On 22/04/2008, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see how that works. If the truth is negative, telling the truth does harm. The net result to society is positive (we generally consider having a free, neutral encyclopaedia a good thing), but that doesn't mean we haven't harmed the subject.
That's one difficulty of applying "do no harm" simplistically. :) Asimov's robots managed to figure out a 0th law to supercede the 1st in important circumstances; why can't we?
Actually, in some of the stories, the "0th law" was just a special application of the first law, rather than a law of its own - can we, too, do without the instruction creep? If we interpret "do no harm" in a general sense, rather than in the sense of harm to the subject, then we should be ok. A non-neutral article (or lack, thereof) does more harm overall than a neutral but necessarily negative article, it's just harm to different people.