> Some people compare the immune system to a muscle
To reiterate something from a recent discussion on air purifiers [0], if your body is a civilization of cells then activating the adaptive immune system is like unleashing Skynet [1] to stop a potential zombie apocalypse.
Even if Skynet reliably wins, you're losing at least a few cities as glowing craters, and each time you're rolling the dice hoping that not too many of the murder-bots go rogue before you can make them self-destruct or go back into storage. You definitely do not want to slam that big red button just because of one police report of a human biting another human, or a report that a bunch of people with green skin are marching down the road, etc.
As we studying the adaptive immune system, we keep discovering safety-interlocks and subtle feedback loops, which presumably evolved because our relatives without them simply tore themselves apart a bit too often.
To reiterate something from a recent discussion on air purifiers [0], if your body is a civilization of cells then activating the adaptive immune system is like unleashing Skynet [1] to stop a potential zombie apocalypse.
Even if Skynet reliably wins, you're losing at least a few cities as glowing craters, and each time you're rolling the dice hoping that not too many of the murder-bots go rogue before you can make them self-destruct or go back into storage. You definitely do not want to slam that big red button just because of one police report of a human biting another human, or a report that a bunch of people with green skin are marching down the road, etc.
As we studying the adaptive immune system, we keep discovering safety-interlocks and subtle feedback loops, which presumably evolved because our relatives without them simply tore themselves apart a bit too often.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41347868#41348890
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator)