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So, on the one hand we need to "prove safety" of $NEW_TECH before deployment and on the other hand the $NEW_TECH industry is not allowed to fund the investigati

So, on the one hand we need to "prove safety" of $NEW_TECH before deployment and on the other hand the $NEW_TECH industry is not allowed to fund the investigation (because suspicious!!)? How does anything new get invented in that world? Also, your linked article is extremely long but ends with this sentence that is just ... well I don't know... ridiculous: "No scientist can say with certainty how many wireless-technology users are likely to contract cancer, but that is precisely the point: We simply don’t know."

sooheon 7y ago
> How does anything new get invented in that world? I agree with you that the linked article reeks of FUD, but I'd urge you to consider that less caution and oversight wrt to new inventions is not free. Every time we pull a new ball out of the "urn" of possible inventions we're gambling that the pros will outweigh the cons. I can't agree with being too pro-industry and derisive of caution (see: https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf).
- itcrowd 7y ago
  I agree with that! Thanks for the linked dissertation. I will take some time to read it soon.
danielst 7y ago
I am not sure it is necessary to prove a negative, as you spoke of in a previous post. New drugs are subject to very rigorous testing before being released onto the market. While such drugs, when approved, are not proven definitively and with utter certainty to be 100% safe in all regards, the rigorous prior testing serves to show that they are very likely safe enough to be used. Drugs are not simply released onto the market without any testing, with the idea that we simply wait and see what happens when millions of people take the drugs. This would be regarded as highly unethical, and I do not see why the deployment of 5G technology without prior testing is any less unethical. I think it makes sense for a reasonable assumption of safety to be demonstrated before deploying new technology that could plausibly be unsafe, and for it to be demonstrated by independently-funded studies. Given that 67% of independently-funded studies show that the prior, related technologies have adverse health effects, I think it is completely reasonable to hypothesize that 5G could also possibly have negative health effects.

sooheon 7y ago

> How does anything new get invented in that world? I agree with you that the linked article reeks of FUD, but I'd urge you to consider that less caution and oversight wrt to new inventions is not free. Every time we pull a new ball out of the "urn" of possible inventions we're gambling that the pros will outweigh the cons. I can't agree with being too pro-industry and derisive of caution (see: https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf).

itcrowd 7y ago
I agree with that! Thanks for the linked dissertation. I will take some time to read it soon.

danielst 7y ago

I am not sure it is necessary to prove a negative, as you spoke of in a previous post. New drugs are subject to very rigorous testing before being released onto the market. While such drugs, when approved, are not proven definitively and with utter certainty to be 100% safe in all regards, the rigorous prior testing serves to show that they are very likely safe enough to be used. Drugs are not simply released onto the market without any testing, with the idea that we simply wait and see what happens when millions of people take the drugs. This would be regarded as highly unethical, and I do not see why the deployment of 5G technology without prior testing is any less unethical. I think it makes sense for a reasonable assumption of safety to be demonstrated before deploying new technology that could plausibly be unsafe, and for it to be demonstrated by independently-funded studies. Given that 67% of independently-funded studies show that the prior, related technologies have adverse health effects, I think it is completely reasonable to hypothesize that 5G could also possibly have negative health effects.