Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sorryforthethro 2579 days ago
Another criticism of this haste is that you set yourself up to be taken advantage of by profiteers or genuine malicious actors. I understand the urgency to save lives as soon as possible; but the risk is high and uncertain.
1 comments

You're right: the risks are both high and uncertain.

With that in mind, it's perhaps worth considering the potential benefits of having a uniform framework for evaluating risks that are attendant upon any given possible course of action. Risk evaluation neither starts nor stops with personal ick-factor or the worst scenarios imaginable. Risk evaluations also need to include the probability of success, expected costs, the estimated probability of any negative outcomes or side-effects, and so on. It's a non-trivial endeavor.

Again, you're right. The risks of any possible course of action, particularly poorly understood ones, are very real. They demand meticulous and systematic evaluation.