Re: Chemicals in Sweden guilty until proven innocent

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Dec 14 2000 - 16:03:41 MST


Damien Raphael Sullivan wrote:
>
> How not? A company uses a new chemical, dumps it, and if and when sufficient
> evidence is found against it then it may be banned. But lots of new chemicals
> are produced, probably outpacing regulatory inspection.

That's one end of the spectrum. At the other end, all new technology is
banned until it is known to be perfectly safe at the end of infinite
time. Historically, political bodies have almost always made the error of
trying to ban too much technology, rather than banning too little. We
are, therefore, always extremely suspicious of efforts to regulate
technology further.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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