Comment by once_inc

4 years ago

I personally fear the lone-wolf attack drastically reducing in cost and effort. Where it would once be cost-prohibitive to design and manufacture your own nerve gas or lethal virus, these days with AI/ML and Crispr-cas and the like, it feels like any intelligent, deranged person wanting to take as many people to the grave with him has the tools to do just that.

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once_inc

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WJW  4 years ago

Intelligent and deranged persons already have the tools to make way more casualties with way less effort using guns and/or explosives. The "problem" for them is that people who get sufficiently deranged to think that killing a few hundred (or even thousand) people will meaningfully solve the problem they are upset about will also be sufficiently deranged that their ability to reason coherently will be drastically reduced.

  • wpietri  4 years ago

    Would they? I'm not seeing that as necessarily true. The Unabomber seems like a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

    Or look at mass shooting incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...

    The Las Vegas shooting was rationally planned and carried out. He managed to shoot nearly 500 people, killing 60.

    They did happen to pick conventional weapons. But is that because of rational choice, or just familiarity and availability? Imagine somebody like Kaczynski, but instead of being an award-winning young mathematician, he was an award-winning industrial chemist or genomics student.

    • Houshalter  4 years ago

      None of these examples got away with it, or even acheived any of their stated goals. If terrorism actually worked, it would be a lot scarier.

      Also fortunately most political extremists don't want to kill just random people. Weapons of mass destruction don't discriminate, making them poor choices.

      2 replies →

    • uxp100  4 years ago

      Kaczynski did not optimize for death, really following the lead of the shockingly common political bombing campaigns of the 70s. The Las Vegas shooter might be a better example.

      1 reply →

bitexploder  4 years ago

I think this is inevitable and something we will grapple with in coming decades. Especially around genetic engineering of viruses.