[rosser]

There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent.

You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something.

Is it really that hard to extrapolate from the specific case to the general? If we get this one wrong, we're dead. Even the possibility makes it incumbent upon us to tread exceptionally carefully.

EDIT: This, "Hey, now. Let's have a rational, skeptical discussion about this" is a disingenuous tactic, in the first place. If we played that game, we'd still be debating whether or not rising CO₂ levels are dangerous, as they crossed the 500ppm threshold. We know, for practical purposes, that this is coming, unless we change course. We know the consequences of its happening. But we're still somehow dithering, apparently in order to convince trenchant outliers who have identity-level investments in being trenchant outliers, that they're wrong. That ship will never sail.

"Oops. Yeah, I guess that was a bad idea after all," is not an reasonable response to an existential threat.

[perl4ever]

"You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something."

Have you checked out the self-driving car threads recently?

[rosser]

Nope. That's not what they're testing. They're testing whether or not the thing even works — which necessarily includes "doesn't kill people", sure. But that's not the specific thing being measured; it's a consequence of the system not being ready yet.

Your argument is more like, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent to see how many people it kills", versus, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent for safety and efficacy" (phase I and II, respectively). We aren't specifically screening for deadliness; we're trying to determine the therapeutic index of the agent, and get a baseline on its side effects (which, yes, may include death).

It's a subtle distinction, but it's a critical one.

All that aside, it's fundamentally disanalogous, anyway, because the populations in chemo clinical trials are already sick, and have given informed consent. Dude walking down the street getting smoked by a Tesla that thought he was a wall, not so much.

[michaelmrose]

Regular cars come with a substantial threat of death or maiming.

[lopmotr]

> There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent.

Just because we don't know if it causes birth defects doesn't mean every untested chemical certainly does cause birth defects. In fact it's obvious that since we don't know, we don't know! You might save people by telling them that lie but it's still a lie and won't help anyone understand nature.

You're really confusing "We don't know if ignoring the environment will wipe us out" with "Let's ignore the environment and see what happens.". I'm not proposing we conduct that experiment, just pointing out that we don't know what the outcome will be.