HYPOTHETICAL: Which is the Least Offensive Explanation?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Well being extinct is the fate of all species (though that's an inductive inference)... question is when? I think we're in the process of trying to get through a bottleneck.

We're not going through a bottleneck. We're forcing everything else through one. There's 7 billion of us. We're not going anywhere soon. Our buildings might, but not our species.

Oh, I fully agree we are forcing all the others, poor things, through a bottleneck! As to humans, I didn't mean in terms of population, but in terms of viability. Meddling with viruses, meddling with nuclear energy, owning a massive arsenal of nuclear bombs and with a dominant form of sociocultural organisation that brutally mistreats the majority of individuals... I'm sure the history of hominids has had a few fortunate turns in the distant path, but I think a massive human extinction event (not necessarily wiping out the race as a whole, but most of us) has been more likely in the last 70-80 years (I would make nuclear fission the dividing line) than for at least ten thousand years beforehands.

Meddling with viruses?

I think even with a nuclear exchange, that would be largely concentrated to major world cities. It would be horrible ecologically, economically and society as we know it would change, but society would still exist and there would still be plenty of people. Starvation would probably be the worst killer, but even then I wouldn't expect the human population to reduce significantly enough to liken it to a human extinction event.

I think the most likely way we'll go extinct is either through some natural global catastrophe or we'll just evolve into something else.

[Dildo Argentino]

Okay, Twid, I think you are right. What a relief! 

Meddling with viruses... I mean (short for) engineering/modifying biological organisms that may accidentally become massive pandemics... so why is that an infeasible scenario? (I mean I'm very willing to accept that it is, I would just like to know why.)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Okay, Twid, I think you are right. What a relief! 

Meddling with viruses... I mean (short for) engineering/modifying biological organisms that may accidentally become massive pandemics... so why is that an infeasible scenario? (I mean I'm very willing to accept that it is, I would just like to know why.)

Well, in order to work with viruses that are pathogenic to humans you would need to know what you were doing to begin with. People don't just dive in and say, right, lets see what happens if we just put a random sequence into this virus and see what it does. When you're working with genes, you already have some idea what you're doing with them. If you don't know what the gene does, more likely than not, you're going to suppress it and see what stops working. You're not going to accidentally make Ebola airborne. On top of that viruses prefer certain species. You're actually covered in viruses right now. Virus are the most abundant form of nucleic acid on the planet. If you're working with a Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, you'd have to alter it in a very deliberate way to turn it into HIV, and it probably wouldn't be that easy to do anyway.

[Doktor Howl]

"Meddling with viruses."

This "science" is deadly business, what with the Frankenstein monsters going berserk every 3 blocks.

[Doktor Howl]

Planning ahead only causes problems later.

I would argue that human capacity for thinking ahead is severely limited by linear cause-and-effect thinking, and that we rarely actually "plan ahead" beyond "If A then B". We have a spectacularly short time-horizon for forethought, which will likely result in us being extinct.

We have so far been saved by the monkey habit of "JUST JAM YOUR FACE IN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!"

Bad for the monkey, good for monkeydom.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well being extinct is the fate of all species (though that's an inductive inference)... question is when? I think we're in the process of trying to get through a bottleneck.

We're not going through a bottleneck. We're forcing everything else through one. There's 7 billion of us. We're not going anywhere soon. Our buildings might, but not our species.

Oh, I fully agree we are forcing all the others, poor things, through a bottleneck! As to humans, I didn't mean in terms of population, but in terms of viability. Meddling with viruses, meddling with nuclear energy, owning a massive arsenal of nuclear bombs and with a dominant form of sociocultural organisation that brutally mistreats the majority of individuals... I'm sure the history of hominids has had a few fortunate turns in the distant path, but I think a massive human extinction event (not necessarily wiping out the race as a whole, but most of us) has been more likely in the last 70-80 years (I would make nuclear fission the dividing line) than for at least ten thousand years beforehands.

Meddling with viruses?

I think even with a nuclear exchange, that would be largely concentrated to major world cities. It would be horrible ecologically, economically and society as we know it would change, but society would still exist and there would still be plenty of people. Starvation would probably be the worst killer, but even then I wouldn't expect the human population to reduce significantly enough to liken it to a human extinction event.

I think the most likely way we'll go extinct is either through some natural global catastrophe or we'll just evolve into something else.

I think the most likely way we'll go extinct is through either another mass extinction event similar to the Permian, caused by a cascading effect of climate change and resulting in all larger mammals and most aquatic species being wiped out.

That, or we finally manage to get enough endocrine disruptors into our air and water systems that we render ourselves functionally sterile. We won't know when that happens until 20-ish years after we pass the tipping point.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Okay, Twid, I think you are right. What a relief! 

Meddling with viruses... I mean (short for) engineering/modifying biological organisms that may accidentally become massive pandemics... so why is that an infeasible scenario? (I mean I'm very willing to accept that it is, I would just like to know why.)

Well, in order to work with viruses that are pathogenic to humans you would need to know what you were doing to begin with. People don't just dive in and say, right, lets see what happens if we just put a random sequence into this virus and see what it does. When you're working with genes, you already have some idea what you're doing with them. If you don't know what the gene does, more likely than not, you're going to suppress it and see what stops working. You're not going to accidentally make Ebola airborne. On top of that viruses prefer certain species. You're actually covered in viruses right now. Virus are the most abundant form of nucleic acid on the planet. If you're working with a Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, you'd have to alter it in a very deliberate way to turn it into HIV, and it probably wouldn't be that easy to do anyway.

This.

[trippinprincezz13]

"Meddling with viruses."

This "science" is deadly business, what with the Frankenstein monsters going berserk every 3 blocks.

This gave me the laugh I needed today.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I changed my mind about molecular biology, I want to do mad science in the field of Frankenvirology.

The other thing to keep in mind, holist, is that if you alter a viral genome in order to make it airborne you might accidentally render it relatively harmless compared to wild type. So in the process of trying to make Ebola airborne you might also make it non lethal. It wouldn't be the same virus anymore.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Curse that Dr. Picker, meddling about willy-nilly with viruses! http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2014/09/oregon_health_science_universi_31.html

[P3nT4gR4m]

I think it's safe to say that eventually we'll have a pretty comprehensive grasp of genetics. At that point, sure, wankers will be able to code all manner of nasty ass shit but, by the same token, generating a vaccine will be a much quicker and more straightforward affair. It'll balance out.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Curse that Dr. Picker, meddling about willy-nilly with viruses! http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2014/09/oregon_health_science_universi_31.html

Ooh. I'm going to forward this to Professor Dunphy (my cell bio professor)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think it's safe to say that eventually we'll have a pretty comprehensive grasp of genetics. At that point, sure, wankers will be able to code all manner of nasty ass shit but, by the same token, generating a vaccine will be a much quicker and more straightforward affair. It'll balance out.

I mean, it's possible, and it might get easier, but again, in altering something to do a particular thing, you might deactivate something else. I could be wrong but if I recall, the Soviets did actually try to weaponize Ebola (not to bring the damn thing up again) and they failed, because sometimes you can't make something do what you want without disabling some other function needed to do the thing you wanted it to do.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think it's safe to say that eventually we'll have a pretty comprehensive grasp of genetics. At that point, sure, wankers will be able to code all manner of nasty ass shit but, by the same token, generating a vaccine will be a much quicker and more straightforward affair. It'll balance out.

I don't know if that's safe to say at all, actually. I mean, hypothetically we could eventually have a pretty comprehensive grasp of genetics, but right now we're at the "Oh shit, we finally know enough to recognize that we know almost nothing" stage.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Basically, we just crossed the Dunning-Kruger threshold with regards to our knowledge of genetics; we are just barely competent enough to be aware of our own incompetence.