Words&Dirt

“Given potential dangers, shall we withhold new technologies until they have been proven to be absolutely safe and harmless?

This is the argument known as the precautionary principle (PP), at least in some of its definitions and practices.  The PP essentially prohibits any new technology or activity unless it can be scientifically proven that there will be no resulting harm to health or environment.  The PP is psychologically comforting, but it is more wishful thinking than a practical approach.

In principle, we should handle the risks in new technologies the same way as we handle other kinds of risks.  The PP has been used by those with a hidden agenda to halt creative innovations, since no amount of testing can guarantee the safety of something new.  It follows from this that an absolute ban on risk does more harm than good.  We should always weigh the pros and cons of waiting for further evidence.  When the negative consequences are irreversible and catastrophic, a bias toward caution and inaction is warranted.  But there is a critical difference between calculated caution and unthinking action.  Moreover, history is made up of countless acts that had potentially irreversible world-ending consequences.

Imagine a debate circa 1492 on the eve of Columbus’s historical trip based on the PP, which can be summed up as ‘control and regulate first, investigate later.’  Some might have asked, what if Columbus might run into a superior power in a strange land that could then come and destroy us?  Since nobody could prove that such a power did not exist, the trip would never have been allowed.

Then there was the famous ‘Maybe we’ll ignite the atmosphere’ argument back when the Los Alamos scientists were building the atomic bombs during World War II.  Few believed the chance was that big, but nobody could totally rule it out, either.

The PP, when implemented in full as a hard legal or regulatory constraint, would leave society paralyzed.  It is a very peculiar form of power, what Jean Baudrillard called deterrence: ‘what causes something not to take place.’  Since nobody has perfect foresight, the PP is essentially a doctrine of ‘never do anything for the first time.’  Concerning newfound genetic knowledge, the British writer Bryan Appleyard warned us about the moral of Leontes’s suggestion in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale:  when you drink your tasty wine from a cup, how can you know if there is a spider at the bottom of the cup?  We cannot.  The seemingly rational approach of the precautionary principle suffers from tunnel vision, which prevents one from realizing that the biggest risk lies in doing nothing at all.

Risk does not disappear simply because one is averse to it.  It is a necessary evil of existence.  Selective, temporary delay can be a smart policy, but attempts to eliminate risk will ultimately bring greater danger over the long run.  This is why higher perspectives such as that provided in the Cosmic Vision, aided by faith and courage, are needed when one is facing great uncertainty but also great potential.

What we need is what Max More calls the ‘Proactionary Principle’ in active management of risks.  The best way to deal with risk is to enhance our tolerance of failure with diversification and preparation.  The precautionary principle is irrational because it ignores dynamic feedback from shocks and unintended consequences.”

––Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision for Our Future Evolution, by Ted Chu, pg. 304-5

“When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there’s nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.”

––As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, pg. 132