Tokos wrote:If you can't define harm provably and instantly, it's fair play?
If you can't define harm in a concrete manner, it's worthless. Otherwise, you open up the opportunity for me to construct unacceptable reductio ad absurdum arguments.
That's not a good basis to make decisions on - erring on the side of caution in regard to existing traditions is best.
What makes existing traditions remotely close to the truth? I can understand, to an extent, erring on the side of caution, but why is tradition the cautious side? After all, burning fossil fuels without restraint is more traditional than conservation, yet the latter is far more cautious. Tradition is worthless. As others have said, it's code for "Yeah it's broke, but I'm too stubborn to change it so let's keep it that way forever."
That blasé attitude applied to other things gave us Thalidomide babies, etc.
No, it didn't. Experimenting with new medication gave us Thalidomide. It also gave us 80+ year lifespans and allowed us to all but eradicate fatal infectious diseases in the first world. The only reasons that there are still some bad infections are because people are too retarded to use their fucking prescriptions properly.
Face it, your precautionary principle, if invoked, would have us stagnate completely because of the fraction of a percent chance that new scientific discoveries may happen to possibly be potentially harmful.
Plus, you can't base politics entirely off reasons as humans are not rational, logical actors.
Nonsense. Because humans don't always act according to reason, laws can't be based on reason? How does that make any sense, at all?