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Notes -
Alec Baldwin, the Lab Leak, and punishing maximal negligence
Alec Baldwin has been charged with manslaughter. We don’t know the nitty gritty details yet, but let’s consider the following possibility. Baldwin, as someone who funded and produced the movie, was ultimately responsible for choices in hiring. He hired someone insufficiently skilled at risk management on set. In addition to hiring and retaining someone whom a reasonable producer would consider insufficiently skilled, he acted negligently on set through pressure, which led to the death of an employee.
Whatever the actual details, there’s a plausible avenue by which Baldwin has serious moral blame in regards to manslaughter. The details that come out later will obviously dictate whether this occurred, but we can imagine a case in which a producer possesses moral blame for the system of failsafes failing. Importantly, in cases where the risks are high (a gun misfiring), greater care is morally warranted. Our expected duty to exercise care is proportional to the potential of harm.
Following from this example, I assert that we should develop a legal principle to maximally punish anyone involved in catastrophic lab leaks (those resulting in millions to tens of millions of death). [paragraph edited for clarity] We should do this regardless of the material facts of individual responsibility of a lab leak. This is because the risk of leak is of such significance that it belongs to a new category of risk:care ratio concerns. It is the principle of reasonable care and deterrence but amplified to the amount of harm involved. The amount of harm that a Covid leak created (implying that the lab leak theory is true) is more than what inspired the Nuremberg Trials. Playing with genetically modified coronaviruses, specifically enhanced for virulence, constitutes such a threat against the human race that every single person involved should have been made to underwrite their life as a guarantee in case of leak. Not for a lifetime in jail, or capital punishment — the guarantee should have been that the State would use medieval punishment on you for the rest of your life. The scientists who worked and funded and stamped the research should have been so certain that a leak would never happen that they literally stake endless, limitless torture for the rest of their life if it leaked. Only this level of deterrent punishment would befit the level of care required to deal with the potential harm of COVID. I am suggesting a moral principle that would prevent future leaks, applied to future cases, to stave off the risk of leak catastrophe.
If Baldwin, in acting unreasonably in hiring or setting workplace culture, can be responsible for one death, how much more care should scientists who work with virulent viruses exercise? Viruses that will kill 200 million by the end of the century are inconceivably more risky than anything that can happen in normal everyday business life. The risk to care ratio must be maximal because only this level of deterrence is sufficient to encourage a reasonable level of care. The whole point of Law is that foreseeing punishment deters behavior. It’s not just that Baldwin ought to have practiced sufficient care; it’s that everyone in Baldwin’s place should foresee a punishment from failing to exercise sufficient care. Baldwin deserves a punishment in accordance to his level of negligence, and everyone in Baldwin’s position must foresee a similar punishment for similar negligence.
Do you think scientists would still work on virulent chimera viruses if they had to stake endless torture on the possibility that it is leaked? If they wouldn’t, doesn’t this simply prove that research this risky should never be done?
They probably would not. People would also, however, be unwilling to build dams, invent novel chemicals, or do a whole host of other risky activities. Including writing certain computer programs. Your proposed principle is untenable; it's the precautionary principle in disguise, with a side of Pascal's Mugging.
You are wrong on these counts:
Covid is (potentially) infinitely more harmful than a dam collapse. The dam killed 200k, and Covid 6 million and counting.
Your go-to an example is one where no one appears to have been placed with responsibility.
There’s no evidence that dam-builders are cowards who would not sign off on “I stake limitless torture on my dam not killing 200k people.” This is actually a completely reasonable thing to make them sign and similar principles have been used throughout history. Men still captioned the Titanic despite the expectation they would go down with their ship, and this was a coveted profession. In Japan, men still competed to become officers despite mistakes resulting in ritual suicide. Men still defended their territory from the Persian Empire in the face of certain death. I don’t think good scientists are cowards — I think the best scientists would stake their life on not accidentally killing millions of people.
A dam has provable benefits that often result in massively increased productivity, whereas playing around with highly lethal coronaviruses has no sum total benefit. We now need to find a way to use an enhanced virus to save, by the end of the century, 100 million lives. Only this would cancel out the harm that the leak caused.
Sure, I understand imprisoning or even executing people for this kind of negligence. Even expecting people to literally fall on their sword. But the torture shit goes a bit too far. Why allow yourself to be taken alive? Why cooperate? How do you get people to cooperate?
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Yes, a dam collapse has finite potential, and infectious diseases infinite. But other things do pose existential risk to humans. Or just existential risk in general. And if you believe climatologists, plenty of human activities right now are posing an existential risk to humans.
So? We don't live under your principle, so we wouldn't expect that.
Even assuming there are such dam-builders, your plan filters for exactly the wrong ones. You're looking for the careful safety-conscious ones, and instead you'll get the fools who don't understand the risk and the arrogant cowboys who believe it will never happen to them.
100 million? You said COVID killed 6 million. Anyway, your principle didn't consider benefits, only risk.
I wrote 100mil at the end of the century.
In order for GoF to be demonstrably beneficial, to have been a good idea in practice, you will need to make up the 100mil dead by 2100. While it’s not impossible that GoF finds some use with malaria, it will likely be an eternal net negative for developed countries. To justify its existence, you now need GoF benefits to make up for the 1 million American lives lost so far and 16 trillion dollars. Do you think that’s actually going to happen?
It doesn't matter, because your principle considers only risks, not benefits.
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