bh42

People who point out that it is in fact high yield & high risk, tend to be accused of being anti-progress luddites.

That's a lot of trees!

Incidentally, living in the west has totally pussyfied me. No offense meant to my (now) fellow westerners.

I understand almost no one owns those kind of proportions today, but what would be the incentive today if everyone seeks diversification. This would create an incentive, would it not?

This assumes good competition among CEO compensations. But when I say "game", I mean that there's essentially a cartel of CEO compensation among all publicly traded companies, so that you can not just invest in a company which does not overpay the CEO.

But the free market is an ideal which is easy to game. CEOs hand picking the board, and the board then turning around and deciding on the CEOs compensation is an example of the free market being gamed.

It's a bit more complicated then that, it requires the government enforced and defined legal entity that is a corporation, but it's still market inefficiency, mostly agency risk.

So in a way, it is the public's concern to remove market inefficiencies.

That's kind of an understatement when it comes to liquid oxygen.

His bold assumption that no one could be sure if the BP rig was safe is complete BS. Watch the 60 Minutes report, listen to the interview, LOTS of people knew exactly how unsafe it was.

The same goes for Enron, both Bethany McLean and James Chanos pointed out the king is naked, long before Enron imploded.

Just because Scott Adams can't comprehend something, it does not mean that it is incomprehensible.

It is true that our modern lives are very complicated. But primitive people posses staggering amounts of knowledge, which just happen to be essential for their survival. We all had knowledge like that a long time ago. I have no idea exactly who knows more, but I bet we are all in the same ballpark, because we are all humans.

I fully agree, but I am getting tired of all of this slam down style, flame-bait headlined, writing.

Franky we got lucky with HIV, it could have been something like that and we along with cheetahs and a few other species don't have much genetic diversity within the species and are thus susceptible to extinction via disease.

This is why I want the biotech pedal to the metal. Because in my opinion the probably of us accidental creating something horrific are far less then something horrific being created quite naturally. Like in some shared living space with humans and domestic animals, it could happen in any given moment and spread quickly around the world. We don't need labs to die of something horrible.

And there's this discussion about artificial and natural micro organisms competing in the same niche. Like using light energy to capture CO2 for example.

And then there's oil drillers.

Bingo! I think this is the solution to the eternal September effect on communities.

You get a super nice place like reddit when it was new and shiny and over time it gets taken over by trolls. So you move on to startup news, then hacker news, but soon that is filled with generic crap and shallow discussions as well.

So you move on to an individually selected group of sub-reddits and then just keep moving, like a nomad always moving away form the trolls. (Or not even necessarily trolls, just too much popularity which brings shallowness if no actual trolling.)

I strongly encourage everyone to try this. Keep in mind the default reddit includes subreddits like pics and WTF which basically equals 4chan, so quickly edit your settings.

They key words here are: "in a number of areas"

In a number of areas indeed. Can a plane fly without oil drillers, oil refiners, fuel trucks, and jet fuel?

Or in a more generalized form: For some X, thing Y is better at X.

Having said that, I in no way belong to those people who think that nature is magical and humans can never do better.

We can quite easily make incremental improvements some of the time.

Note that I consider it an improvement if it still does everything else equally well and some new things better.

If on the other hand, it can't do some things, then it is only useful in a number of areas.

So a plane is not an improvement on a bird, but a bird immune to some pesticide would be an improvement IF that immunity didn't have a huge cost.

Or we can say it's better only when lots of that pesticide is in its environment and worse otherwise.

Fuel, jet fuel.

Biology doesn't produce the wheel.

Tumble weeds? Insects which curl up into a wheel to quickly roll away from danger? Can a car drive up stairs?

Indeed if we genetically engineered a large animal to run on gasoline AND provided it with an ample supply of gasoline, it would move faster than anything else... as long as it had gasoline.

If we engineered a bacterium to eat oil and/or gasoline and dispersed in the gulf.... already there, eating oil, consuming the oxygen in the water in the process.

If we added it to an oil well... already there, lots of bacteria deep within the earth, eating everything from metal to methane. Probably not consuming the world's oil reserve only for lack of oxygen or any other oxidizer.

...some possibilities, some terrifying.

Ebola, HIV, the flu de jour all quite terrifying, all 100% natural.

And unlike you, they don't care. They will keep evolving and trying to kill you as fast and as hard as they can, every minute of every day.

In all seriousness, the dangers brought up in the article can only come from a person lacking significant knowledge of bacteria.

Unimaginable numbers of bacteria permeate every part of the world, including miles within the earth, deep sea volcanic vents, radioactive waste, the rain drops falling on our heads, and us, up our noses, in our skin pores, our guts, etc.

Those simple bacteria evolve at staggering rates, and swap genes like DJ Danger Mouse mixing tracks.

Any new synthetic, or extraterrestrial, or magical, life form would have to compete. And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche.

The grey goo danger often thrown at nano-tech, is possible only if we violate one or more of the basic laws of thermodynamics.

And when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria, well we are already doing a great job of breeding those within ourselves.

But if you grew a barrel full of MRSA and then poured it down your toilet, the SA wold quickly lose its metabolically expensive MR. Because there is no Methicillin in the sewer, the resistance to Methicillin is a disadvantage. And the only way the Staphylococcus aureus could survive is if it dumped this feature.

But luckily you're probably taking antibiotics so you are a niche where MRSA can out-compete and thrive.

It may not sound like a lot -- between 1 and 4 percent. But that's the equivalent of one great-great-great grandparent's DNA contribution.

That is quite a bit!

And from that same link:

Does this mean that Neandertals belong in our species, Homo sapiens?

Yes.

I did not notice that, but it seems that's just what we have detected so far. If it can happen twice, isn't it very likely it would happen quite a few times?

As to species barriers, by definition a species is what is reproductively isolated.

Biology is not nearly as clean as say math, and so reproductive isolation is quite blurry. Some times A + B works and B + C works but A and C are reproductively isolated.

Often, A + B makes, C and C + (C or A or B) makes D, but D is infertile. Or E is infertile. And while A + B makes C and even D and E, the fact that the lines eventually terminate means A and B are reproductively isolated.

The foals would be mostly horse, and the result of that is an animal that is 3/4 horse which therefore is likely to be able to breed with other horses.

Not so.

It is true that once in a million a fertile mule is born, but that mule's offspring are not fertile, or its grandchildren are not fertile. Mules have been bred throughout history, but I know of no line of mostly donkey or horse hybrids with a fertile mule parent, or gand, or grand-grand-grand parent, or any mule linage.

and by chance on 2 occasions fertile offspring

But that in no way guarantees THEIR offspring with either Humans or Neanderthals (or other hybrids) would be fertile or that their grandchildren would be.

And if they were, then by definition us and Neanderthals are the same species.

And in that case I still don't understand how there could be so little genetic difference contributed.

For sweet zombie jesus' sake, we can identify the descendants of a Central Asian male who lived around the time of Genghis Khan over most of Eurasia. And successful interbreeding with a population who lived apart for 200 THOUSAND freaking years leaves only a few stray genes?