[JoshTriplett]

Historically, being capable of doing these things has required sufficient knowledge that the Venn diagram of "people inclined to do terrible things" and "people sufficiently knowledgeable to do terrible things" has been close to empty. Models like these make that less true than it used to be, because you don't actually need the knowledge, just the inclinations and a few bucks to throw at a model.

[bigbadfeline]

Your "Venn diagram" is wrong. People don't decide against crime because they are dumb, they don't do it because of legal repercussions.

Did you forget there's law? Why argue about dumbing down people in order to fight crime, that's nonsense.

Private entities deciding to dumb down people as a replacement of law is worse than any crime.

[JoshTriplett]

I'm not primarily suggesting intelligence as a factor. I'm saying that among those who might want to do something especially harmful to humanity, it is exceedingly uncommon to, for instance, go study specific aspects of biology that would allow engineering a plague, in a long and diligent fashion without revealing anything, and still want to do it afterwards; that takes "premeditated" to a whole new level. And conversely, the kinds of people who study those aspects of biology in a long and diligent fashion aren't especially likely to have the temperament to decide they want to create a plague.

It's not that it could never happen. It's that it is much less likely.

Thought experiment: suppose there exists some trivial activity that would end the world, using everyday household objects that is easy to enact but vanishingly unlikely to do by accident, such that it could only happen if you made a deliberate choice to do it. For the sake of an absurd-but-clear information-theoretically-unlikely example, "write this exact ten-word sentence on a piece of paper, and place it in the microwave along with a vinegar-soaked match".

Now suppose that activity becomes public knowledge. How many minutes does the world last? I'd bet against more than a day (if betting were of any use).

Making it simple and widely accessible to do such things is a bad idea.

[Dylan16807]

> Your "Venn diagram" is wrong. People don't decide against crime because they are dumb, they don't do it because of legal repercussions.

That's a factor that shrinks the "people inclined" circle. It doesn't change the analysis they're making, or make the analysis wrong.

[bigbadfeline]

It does make it wrong. Why do you assume that the "shrinkage" should come from messing around with information and information sources? The only permissible way to do that is to better the legal system. Bastardizing the information space under the pretense of fighting crime is much worse than the crime savings from it.

[Dylan16807]

Who said anything about "should"? It was just a description of how things work.

[tsunamifury]

History proves you wrong quite clearly. As information has spread violence and terrorism has reduced