[api]

If we’d done that with the Internet we’d still have dialup while we debate the safety of higher speeds and the danger of viruses spreading faster or whatever.

I’m not arguing that safety is nonsense. I’m arguing that humanity doesn’t know how to both move and be safe, at least at scale. We can do it as individuals when we exercise caution in an endeavor, but in groups we either move or we do not move. When we admit the cautionary forces it becomes a vetocracy of fear and everything stops.

This is why it usually takes an unhinged maniac to make progress at anything, like the psycho behind the company launching the rocket today.

We are not good at this.

Edit: forgot to add that things are even more complicated because sometimes there are hidden risks to not acting. Take nuclear power, which we basically paused when we encountered the risks. By doing that we blew our chance to head off climate change.

[elzbardico]

Be careful with reasoning by analogy and mistaking what is basically an ideology, namely the progress ideology, for some kind of natural law.

[0xE1337DAD]

There must be some middle ground between reckless advancement without safeguards and hamstringing the technology through an abundance of caution.