I wrote this substack post due to my growing frustration with European innovation landscape compared to the US. We seem to follow technological development with at-least about a decade gap. Particularly when it comes to medical research, but others also. That is, if activist groups and political lobbying even allows it to be developed (see chatgpt being banned in Italy).
There is also regulatory burden when it comes to research. In the past year only, it has become exceedingly difficult to do any animal experiments in the Netherlands. This makes sense given the aim of completely 'phasing out' animal research by 2025 . I really hope the new minister of agriculture (Femke Wiersma), from the farmers party, can put a stop to this. I do not understand how supposedly intelligent people believe that animal research can be 'phased out'. Indeed, it is very easy to challenge them on this and receive no satisfying reply. This to me makes it seem more like 'feels over reals' sort of thing. I think a part of the regulatory burden is in part to ensure that the science aligns with ideology, which is perhaps why some places in the US are possibly worse than others.
I am not sure how much this explains. Of course with animal research its easy to say that it explains all of it. But things like GDPR and the research ethics stuff (for human research) seem more influenced by safetyism and ass-covering to me. Here, caution and risk avoidance have become virtues, which makes sense given the median age. I always remember back to the AstraZeneca debacle. Some very very small increase in chance of clots for a certain age group and if you were in this age group you could not get the vaccine full-stop. No matter if the statistics showed that things were actually on the net, positive, or whether you were tired of living under abject tyranny and saw this as a way out. You, as an adult could not make a decision regarding your own well being. Faceless bureaucracy did this for you. Likewise, currently when running any human experiment, it doesn't matter if you want to very much participate in an experiment.
If you have 3 kidneys and the MRI can see this, people can identify you and so this is personally identifiable information and therefore your 'informed consent' means nothing. I see 'consent' as a legacy of classical liberalism. We are paying lip service to it. But actually the consent of the paper pusher, is much more important here than that of the individual.
I really think the current trajectory is ruinous. As I finished off in my post, there are very real consequences to being left behind on the technology game.
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Notes -
I am not regulation fetishist unlike EU leadership but...
For GDPR for me "to hell with marketers and data leakers" is a convincing justification.
I was looking through some fines issued under GDPR and applaud them in general.
Every time I bring my car in for service I have to sign a form allowing them to read out my car's computers and send the data to the EU. EU laws say they can't use my data without my affirmative consent, but EU laws also say they're obligated to send all my data to the EU when they work on my car. So every time they give me a form and every time I sign it. I could withhold consent, but then it would be illegal for them to work on my car. That's EU regulation for you. But luckily my privacy is safe.
Big companies will do what they want anyway and the fines are just taxes by another name.
yes, and this case specifically thing I hate is taxed - that is why I like it
Another thing I like about GDPR is that fines scale with size of company, so even Google and FB cannot just ignore it
"4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year or €20 million, whichever greater" maximum fine is not toothless.
FB is so far winner with €1.2 billion fine (probably still being appealed, not sure about actual value).
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Isn't the problem here mass marketing? The same regulations basically seem to apply across the board, irrespective of the amount of data, nature of the data , or the usage of the data (non-commercial, research). The nature of the data in our case is very clear. Data obtained during human experiment, under informed consent, with a very real physical signature of said consent document.
In such case GDPR should not be a problem, right? Beyond cost of adding and having GDPR-specific incantations in the consent document.
GDPR is pretty vague, so there's a massive chilling effect in which whenever there's a remote possibility that might run afoul, <don't do thing> is the only winning move. Basically anything that might be considered AI (by a clueless bureaucrat) is currently an example of .
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GDPR doesn't really say "to hell with marketers" it says "to hell with marketers that can't make a browser with high adoption rates".
I admit it is not ideal, but at least Google provides something that is often useful.
And as far as "to hell with marketers" this was the most likely one, deeper EU-wide partial outlawing of ad industry was not plausible.
Google might be useful, but they've already shown they're more than happy to use their power to manipulate their users.
That's actually an argument in favor of Google for the EU, but it's clearly against the public's interest.
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