The omnicital factor, if we can call it that, is something they think people very frequently miss. It's easy to rule out a majority of bad guys who normally dominate international headlines. We can safely say that putton she indeed north corea are wildly unlikely to inflict a pandemic on the world because they have so many people to protect and so much to lose. If we're in the mind set that it takes a major state actor to do such a thing, there is a bit of mutual assured destruction built into that.
In this episode of the podcast, Rob Reid and Kevin Esvelt discuss USAID’s new “Deep VZN” program, which aims to discover new pandemic-grade viruses and publish their genomes to the world. Esvelt estimates that there are currently around 30,000 people who could then easily build them.
If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.