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Comment by tejasvi88 | Hacker News Reader

> decide to continue doing dangerous GoF research in metropolises, that is bad.

How do you know GoF research is bad? By analysing the consequences of previous GoF research.

If lab origin is confirmed, it adds support to GoF research being bad hypothesis helps creating relevant regulations. If zoonotic origin is confirmed, it adds another data point of naturally created dangerous pathogens and weakens the argument of banning GoF research.

There are no _a priori_ truths, only approximations at a time based on past statistics.

Let me know if you are convinced, either way :)

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> If zoonotic origin is confirmed, it adds another data point of naturally created dangerous pathogens and weakens the argument of banning GoF research.

Why would a zoonotic origin of COVID reduce the risk of GoF?

Zoonotic origin reduces the risk of GoF research because understanding the underlying biology becomes more useful to address novel variants popping up in the wild (apart from other potential uses).

A poor analogy is suppose in 1800s humans encountered nuclear explosion near nuclear research lab. It could have human or natural origin. If natural then it is important for us to accelerate nuclear research with relatively lax regulations and develop countermeasures. If human origin, lack of sufficient regulation is a more probable cause.

> understanding the underlying biology becomes more useful to address novel variants popping up in the wild (apart from other potential uses).

This is effectively not true in light of the mRNA platform, which negates the rest of your argument as well, because the existence of the mRNA platform is not contingent upon the origin.

Dangerous GoF was made excessively dangerous by the invention of the mRNA platform regardless of whether COVID itself even happened, never mind the specific origin of it.

Doing GoF research in major metropolitan areas is very obviously unacceptable and should have been considered such prior to COVID, and should be widely considered such after COVID. Again regardless of whether COVID itself came from WIV.

We already know everything we need to know about zoonotic possibilities which is that nature can produce pathogens orders of magnitude worse than COVID on any dimension.

If after learning that COVID was zoonotic, your conclusion is "guess it's okay to keep WIV and WIV-like labs in major cities doing the type of research they were doing," then you are simply insane.

Any new technology has its dangers and its uses. The whole EA vs e/acc is a more recent example. A utilitarian will try to probabilistically measure expected benefit of the technology based on existing data points.

> Doing GoF research in major metropolitan areas is very obviously unacceptable.

It is not so obvious to the people wanting to accelerate the research and solve cancer, aging or whatever their pet problem at (in their opinion) slim risk of catastrophe.

> nature can produce pathogens orders of magnitude worse than COVID on any dimension

Everything is possible, including nature producing mass extinction pathogens. The key missing information is the probability. Else we all will be living in bunkers.

> If after learning that COVID was zoonotic, your conclusion is "guess it's okay to keep WIV and WIV-like labs in major cities doing the type of research they were doing," then you are simply insane.

Agree, a single data point does not warrant extreme change in status quo. But it does weaken the argument to a non-zero extent that GoF research leads to global pandemic. This has trickle down effects of eschewing additional regulations which would have been added otherwise.

> It is not so obvious to the people wanting to accelerate the research and solve cancer, aging or whatever their pet problem at (in their opinion) slim risk of catastrophe.

What GoF research either a) increases contagiousness of a pathogen or b) increases pathogenicity of a contagion and has anything to do with "cancer, aging, or whatever their pet problem" is?

> The key missing information is the probability.

COVID did - not - change the probability.

> But it does weaken the argument to a non-zero extent that GoF research leads to global pandemic.

No! It literally doesn't! The probability of GoF research leading to a future pandemic was the same the day before the COVID outbreak as it was the day after which is the same as it is today.

The only thing that will shift those probabilities are mitigations that we put in place.

We know so little about biology that any kind of research can lead transformative benefits. Therefore the outcomes of a certain line of biological research including GoF are unknown. Penicillin is a great example of this.

> COVID did - not - change the probability.

True from the perspective of omniscient universe, but for humans with limited knowledge, it will change our priors based on the origin.

There is a valid reasoning for how GoF research can lead to pandemic but we do not know how often it will happen in practice. There are many things we already do with potential global consequences. Historical example is the risk of chain reaction during first atomic test. Contemporary example is the universal dependance on digital infrastructure which can be hacked. Timeless example is asteroid hitting the earth.

We make decisions for each of the scenarios based on perceived (objective + subjective) probabilities and the tradeoffs.

If natural origin is proved, there is less reason to add mitigations to the GoF research because mitigations are hard to design and limit the exploration space.

To summarize:

P(GoF causing pandemic) = P(GoF) = GoF pandemics / total pandemics

Mitigations ∝ P(GoF)

If natural origin, P(GoF) stays same. If lab origin P(GoF) increases and calls for commensurate increase in mitigations.

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