Worry horizons
Today I met with Olwen Huxley, professional staff member of the House subcommitte on Science. We discussed how science and media produce legislation, and one of the interesting things I learnt was that the nanotech-field in the US seems to co-evolve with both environmental interests and overall techno-sceptical forces. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually does studies on the potential harm of nanotechnology, and there is even an act, or an initiative on nanotechnology - The Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2002 - that sets out a few conditions on how nanotechnology should be developed.
This is the first time a field gets regulated before it actually exists. Sure - there are examples of nanotechnology, bur are they clear and operational enough to serve as a foundation for legislative measures? Hardly. The risks are obvious: how do we ensure that the environmental concerns brought forward do not hamper investments in nanotechnology? How do we calibrate our legislative measures not to prohibit new avenues of research?
It all comes down to what I would like to call the rational worry horizon.
The worry horizon is the time perspective in which it makes sense to worry. If we worry, now, about the Milky Way colliding with other galaxies (yes it will!) we behave irrationally. We have no way of knowing what things will be like in so far a future, and preparing, with our current means and tools, to engage such an event merely seems foolish. What we do is note the fact, and make sure that it stays a part of the body of human knowledge. When we cross that bridge (or...collide with that galaxy) we had better have a solution, but it is likely that we will not need any of the tools or methods we can access today.
When it comes to nanotechnology it is much harder to decide on a reasonable worry horizon, much less on a rational one. Let us assume that nanoparticles can have some of the negative effects that asbestos can have - as has been feared. Should we worry about this?
There are arguments both ways. He who thinks we should indeed worry may point to the asbestos-case and say that it proves that we should worry, pre-emptively, as it were. But the counterargument is simple: why shouldn't we assume that if we achieve global scale nano-engineering we will be able to engineer away the averse effects of nanoparticles by simply building other particles that eliminate them?
When we try to solve potential problems that may arise far ahead in time with the tools available to us today we will undoubtely set back development and progress. Worry horizons that become to long actually should be a worry in and of themselves, since they divert energy, resources and brain power from technological development and thus risk sub-optimizing human growth.
How should we then set our worry horizons? To a single day? A minute? No. We should look at our tools and try to make an intelligent assumption about how long we will actually have these same tools. The expected life-time of our tools is the only reasonable way we have of appreciating the worry horizon.
We should never worry about problems which we think will be solved by other tools than those we can wield today.