From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 14:20:26 MDT
John Clark wrote:
> [snip] Imagine a virus that's airborn and as contagious as the
> common cold, that has no vaccine or any other treatment, and kills 90% of those
> infected in less than 48 hours in a manner gruesome enough for any horror movie.
> I sure hope there is something about this experiment I don't understand.
>
I suspect that had this research been published a few months ago, it would have been listed
by Bill Joy in his comments about "future pestilence" made at Stanford. There is a
corollary of the Law of Large Numbers called the "Some Nut Theory" which state that "In a
sufficiently large population, no matter what it is, there is some nut out there who will
try it." Unfortunately, this implies that when the technological cost of whacking your
first megaperson gets down to $1.50 and two box tops, a fair number of us are going to get
whacked.
-Ken
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