Razib has occasionally banged the drum on one’s ownership of their genetic code and freedom to access it. Now he’s calling for folks to spread the word and man the ramparts against the F.D.A’s attempt to ensure that we can only do so through “experts”. This isn’t simple fear of persuasion but fear of people learning about themselves outside of approved channels. I found it odd when Keith Humphreys asked Are There Libertarians Who Worry About Corporate Power? in the context of people who seek out providers for difficult to obtain pain medication. But even there the assumption was that some folks are essentially poisoning themselves, with the provider as an accessory. Here again we see the excuse of protecting people “from themselves” and “snake oil-salesmen”, not from any chemical but simple information.
March 9, 2011
Entitled to an Opinion 
March 9, 2011 at 11:18 pm
totally disgusting. But par for the course for the FDA and AMA. Anything health related that is not regulated by them is perceived as threatening the legitimacy of their jobs.
March 10, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Proposition: it is never ethical to, in the name of promoting A’s own good, forcibly restrict A from accessing information.
Any exceptions? I can’t think of any. I buy this proposition hard.
March 10, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Sounds like a theoretical possibility which is never actually the case.
March 11, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Exceptions are probably very situation-specific, and thus difficult to specify without knowing the context.
The only general exceptions I know of are strictly theoretical – basilisks and other forms of “data poison”. We’re not even sure if they really exist or not.
March 12, 2011 at 7:42 am
I like the neutral, generalized way you frame this proposition, except for the world “ethical” (I’d replace is with something like “more existential risk minimizing”).
I think it can be existential risk minimizing to, although the real world is messier than hypotheticals.
This calls for diversified experimentation, although I’m guessing there’s a bunch already on this topic.
The easiest ones that comes to mind are from the Prof. Hanson school of “it’s okay to increase paternalism on low status people” -restricting access to information on how to get unhealthy foods for obese people, for example.
Logistically unrealistic in 2011, but maybe not with future technology, and may be a bad idea anyways.
I don’t know -but I’m more interested in experimentation than in some sort of push towards universal consensus against information paternalism.
March 10, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Cf. Paul Graham.
March 11, 2011 at 10:57 am
This is no different from physicians (individually or organizationally) avoiding discussion of medical errors so that potential patients won’t develop an “irrational” fear of them.
When you realize that medicine as it is currently practiced is basically a sham… well, it undermines your belief in the utility of authorities generally. Which is part of why so much effort is expended upon the task of preventing people from realizing it.
March 12, 2011 at 11:38 am
Don’t planes avoid showing plane crashes in their on-flight movies? Seems like reasonable paternalism to me.
There’s also the information paternalism regarding the production of weapons of mass destruction -don’t know the regulatory structure or how effective the information paternal aspect of it is (as opposed to component scarcity and the IQ barrier involved).
March 16, 2011 at 1:25 pm
The plane thing isn’t paternalism… and the WMDs are a terrible example, because history already shows that such knowledge can’t be kept out of people’s hands.
March 13, 2019 at 10:38 pm
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