Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign … under varying names like … “Precautionary Principle” [etc.]
I interpret that to mean not that he’s against precaution, but that he thinks terms like that are being used to promote bad ideas.
Also, the Precautionary Principle is objectively bad:
As we look back on the failed civilizations of the past, we can see that they were so poor, their technology was so feeble, and their explanations of the world so fragmentary and full of misconceptions that their caution about innovation and progress was as perverse as expecting a blindfold to be useful when navigating dangerous waters. Pessimists believe that the present state of our own civilization is an exception to that pattern. But what does the precautionary principle say about that claim? Can we be sure that our present knowledge, too, is not riddled with dangerous gaps and misconceptions? That our present wealth is not pathetically inadequate to deal with unforeseen problems? Since we cannot be sure, would not the precautionary principle require us to confine ourselves to the policy that would always have been salutary in the past—namely innovation and, in emergencies, even blind optimism about the benefits of new knowledge?
–David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
The EU had by now installed the precautionary principle as a guiding light. This superficially sensible idea—that we should worry about unintended consequences of innovation—morphed into a device by which activists prevent life-saving new technologies displacing more dangerous ones. As formally adopted by the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty, the principle holds the new to a higher standard than the old and is essentially a barrier to all innovations, however safe, on behalf of all existing practices, however dangerous. This is because it considers the potential hazards, but not the likely benefits of an innovation, shifting the burden of proof to an innovator to prove that its product will not cause harm, but not allowing that innovator to demonstrate that it might cause good, or might displace a technology that already causes harm.
Thanks. What I see is that this paper specifies “a non-naive precautionary principle” or “an intelligent application of the precautionary principle,” which implies something about what the precautionary principle might end up being in practice without those qualifiers…
The precautionary principle is objectively bad? That’s a massive assumption that only holds if you are somehow confident that nuclear war, engineered pandemics, advanced AI derailing society etc. are all impossible, right?
No. The Precautionary Principle doesn’t just mean “take precautions when warranted.” No one would be against that. It has become more like a bias towards inaction, regardless of cost/benefit calculations. See Ridley’s quote above, about how this “superficially sensible idea” was transformed into something irrational.
To be exact, what he said was:
I interpret that to mean not that he’s against precaution, but that he thinks terms like that are being used to promote bad ideas.
Also, the Precautionary Principle is objectively bad:
–David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
–Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works
You might want to Ctrl+F here for mentions of the precautionary principle: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207020301230
Thanks. What I see is that this paper specifies “a non-naive precautionary principle” or “an intelligent application of the precautionary principle,” which implies something about what the precautionary principle might end up being in practice without those qualifiers…
The precautionary principle is objectively bad? That’s a massive assumption that only holds if you are somehow confident that nuclear war, engineered pandemics, advanced AI derailing society etc. are all impossible, right?
No. The Precautionary Principle doesn’t just mean “take precautions when warranted.” No one would be against that. It has become more like a bias towards inaction, regardless of cost/benefit calculations. See Ridley’s quote above, about how this “superficially sensible idea” was transformed into something irrational.