as an evolved one. My understanding is there is not much incentive for a virus to kill off all its hosts. When they do it is largely an accident, and it is not uncommon for a severe virus to eventually get replaced by a less virulent and thus more successful strain. It's pretty hard to hill-climb evolution to such a point since the virus could starve itself in the process. And induction on evolution feels misguided to me. Consider our species. A million years ago it would have seemed completely reasonable to state that the absence of advanced tool use in the kingdom of life suggests it is biologically impossible. After all, such a thing had not occurred in hundreds of millions of years! To be clear, I am not saying that such a virus will exist eventually. I am just noting that the arguments displayed here are not completely tight, and there are unknown unknowns at play. Some things are unfalsifiable. This is common.
- crazygringo 6d ago
  I'm not sure what the point of your comment is then, because there are unknown unknowns in literally everything. The main point of the article has nothing to do with manufactured technology vs evolved technology. It is fundamentally about the tradeoffs involved in viruses spreading period. I think you either continue to misunderstand the article, or set such an epistemologically high bar for arguments that nothing can ever satisfy you -- which then has nothing whatsoever to do with this specific article.
  - mikestylz 6d ago
    You seem like a smart person. I'm glad you're pushing back but cool the tone, and let's see if we can get to an agreement. There is not much evidence for these trade-offs put forward in the article, just on the order of five instances in nature which form a kind of curve if you squint. Should this be convincing? Well there are even definite outliers in history. Take smallpox on the native americans, or the bubonic plague. Ten years ago a mysterious virus wiped out 90% of the world's Bellinger River turtles. Why aren't these points in the article? Before the invention of the airplane there were many biologists saying such a thing was impossible, because they were extrapolating from the example of avian flight. As for complete satisfaction with arguments, I'll admit you're right. I am often reasonably convinced but I don't know if I would ever give 100% confidence to anything. There can still be loads of zeros or nines after the decimal though. What's concerning here is that the article speaks in absolutes. I'm inclined to thinking in expected values. Even if we believed there were only a 1% chance such a virus could ever be designed by an AI, if the effect were to be a global plague of biblical proportion, we should still take that possibility extremely seriously. There's no humility shown in the writing, and that's the single most problematic part to me.

mikestylz 7d ago

It is not, because we should not expect a manufactured technology to behave exactly as an evolved one. My understanding is there is not much incentive for a virus to kill off all its hosts. When they do it is largely an accident, and it is not uncommon for a severe virus to eventually get replaced by a less virulent and thus more successful strain. It's pretty hard to hill-climb evolution to such a point since the virus could starve itself in the process. And induction on evolution feels misguided to me. Consider our species. A million years ago it would have seemed completely reasonable to state that the absence of advanced tool use in the kingdom of life suggests it is biologically impossible. After all, such a thing had not occurred in hundreds of millions of years! To be clear, I am not saying that such a virus will exist eventually. I am just noting that the arguments displayed here are not completely tight, and there are unknown unknowns at play. Some things are unfalsifiable. This is common.

crazygringo 6d ago
I'm not sure what the point of your comment is then, because there are unknown unknowns in literally everything. The main point of the article has nothing to do with manufactured technology vs evolved technology. It is fundamentally about the tradeoffs involved in viruses spreading period. I think you either continue to misunderstand the article, or set such an epistemologically high bar for arguments that nothing can ever satisfy you -- which then has nothing whatsoever to do with this specific article.
- mikestylz 6d ago
  You seem like a smart person. I'm glad you're pushing back but cool the tone, and let's see if we can get to an agreement. There is not much evidence for these trade-offs put forward in the article, just on the order of five instances in nature which form a kind of curve if you squint. Should this be convincing? Well there are even definite outliers in history. Take smallpox on the native americans, or the bubonic plague. Ten years ago a mysterious virus wiped out 90% of the world's Bellinger River turtles. Why aren't these points in the article? Before the invention of the airplane there were many biologists saying such a thing was impossible, because they were extrapolating from the example of avian flight. As for complete satisfaction with arguments, I'll admit you're right. I am often reasonably convinced but I don't know if I would ever give 100% confidence to anything. There can still be loads of zeros or nines after the decimal though. What's concerning here is that the article speaks in absolutes. I'm inclined to thinking in expected values. Even if we believed there were only a 1% chance such a virus could ever be designed by an AI, if the effect were to be a global plague of biblical proportion, we should still take that possibility extremely seriously. There's no humility shown in the writing, and that's the single most problematic part to me.