What will it take for bio people to treat dangerous information as if it was dangerous? Do they have a rosy view of the world, where no one would misuse it? Do they have incentives to spread the info? Is the open data movement unwittingly to do with it?
It’s going to be a tough sell. The scientists involved are saturated with cultural norms and deep beliefs that more information is always better, and academic and funding incentives are aligned with that understanding.
I don’t know that the “open data movement” is, like, radically influencing the beliefs of scientists involved in this kind of work, but rather they’re both products of the same (mostly great) culture of openness.
I think the actual long-term solution is to influence trainees and help them rise to positions of influence. In the meantime we need to mitigating risks from these projects in ways that don’t depend on changing hearts and minds of the senior scientists most highly invested in their continuation.
What will it take for bio people to treat dangerous information as if it was dangerous? Do they have a rosy view of the world, where no one would misuse it? Do they have incentives to spread the info? Is the open data movement unwittingly to do with it?
It’s going to be a tough sell. The scientists involved are saturated with cultural norms and deep beliefs that more information is always better, and academic and funding incentives are aligned with that understanding.
I don’t know that the “open data movement” is, like, radically influencing the beliefs of scientists involved in this kind of work, but rather they’re both products of the same (mostly great) culture of openness.
I think the actual long-term solution is to influence trainees and help them rise to positions of influence. In the meantime we need to mitigating risks from these projects in ways that don’t depend on changing hearts and minds of the senior scientists most highly invested in their continuation.