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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

We are obviously talking about the same thing, and nothing I said about the PP is novel.

I very specifically did not say that PP analyses were dead on arrival, or that problems with PP thinking were dispositive. I said rather that it is not enough to simply invoke the PP in policy debates; that rhetorical habit has bad outcomes. Again: the idea is not that "precaution" is bad. It's that you can't mechanically shift the burden of proof to anything "new" and assign a lower risk to the status quo by default --- you have to make that argument on the merits.

There's a good Cass Sunstein thing about the PP if you're interested in understanding critiques of it:

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

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> It's that you can't mechanically shift the burden of proof to anything "new" and assign a lower risk to the status quo by default

Not quite - it is true that you cannot assign a lower risk to the status quo by default, but the burden of proof is on the new intervention to prove that it's safe, not on detractors to prove that it isn't.

In other words, if the world is functioning today, you need to prove that your intervention won't cause ruin, no matter how small the chance or how big the upside.

Well, once again, your logic halts the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021.

No because it wasn't mandatory in most places, so there was no systemic risk. People were free to take it, in the same way people are free to drink alcohol, and the precautionary principle doesn't apply to individual risk.

I still think we are talking about two different things here.

I'm not saying you opposed the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. That would have been a batshit position to take (though: many did). I'm saying that the Precautionary Principle calls for exactly that position, and, moreover, the Extended Precautionary Principle proposed upthread --- the one where we look especially askance at risks where a party involved stands to profit --- opposes it even moreso.

I can't say enough that this is not random message-board dorm-room logic, and that lots has been written about this flaw in the simplistic application of the Precautionary Principle. I already gave a link upthread; I feel like I've done my due diligence at this point.

We're talking about the same thing. I wonder if you've just never read anything deeper about the Precautionary Principle than activists weaponizing it to make points about glyphosate (or vaccines or nuclear power).

> I'm saying that the Precautionary Principle calls for exactly that position

Not necessarily. The PP is interpreted so many different ways, it was actually invoked by people like Nassim Talib to not only justify the vaccine rollout but to call for strict lockdowns among other measures.

There are many arguments made against the precautionary principle, just like there were many arguments made in favour of leaded gasoline. We all know who ended up on the right side of history on that one, and I expect it will be the same for roundup.

In the context of this article, we are discussing the PP as relevant to regulatory agencies. The EU employs the PP while the USA takes something called the Scientific Approach - in other words, the EU requires evidence that an intervention carries no risk, whereas the US requires proof that an intervention has significant risk in order to ban it. Idk about you, but I feel a lot better eating food grown in Europe.

Your position isn't unique, there are many very intelligent people who nonetheless overestimate their capacity for understanding the world and predicting the future.

You are now making the point I made at the top of this thread. I'm glad we agree.

You used that trigger word, it probably is what's getting you downvoted even though you are correct.

As always, it comes down to the risk of X vs the risk of not doing X. And history has clearly shown we made the right choice.

Which trigger word are you referring to?

Covid.

How do you make that calculation when there is a small possibility of infinite risk? That is why the PP exists, otherwise you either ignore the possibility of total disaster events, or you cannot choose to act.

And nature doesn't have infinite risk events?!

We are reasonably confident that no likely gamma ray bursters are pointed at us and within lethal range. We know dinosaur killers are out there--a failure to map every such object in the solar system is a small probability of an infinite risk. Why are there no ICBMs fitted for point defense against a city killer asteroid? You have the rocket, you have the boom. You need a seeker that can guide it to impact (there are other radars that could illuminate, it just needs to home on the reflection) and a standoff fuse that will fire it at the last possible millisecond.

What is your point? That we should put more effort into protecting against asteroids? I'm sure you could make a convincing case for that.

The problem is we should be focusing on risk, not whether any given risk comes from man or nature.

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