Hal Finney wrote:
> We already face
> a situation where small groups are capable of causing immense damage to
> the world, through biological or nuclear terrorism. At this point it
> appears that this problem is only going to get worse.
>
> Advances in biotech may allow for tailored viruses like an air-vectored
> version of ebola (which kills very quickly). In ten or twenty years it
> is likely that virtually any motivated group could create such a bug,
> and it is not at all certain that countermeasures would exist.
>
> Then of course nanotech will raise the stakes even farther, allowing
> more destructive power and potentially easier design mechanisms.
These are simple but very important insights. (I have yet to hear a
sensible extropian proposal for how do deal with this situation.
Personally I suspect that individual freedom etc. will in the future
only be possible *within* the singleton.)
_____________________________________________________
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
Received on Sun Apr 26 23:48:22 1998
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