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People are talking about banning something, when they can’t even outline a real harm that the ban is intended to avoid. If that’s the threshold, then we are ge

People are talking about banning something, when they can’t even outline a real harm that the ban is intended to avoid. If that’s the threshold, then we are genuinely talking about banning everything by default.

defrost 2y ago
> People are talking about banning something, That'd be inglor_cz above. > when they can’t even outline a real harm that the ban is intended to avoid. Unsurprising when { something } (for various values of something) has never been done before. The wise course of action is to not rush full bore into, say, handing out sticks of dynamite, dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste, allowing third parties in other countries to digitize citizens, etc. etc. until time has been taken to look into pootential harms.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  "wise" This is very much in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion, we already suffer from an abundance of suffocating safetyism, which may be a consequence of aging of our societies. "time has been taken to look into pootential harms." And I am also very skeptical towards the idea that a theorizing committee can predict future reliably. Which includes future harms and rewards of some technology that has barely started to develop. The experience from the past is that we cannot tell such things in advance.
  - defrost 2y ago
    The experience from the past is that we cannot unfuck a goat. New technologies don't need to be "banned" forever, what a daft idea. They also don't have to be jumped into head first w/out checking for snags and clearance either.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      "They also don't have to be jumped into head first w/out checking for snags and clearance either." So new technologies should be at least put on hold until someone checks them for snags and clearance to an extent satisfying for ... whom? You? An average person? A committee? The parliament? Some regulatory body? Again, what you think of as wisdom seems like obsessive safetyism to me. As someone else here argues, you shouldn't have the right to stop or delay random things just in case, unless you can demonstrate some concrete harm. The world shouldn't be a carefully padded kindergarten for adults. Heck, even current kindergartens for kids are too safetyist by far. Shout out to Lenore Skenazy and her free-range parenting.

defrost 2y ago

> People are talking about banning something, That'd be inglor_cz above. > when they can’t even outline a real harm that the ban is intended to avoid. Unsurprising when { something } (for various values of something) has never been done before. The wise course of action is to not rush full bore into, say, handing out sticks of dynamite, dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste, allowing third parties in other countries to digitize citizens, etc. etc. until time has been taken to look into pootential harms.

inglor_cz 2y ago
"wise" This is very much in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion, we already suffer from an abundance of suffocating safetyism, which may be a consequence of aging of our societies. "time has been taken to look into pootential harms." And I am also very skeptical towards the idea that a theorizing committee can predict future reliably. Which includes future harms and rewards of some technology that has barely started to develop. The experience from the past is that we cannot tell such things in advance.
- defrost 2y ago
  The experience from the past is that we cannot unfuck a goat. New technologies don't need to be "banned" forever, what a daft idea. They also don't have to be jumped into head first w/out checking for snags and clearance either.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    "They also don't have to be jumped into head first w/out checking for snags and clearance either." So new technologies should be at least put on hold until someone checks them for snags and clearance to an extent satisfying for ... whom? You? An average person? A committee? The parliament? Some regulatory body? Again, what you think of as wisdom seems like obsessive safetyism to me. As someone else here argues, you shouldn't have the right to stop or delay random things just in case, unless you can demonstrate some concrete harm. The world shouldn't be a carefully padded kindergarten for adults. Heck, even current kindergartens for kids are too safetyist by far. Shout out to Lenore Skenazy and her free-range parenting.