Really nice bit here from Mark Changizi. He clarifies the Precautionary Principle, and he adds a new principle to the concept as well. So the Precautionary Principle is now complete.

This quote sums nicely the two principles together:

Precautionary Principle: The burden is on you to convince me 12 ways to Sunday that your ingenious scheme to save us ISN’T GOING TO royally fuck things up.

Culpability Principle: The burden is on you to convince me 12 ways to Sunday that your ingenious scheme to save us DIDN’T royally fuck things up.

This quote re-names the principles and clearly assigns responsibility to each:

The Intervention Precautionary Principle

and the

The Intervention Culpability Principle

I like it. The terms are clear and parallel and responsibility is directly tied to the interventionist. To me the addition of the second component just completes the first. It’s common sense. And even though the original Precautionary Principle was incomplete, it still worked well for those who had a clue. I mean, I learned it 20 years ago in my technical writing classes at Northeastern University.

Reading Mark’s article above reminds me of The Buddha’s instructions to his son. Basically, The Buddha tells his little kid to think about his actions before, during, and after taking them. And he also tells his kid to test the results of his actions before, during, and after. In other words, think! Test! Will your actions cause harm if you do them? Stop! Think! Test! Are your actions causing harm now that you are doing them? Stop! Think! Test! Did your actions cause harm now that you’ve done them? Stop! Think! Test! This isn’t hard.

Update 9/2023: Mark’s video on Twitter.