Volume 1, Issue 2
2nd Quarter, 2006
Max More, Ph.D.
page 3 of 7
I think we need to institute a procedure that encourages people to use them more often and more effectively. If that were to happen, we would see the following benefits:
Still, we do not commonly see regulators sit down and say, “We have to make decisions that will affect the next few decades. What are the best procedures that the social sciences have identified for making forecasts?” This question is rarely asked. If we are lucky, they might do a scenario analysis, but I do not think that even this is done very often at the government level. Yet these are good principles.
One source of procedures is Scott Armstrong's "Principles of Forecasting". In it, Armstrong systematically examines all forecasting methods, including how reliable they are and the types of problems for which they are most appropriate.
Another intriguing source is Gordon Ruggs’ “Verify Approach”, which was recently written about in Wired Magazine. Ruggs has devised a method for accurately verifying experts when you are not an expert in their area. He shows how to come in from the outside and apply certain methods to testing whether the experts are missing something. He famously proposed the solutions of the Voynich manuscript problem, where he showed how it could have been forged at a certain time when nobody else had really figured that out.
There are many examples of sources like Armstrong’s and Ruggs’ that are available and yet go unused.
The Precautionary Principle
That leads me to the precautionary principle, which is very well known in Europe, but less so in the United States. The precautionary principle is the regulator's favorite principle. They like to use it because it embodies a bias on the side of caution or precaution. It is actually embodied in the European Union Constitution[1], which I find a little bit frightening. The precautionary principle is also implicit in many U.S. regulations.
There are many ways of stating the precautionary principle. The following, from Nature magazine, is often quoted:
"When an activity raises threats of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures that prevent the possibility of harm shall be taken, even if the causal link between the activity and the possible harm has not been proven or the causal link is weak and the harm is unlikely to occur."
In practice, that means if someone has managed to raise a scare about something with no basis in reality at all, we must stop it until it is proven safe. This tends to be rather discouraging for the activity and has many, very conservative effects.
One effect is that it bolsters the position of existing technology in an institution because there is a bias against innovation. If someone proposes a better way of doing things, he or she must prove that it is safe and better in every way before it is even considered.
Footnote
1. Following the two devastating World Wars of the first half of the 20th century, a number of European leaders in the late 1940s became convinced that the only way to establish a lasting peace was to unite the two chief belligerent nations - France and Germany - both economically and politically. In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed an eventual union of all Europe, the first step of which would be the integration of the coal and steel industries of Western Europe. The following year the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was set up when six members, Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, signed the Treaty of Paris. Referenda held in France and the Netherlands in May-June 2005 rejected the proposed constitution. This development suspended the ratification effort and left the longer-term political integration of the EU in limbo. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ee.html April 17, 2006 10:28AM EST (back to top)