Volume 1, Issue 2
2nd Quarter, 2006
Max More, Ph.D.
page 4 of 7
The precautionary principle also discourages learning through experimentation. It assumes that we can figure everything out without doing anything. It is very much a rationalist view of discovery as opposed to an empiricist view, encouraging one to sit in an armchair and think carefully about something and make the best decision without actually taking any action. Whereas I think most of us would agree that you need to actually try something out and learn by doing.
Bill Joy: Precautionary Relinquishment
Bill Joy is quite well known for his version of the precautionary principle - called precautionary relinquishment - which is applied to genetic engineering, nanotechnologies, and robotics (GNR). Joy believes that GNR threatens to make humans an endangered species. He concludes that we therefore must limit our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge. This is a frightening view.
Joy backs precautionary restriction on the freedom to innovate, saying “The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit the development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge. With their widespread commercial pursuit, enforcing relinquishment will require a verification regime similar to that for biological weapons, but on an unprecedented scale. This, inevitably, will raise tensions between or individual privacy and desire for proprietary information, and the need for verification to protect us all.”
This is a terrifying claim about the kinds of enforcement that would be needed. It leaves a lot to the imagination, but sounds as though it is really quite drastic.
It is possible to say that Bill Joy is just one person, but there are many others on this wavelength. One reason for this may be that as we develop as a society and economy to a fairly comfortable level, we tend to get more focused on dangers and threats and less so on survival.
Tragically, we often impose that preference on countries that are not as well off as we are. For example, we may stop them from developing in ways that are direly needed because it might put a little bit of smoke into the atmosphere. Yet they might actually be more interested in feeding their children and surviving past the age of twenty than in protecting the environment.
In our society, we tend to be very, very cautious, which is, in some ways, a sensible approach. We all want to wear our seat belts and have air bags in our cars. That's smart. We did not do that fifty years ago. Obviously, not all caution is bad, but we do tend to lean a bit too much in that direction.
Structuring the Decision Process
It would be useful to ask the following questions about a procedure that someone is using to make a decision:
By these measures, the precautionary principle fails. It certainly fails the test of objectivity because it encourages fear-based reasoning. It does not attempt to make it reasonably comprehensive by taking all the possible effects into account, including both good and bad. This wrongly shifts the burden of proof onto innovators. It makes it very hard to get any kind of innovation through. As far as it is concerned, a new idea is guilty until proven innocent.