bad directions, but because it leads in no direction at all." But the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development defines the precautionary principle as ""Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." So rather than conceived as imposing no change until proof of safety is produced, this definition of the precautionary principle is meant to legitimate protective measures, attempting to avoid the desire of a technology's advocates to delay legislation until irrefutable evidence of harm can be produced. Collingridge's solution was not exactly the precautionary principle but rather the application of "Intelligent Trial and Error," a process by which decision making power remains decentralized, changes are manageable, technologies and infrastructures are designed to be flexible, and the overall process is oriented towards learning quickly while keeping the potential costs as low as possible. Collingridge advocated ensuring that innovation occurs more incrementally so as to better match the pace of human learning and avoiding technologies whose design was antithetical to an Intelligent Trial and Error process. References Technology assessment Technological change