Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks | Lex Fridman Podcast #193

The following is a conversation with Rob Reid, entrepreneur, author, and host of the After On podcast. Sam Harris recommended that I absolutely must talk to Rob about his recent work on the future of engineered pandemics. I then listened to the four-hour special episode of Sam's Making Sense podcast with Rob, titled Engineering the Apocalypse, and I was floored and knew I had to talk to him. Quick mention of our sponsors: Athletic Greens, Belcampo, Fundrise, and NetSuite. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say a few words about the lab leak hypothesis, which proposes that COVID-19 is a product of gain-of-function research on coronaviruses conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was then accidentally leaked due to human error. For context, this lab is Biosafety Level 4, BSL-4, and it investigates coronaviruses. BSL-4 is the highest level of safety, but if you look at all the human and the loop pieces required to achieve this level of safety, it becomes clear that even BSL-4 labs are highly susceptible to human error. To me, whether the virus leaked from the lab or not, getting to the bottom of what happened is about much more than this particular catastrophic case. It is a test for our scientific, political, journalistic, and social institutions of how well we can prepare and respond to threats that can cripple or destroy human civilization. If we continue gain-of-function research on viruses, eventually these viruses will leak, and they will be more deadly and more contagious. We can pretend that won't happen, or we can openly and honestly talk about the risks involved. This research can both save and destroy human life on Earth as we know it. It's a powerful double-edged sword. If YouTube and other platforms censor conversations about this, if scientists self-censor conversations about this, we'll become merely victims of our brief homo sapiens story, not its heroes. As I said before, too carelessly labeling ideas as misinformation and dismissing them because of that will eventually destroy our ability to discover the truth. And without truth, we don't have a fighting chance against the Great Filter before us. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Rob Reid. I have seen evidence on the internet that you have a sense of humor, allegedly, but you also talk and think about the destruction of human civilization. What do you think of the Elon Musk hypothesis that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely? And he, I think, followed on to say as seen (laughs) from a, an external observer, like if somebody was watching us, it seems we come up with creative ways of, uh, progressing our civilization that's fun to watch.

Yeah, so he, he... exactly. He said from the standpoint of the observer, not the participant, I think.

Right.

And so what's interesting about that, those were, I think, just a couple of freestanding tweets and, and delivered without a whole lot of wrapper of context so it's left to the mind of the, the reader of the tweets-