> With the calici trial, the right things were being done, but then some > idiot (probably with your mindset) decided to release the virus on the > mainland anyway. Fortunately, in that case, we dodged a bullet. Not so > with cane toads, or the bloody rabbits in the first place.
Even before the age of modern biotech, Mao Zedong had a similar idea with his "Four Pests Campaign": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign I agree with Russell. I am not morally opposed to such interventions, but it seems obvious to me that one must proceed with extreme caution for two reasons: complex systems are notoriously hard to model and the downside is unbounded. Obviously it is sometimes more wise to take a risk, but I don't think one should take it until one can at least estimate it. In the case of the "Four Pests Campaign", the downside probably included tens of millions of people dying of starvation. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
