Comment by samdoesnothing

> It's that you can't mechanically shift the burden of proof to anything "new" and assign a lower risk to the status quo by default

Not quite - it is true that you cannot assign a lower risk to the status quo by default, but the burden of proof is on the new intervention to prove that it's safe, not on detractors to prove that it isn't.

In other words, if the world is functioning today, you need to prove that your intervention won't cause ruin, no matter how small the chance or how big the upside.