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by chunkstuntman
2579 days ago
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The US government routinely monitors purchase and search histories to prevent the active ingredients of something destructive like that from falling into nefarious hands, and you're posing a wholly disingenuous argument |
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To make a sensible decision in a risky context both probability and consequence are needed. There is always a (practically 0%) risk of any action leading to catastrophic global consequences.
In addition, the original Precautionary Principle paper linked is an idea that sounds nice but is actually a bit dangerous. If we applied the PP to the formation of the internet it should have been suppressed right from the get go - we never had and still have no positive evidence that social media won't cause extreme harm to the public (eg, it could have caused mass depression and disengagement with reality and maybe moral corruption :p). The internet is risky - did huge damage to existing industries and triggered the rapid rise of China through knowledge sharing and enabling remote management of industry (why else have we never seen anything like it before?). Impact of research into splitting the atom - did a lot of damage, much more risk.
Proving that something is safe without just doing it is hugely expensive. Technological advancement would not be a fraction of what we have now - the cost of trying things needs to be cheap to encourage progress. We couldn't prove most of the things we do are safe without being able to point to them and say 'seems to be working?'.