caustiko

This post is grey, and I'm not quite sure why. It's a bit on the "pessimistic" side, but... that philosophy is actually spot on IMO when it comes to security. So why downvote this? I'm honestly a bit new to this community but to me this sceptic perspective as it pertains to software security is ... well, actually it isn't even enough. Is this a weakness w/HN where even justified pessimism is eschewed?

Thanks for replying. I'm a layman in this field, so I'm not quite sure about how to parse your response. But wanted to make sure you were aware of the existence of Gene Drive. To me it seems dangerous, but I'd love to hear thoughts from someone more educated in the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Gene_drive

This is the point where my thought process forked off into wondering about the implications if the capabilities of Gene Drive could somehow become airborne.

There are first of all the obvious worries about the impact of genetic engineering. But worse than that is the method described on Radiolab where the genetic changes produce more instances of CRISPR itself so it passes along from generation to generation. But worse than that is the idea of CRISPR being airborne such that it can infect and change all of our genetics. Or the genetics of only some particular targeted subset of the population.