# Regulations create paradigm lock-in Regulations effectively lock in a paradigm. This paradigm lock in can run a spectrum from more explicit to less explicit. The explicit end looks like mandates about specific technology and design choices:“your car must have a catalytic converter.” The less explicit end looks like certain measurements that need to be hit “you can only emit X amount of CO2.” Even measured quantities lock-in a certain paradigm about what is important to measure. From [[Thomas Kuhn]], paradigms `provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners, i.e., what is to be observed and scrutinized`. [[Paradigms outline a set of questions and the rules around answering them]]. A lot of these paradigm lock-ins happen because [[Many things cannot be measured well]] - often we can’t measure safety directly so you need to use proxy measurements that assume a certain paradigm of “what’s safe.” These proxy measurements is why cars are required to have a certain sized crumple zone and thus all have the same shape. It’s much easier to measure physical characteristics of a car than to do a thousand crash tests and see what percentage of them would kill the dummy. Regulations also lock-in priority paradigms. The supersonic flight ban locks in a paradigm that prioritizes volume levels near airports over transportation speed. Built into that are implicit assumptions about how loud sonic booms are and a utilitarian calculus about the number (and sort of) people who would be harmed by the noise pollution vs the people who would benefit from having supersonic flight. If you take a politics-neutral definition of conservatism as being averse to change, once in place regulations are inherently conservative. (Unless you are conservatively trying to prevent the change that is the regulation itself.) [[Regulations slow down technological advancement]] follows naturally through the lens of paradigm lock-in. ### Related * [[Once you create a regulation you don't even have to argue anymore]] * [[Changing paradigms is hard]] * [[Paradigms are lenses for looking at the world]] * [[storrshallWhereMyFlying2021]] * [[Labs as regulation-free environment]] * [[Stagnation]]