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Punoxysm comments on What is the most anti-altruistic way to spend a million dollars? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Well, bioterrorism is definitely illegal. And remember the challenge is "don't do anything illegal", not "don't get found guilty". And there is plenty of information out there about how to do bad things, though reading too much of it without a reasonable cover will get you on a watchlist. And there are plenty of books filled with both malice and misinformation. What could you really contribute at the margin? If you think you could kickstart your rise as a dictator for a million dollars, I'm afraid I think you're suffering from overoptimism/pessimism.
Norman Borlaug relied on people adopting his inventions and discoveries. If he'd been pushing agricultural practices that only produced half as much food, he'd just be crank.
Bioterrorism is definitely not where I was going with this. However, it is pretty much a given that the owners of large farms will do things that will increase their crop production, even if it decreases the productivity of farms that are spatially or temporally distant from them.
Again, think about creative uses for the knowledge you have for 5 minutes before you come to the conclusion that it's not possible to do significant harm with it. You probably don't even have to think directly of doing harm -- just look for the most profitable thing you can do with that knowledge, figure out what the negative side effects would be (particularly tragedy-of-the-commons type effects), and figure out how you can maintain profitability while increasing those negative side effects.
I'm gonna guess this has something to do with bees then (or in that general direction)?
Well, all sorts of tragedy of the commons things exist. If you think you've got one that could turn a commons into a resource to be manipulated, and can convince people, there will be a dozen investors knocking at your door!
It's been done a thousand times before and not only that but there are whole philosophical movements arguing that it's a moral imperative.
Nevertheless, you seem like you're in the running for the prize.
Tragedy-of-the-commons-for-profit has been done quite profitably -- see swoopo.com until quite recently.
Yes, I agree completely. Taking a commons and turning it into a tragedy is a perfectly viable business model for many things.
Are you sure every country on earth has a well defined law against bioterrorism? Especially that there no country in Africa that wants to develop bioweapons themselves and might use them in practice?
No island nation with isn't up to date with their laws to the 21st century?
I expect even your island nations have laws against murder that don't care what the murder weapon was.
The weapon industry who's tools kill millions in regions of crisis has plenty of people who are responsible for killing in Western nations with laws against murder don't get put into prison.
In the US I'm not allowed to build a killer virus and give it some criminal organisation to use because of bio-safety legislation. Other countries might not have laws against such practices.