Proactionary Principle

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The Proactionary Principle (2004) argues that only probable and serious negative outcomes should be enough to block the development of potentially-useful technologies.

Coined by transhumanist advocates Max More and Natasha Vita-More, to counter the Precautionary Principle:

"People’s freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies a range of responsibilities for those considering whether and how to develop, deploy, or restrict new technologies. Assess risks and opportunities using an objective, open, and comprehensive, yet simple decision process based on science rather than collective emotional reactions. Account for the costs of restrictions and lost opportunities as fully as direct effects. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have the highest payoff relative to their costs. Give a high priority to people’s freedom to learn, innovate, and advance." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactionary_Principle)


Principles

"The five Pro-Actions are:


1. Anticipation

All tools of anticipation are valid. The more techniques we use the better because different techniques fit different technologies. Scenarios, forecasts and outright science fiction can give partial pictures. Objective scientific measurement of models, simulations, and controlled experiments should carry greater weight, but these too are only partial. The process should try to imagine as many horrors as glories, and if possible to anticipate ubiquity; what happens if everyone has this for free? Anticipation should not a judgment. Rather the purpose of anticipation is to prepare a base for the next four steps. It is a way to rehearse future actions.


2. Continuous assessment

We have increasing means to quantifiably test everything we use all the time. By means of embedded technology we can turn daily use of technologies into large scale experiments. No matter how much a new technology is tested at first, it should be constantly retest in real time. We also have more precise means of niche-testing, so we can focus on susceptible neighborhoods, subcultures, gene pools, use patterns, etc. Testing should also be continuous, 24/7 rather than the traditional batch mode. Further, new technology allows citizen-driven concerns to surface into verifiable science by means of self-organized assessments. Testing is active and not passive. Constant vigilance is baked into the system.


3. Prioritize risks, including natural ones

Risks are real, but endless. Not all risks are equal. They must be weighted and prioritized. Known and proven threats to human and environmental health are given precedence over hypothetical risks.

Furthermore the risks of inaction and the risks of natural systems must be treated symmetrically. In Moore’s words: “Treat technological risks on the same basis as natural risks; avoid underweighting natural risks and overweighting human-technological risks.”


4. Rapid restitution of harm

When things go wrong – and they always will – harm should be compensated quickly in proportion to actual damages. Penalizing for hypothetical harm or even potential harm demeans justice and weakens the system, reducing honesty and penalizing those who act in good faith. Mechanisms for actively fixing harms of current technologies indirectly aid future technologies, because it permits errors to be corrected quicker. The expectation that any given technology will create harms of some sort (not unlike bugs) that must be remedied should be part of technology creation.


5. Redirection rather than prohibition

Prohibition does not work with technology. Absolute prohibition produces absolute outlaws. In a review of past attempts to ban technology, I discovered that most technologies could only be temporarily displaced. Either they moved to somewhere else on the planet, or they moved into a different niche. The contemporary ban on nuclear weapons has not eliminated them from the planet at all. Bans of genetically modified foods have only displaced these crops to other continents. Bans on hand guns may succeed for citizens but not soldiers or cops. From technology’s point of view, bans only change their address, not their identity. In fact what we want to do with technologies that produce more harm than good is not to ban them but to find them new jobs. We want to move DDT from an insecticide aerial-sprayed on crops to a household malaria remedy. Society becomes a parent for our technological children, constantly hunting for the right mix of beneficial technological friends in which cultivates the best side of each new invention. Often times the first job we assign to a technological is not at all ideal, and we may take many tries, many jobs, before we find a great role for a given technology." http://www.maxmore.com/proactionary.htm)


Discussion

Commentary by Kevin Kelly at http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/11/the_pro-actiona.php