Biosecurity researchers are often better-educated and/or more creative than most bad actors.
I generally agree with the above statement and that the risk of openly discussing some topics outweigh the benefits of doing so. But I recently realised there are some people outside of EA that I think are generally well educated, probably more creative than many biosecurity researchers, and who often write openly about topics the EA community may consider bioinfohazards: authors of near-future science fiction.
Many of the authors in this genre have STEM backgrounds, often write about malicious-use GCR scenarios (thankfully, the risk is usually averted), and I’ve read several interviews where authors mention taking pains to do research so they can depict a scenario that represents a possible, if sometimes ambitious, future risk. While these novels don’t provide implementation details, the ‘attack strategies’ are often described clearly and the accompanying narrative may well be more inspiring to a poorly educated bad actor looking for ideas than a technical discussion would be.
I haven’t seen (realistic) fiction discussed in the context of infohazards before and would be interested to know what others think of this. In the spirit of the post, I’ll refrain from creating an ‘attention hazard’ (or just advertising?) by mentioning any authors who I think describe GCR’s particularly well.
Yeah, I agree there’s a bunch of bio researchers who are fine talking openly about scary stuff you could do with bio and sometimes fiction authors represent that. I think the effect this should have on those that care about infohazards is to be willing to discuss them in order to get work done to prevent them or aid us in the case that they happen. It’s hard to justify preparing for something if you’re totally unwilling to acknowledge the things you want to prepare for or prevent.
I generally agree with the above statement and that the risk of openly discussing some topics outweigh the benefits of doing so. But I recently realised there are some people outside of EA that I think are generally well educated, probably more creative than many biosecurity researchers, and who often write openly about topics the EA community may consider bioinfohazards: authors of near-future science fiction.
Many of the authors in this genre have STEM backgrounds, often write about malicious-use GCR scenarios (thankfully, the risk is usually averted), and I’ve read several interviews where authors mention taking pains to do research so they can depict a scenario that represents a possible, if sometimes ambitious, future risk. While these novels don’t provide implementation details, the ‘attack strategies’ are often described clearly and the accompanying narrative may well be more inspiring to a poorly educated bad actor looking for ideas than a technical discussion would be.
I haven’t seen (realistic) fiction discussed in the context of infohazards before and would be interested to know what others think of this. In the spirit of the post, I’ll refrain from creating an ‘attention hazard’ (or just advertising?) by mentioning any authors who I think describe GCR’s particularly well.
Yeah, I agree there’s a bunch of bio researchers who are fine talking openly about scary stuff you could do with bio and sometimes fiction authors represent that. I think the effect this should have on those that care about infohazards is to be willing to discuss them in order to get work done to prevent them or aid us in the case that they happen. It’s hard to justify preparing for something if you’re totally unwilling to acknowledge the things you want to prepare for or prevent.