

Hacking goes squishy - fauigerzigerk
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299634

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biohacker42
_But the FBI may genuinely be wary of biohackers_

Obviously, the government has never seen any invention it's not scared of.
This goes all the way back to the steam engine.

Before anyone here dredges out the old tired super virus or gray goo.

There's no such thing as gray goo and never will be because you'd have to
violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to get it.

There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor MRSA
came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be like
just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one that
gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can also
get you.

~~~
tigerthink
>There are plenty of super viruses and bacteria in nature. Neither HIV nor
MRSA came from biohacking. As I have said before, anything we create would be
like just one more bullet in a machine gun shootout. Sure it could be the one
that gets you, but then again, there's an infinity of stuff out there that can
also get you.

It sounds like you're saying that each supervirus mankind creates marginally
increases the chance that a Bad Thing will happen. Isn't marginally increasing
the chance that a Bad Thing will happen also Bad?

Also, how close do you think that HIV and MRSA are to the upper bound on
supervirus potency?

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
MRSA is pretty close to sending us back in time, a time before penicillin, it
wasn't a good time, but obviously we survived.

We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to
catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're
screwed.

And while the marginal danger may increase with research, the marginal utility
will also increase, in fact it will increase faster. We'll discover more cures
then diseases. And yes, regulation is a blunt weapon which stops not only the
bad, but also the good.

~~~
tigerthink
>We got super lucky with HIV because you have to exchange bodily fluids to
catch it. If it ever becomes as easy to catch as the common cold, we're
screwed.

If some asshole creates a contagious HIV, then discovering cures faster than
diseases will hardly save us.

You get diminishing utility from curing diseases anyway. Say you discover
cures for half the world's currently incurable diseases at random. My guess is
that our life expectancy would increase by less than a decade. People are
still going to age.

And I'm not sure the threat of a contagious HIV would ever go away. It'd be
hard finding a cure for a disease that wasn't even created yet.

My guess is that there's already too much momentum behind this sort of
research for us to halt it. Do you think requiring background checks for
purchasers of biotech supplies would make the field more or less attractive to
a hypothetical evil mastermind?

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
Requiring background checks is like requiring any bureaucratic red tape, it
annoys the good and does not stop the bad.

But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more research
will only marginal increase life spans, and that we can't find cures for yet
undiscovered diseases.

That's like saying in 1989 that in 2009 all the progress in the computer
industry both hardware and software would only give us marginally better
VisiCalc.

To me at least it is OBVIOUS more biotech research will radicaly change the
world not just slightly improve things.

And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is
mother nature.

~~~
tigerthink
>But I completely and totally disagree with your implication that more
research will only marginal increase life spans

Unless the research is directed at curing aging, aging will always cause
people to get more and more susceptible to disease as they get older.

>and that we can't find cures for yet undiscovered diseases.

What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you
haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree?

>And the asshole most likely to create a more easily transmissible HIV is
mother nature.

There are six billion humans on Earth and the population is growing. All we
need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants to
destroy the human race. I agree that person would be very atypical. I disagree
that we can be confident no one will ever fit that profile.

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
_What I was saying there was that you can't find a cure for a disease you
haven't discovered yet. Do you disagree?_

Absolutely. Many drugs targeting one disease have been found to cure others.
The list includes cancer drugs, antibiotics, antiviral compounds, etc. And
that's just drugs, what about the research itself, isn't it obvious it has
implications well beyond any one single thing. And isn't that the case for
every kind of research, not just medical? To me this seems obvious.

 _All we need for disaster is one person who's intelligent, driven, and wants
to destroy the human race._

Again, we already have that, it's called mother nature. HIV, Ebola, 1918 flu,
current flu, etc, all natural.

Here's where I see the problem with your argument, it assumes great asymmetry.

Here's what I mean by asymmetry, I think you imply that if we have the
technology to create super viruses on demand that does not mean we'll have
anywhere near equivalent knowledge and technology to fight them.

I happen to consider that an extraordinary claim. To me the symmetry of
knowledge is self evident. Almost as soon as we invent the nuclear bomb, we
also invest nuclear power. Almost as soon as we can gene splice, we have gene
therapy for humans which has already been successful applied.

If we have the ability to create super viruses on demand, then we also have
the ability to create drugs for them, to detect them, to stop transmission,
and most obviously to create vaccines for them. If you can manufacture the
virus, it would be one hell of a cosmic improbability that you are also NOT
able to manufacture a vaccine for it.

Alternatively if we don't have the knowledge to make viruses and vaccines on
demand, that won't stop mother nature from her never ending quest to kills us
all.

~~~
tigerthink
>And that's just drugs, what about the research itself, isn't it obvious it
has implications well beyond any one single thing. And isn't that the case for
every kind of research, not just medical? To me this seems obvious.

I agree there will be unexpected good benefits associated with biotech
research.

>Again, we already have that, it's called mother nature. HIV, Ebola, 1918 flu,
current flu, etc, all natural.

None of those were _designed_ to be harmful.

>Almost as soon as we invent the nuclear bomb, we also invest nuclear power.

This is not an example of symmetry. The nuclear bomb gave humanity the power
to destroy itself forever. Nuclear power has not given humanity the power to
preserve itself forever.

>If we have the ability to create super viruses on demand, then we also have
the ability to create drugs for them, to detect them, to stop transmission,
and most obviously to create vaccines for them. If you can manufacture the
virus, it would be one hell of a cosmic improbability that you are also NOT
able to manufacture a vaccine for it.

Are you sure you aren't exaggerating? You call that _cosmically improbable_?
Remember, we are talking about things that _haven't even been discovered yet_.

Let me put it this way. If you had such extraordinary predictive power about
which technologies will be invented in what order, you could make a lot of
money in the stock market. And extraordinary predictive power is what you need
to rule scenarios that are compatible with all formulations of the laws of
physics as being "cosmically improbable". I agree that such predictive power
may exist in astronomy. I disagree that such predictive power exists in
technology forecasting, or pretty much anything involving humans for that
matter.

If you continue to stand by this position, I will decide that you're not worth
convincing and unlikely to be convinced and leave the discussion.

>Alternatively if we don't have the knowledge to make viruses and vaccines on
demand, that won't stop mother nature from her never ending quest to kills us
all.

"Mother nature" has no quest to kill us. All the damage that's been done by
naturally-occuring viruses has been by accident. So someone who was
consciously optimizing to create a maximally harmful virus might be able to do
a lot more.

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mustpax
This might be the first time I've seen a mainstream news publication use the
work "hacking" to mean something other than "criminal subversion of computer
systems." And we're talking Economist here, not Wired or another geeky outlet.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
True, but they used it a little too often in the sense of "amateur", which
doesn't do justice to what hackers are in computing today. In biohacking it's
a different matter in 2009.

~~~
anigbrowl
_amateur_ is one who loves a particular activity; doing something for nothing
is a matter of choice, not of inability.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Of course, but I think most hackers nowadays are not amateurs.

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fgh
Hmm, interesting, although I'm not sure that we're quite comfortable yet about
GM here in Europe, especially for things that enter the food chain.

~~~
biohacker42
I don't give a damn about food GM. It's not about feeding the hungry or
helping the planet. That's the marketing speak. The reality is that it's
hacking roundup resistant genes into crops so that you can (or have to) buy
and spray MORE roundup. That's very good for Monsanto and DuPont's bottom
line.

GM work in industry, think bio manufacturing of industrial compounds, and
obviously human health is absolutely worth pursuing.

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c3o
Just in case anyone from Vienna, Austria is reading this: There's a talk on
exactly this topic at local hacker space Metalab tonight:
<http://metalab.at/wiki/Metaday_25> [german]

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Locke1689
That is one freaky picture.
<http://media.economist.com/images/20090905/D3609TQ7.jpg>

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pbhjpbhj
Article concerns biohacking particularly manipulating living organisms - could
HN have some editorial system to ensure articles posted have a proper
descriptive title or maybe a categorisation system.

~~~
gehant
Squishy was a pretty good indicator that it wasn't going to be your typical
hacking article IMO...

But if you are insinuating that biohacking is not relevant:
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
No insinuation.

Squishy suggested it may not be programming, but there's no reason why it
couldn't be a neologism or brand name in that field.

~~~
gehant
ah, I didn't think about that possibility - so that means it's still yours for
the taking

Although I love the economist, I find they tend to touch upon computer
technology less frequently as compared to the natural sciences

~~~
pbhjpbhj
There's an article in Compute! from July 1991 that uses the term "squishy" to
describe technology with a natural feel - soft buttons, rounded corners, etc.
(I'm thinking Existenz!).

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noverloop
reminds me of "Our Neural Chernobyl" by Bruce Sterling

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(anthology)#.22Our_Neur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_\(anthology\)#.22Our_Neural_Chernobyl.22)

