[tejasvi88]

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.

[estearum]

> 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.

[tejasvi88]

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.