Hacker News Reader

Ever wonder if things like this lead to companies intentionally avoiding environmental research? We need to find some way to align our interests, this seems like a dead end path. We are unintentionally incentivizing the disruption of environmental research.

View on HN

It's not about the research itself, it's about what happened after the discovery of danger. If their research discovers harm and they discontinue the product promptly, that should be a mitigating factor. If their research discovers harm and they continue, that should be a severely compounding punishment. That promotes research because it mitigates company risk.

Management is also incentivized to sell research that aligns with their own agenda to the board, rather than research that says maybe what they've been hired to burn money on for the last couple years wasn't the right direction at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com