ABSTRACT
There are two bedrock approaches to managing risk—trial and error, and trial without error. Trial and error is a device for courting small dangers in order to avoid or lessen the damage from big ones. Trial without error is proposed as a criterion of choice by David W. Pearce, who wishes to prevent technologies from being introduced without first having solved the problems they create. Viewed as rhetoric, the no-safe-dose argument is superb. If it is accepted, it creates a convincing rationale for forbidding any trials of new chemical substances on the grounds that errors could be catastrophic. Incrementalism has now been recast as a reactionary doctrine in which the tiniest conceivable increment of error or harm can halt all change. Trial and error samples the world of as yet unknown risks. Risk aversion is sometimes justified on grounds that the smallest probability of irreversible disaster overwhelms all other considerations.
