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In 1979, there was a partial meltdown at a nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. I was a young newspaper editor at the time, and I was caught up in coverage of the resulting debate about whether nuclear power could ever be safe. I have long forgotten the details of that episode, except for one troubling thought that occurred to me in the middle of it: The experts we relied on to tell us whether a given design was safe, or indeed whether nuclear power generally was safe, were people with advanced degrees in nuclear engineering and experience running nuclear plants. That is, we were relying on people who made their living from nuclear power to tell us if nuclear power was safe. If they started saying out loud that anything about the nuclear enterprise was iffy, they risked putting themselves out of business.
I mention this not because I think the engineers lied to the public. I don't. Nor do I think nuclear power is so dangerous it should be rejected as an energy source. I mention it because it shows how hard it can be to make sense of information from experts.
Trust in institutions and expertise has taken a lot of knocks in the last decade. Can society recover it? Are we all called to a higher effort to vet the information we are given, or is there another, better remedy?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:19AM (12 children)
I think it might have more to do with a general increase in a distrust of authority figures. It's the "backside" of the whole Internet that with free or available information now all of a sudden "everyone is an expert" (at least they think so in their own mind). Discussions tend to end with "I don't believe so and my opinions are just as valid as yours", after all you can almost always find someone somewhere that believes what you believe in and wrote a paper on it. It's 'idea-shopping', you don't have to change cause as your mommy told you when you where 5 years old you are special and unique. It's a lot more common in some aspects and topics then others. If nothing else it brings new life and meaning to the saying that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. One notice this more and more for each passing year in academia how students now think they are just as good as their teachers -- it doesn't matter if they just started and I have been here for years and there are professors that have been here for decades. They think their opinions matter, cause that is how they have been raised. While it is probably far more likely that society in general has just failed them and turn them into victims of their own delusions.
If one is to talk about nuclear safety I would assume that it's fairly safe (I'm not a nuclear scientist after all), but the amount of accidents per year per power provided is remarkably small. People that fanatically hate nuclear power and want to go green tend to have unrealistic ideas about power conservation. One nuclear power plant vs the land taken up by solar/wind-farms to reach the same output; there is just no comparison.
This is also why I normally really hate Greenpeace and similar organizations, or the entire green movement or whatever you like to call it. They more or less hate nuclear power, they made sure we shunned away from research cause it was so dangerous and then they complain about how bad it is or how unsafe the power plants are becoming now that we have not invested in them for decades or put massive amounts of research into them. It's just utterly dishonest of them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:57PM (11 children)
The only reason nuclear power is at all economically viable is because the costs are socialized: the costs to build, the costs to operate, and the costs to cleanup. It is the golden child of moral hazards, socializing losses and privatizing profits.
Secondly, on a time scale of all of human history for the leftovers, 70 years worth of experience seems a ridiculously small amount of time to make assertions about safety. It's like we've solved our sewer bill issue, by storing all our crap in the attic. Eventually that stops working and makes our lives unlivable.
Thirdly, by sucking up gazillions in taxpayer subsidies, the industry retards growth energy solutions that have long term viability and absolutely nothing like the risks involved.
So aside from being a cool technology without economically viable free market application, I have a difficult time comprehending why geeks are so enamored by nukes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:02PM (3 children)
There is no need for it to be free market, a good, green base generation for a countries grid seems like something they should take into own hands.
And, if you really feel 70 years is to short to judge on safety issues, I'm assuming you are very much against solar power and wind power and those things yes?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:49PM (2 children)
When was the last time a windmill or solar panel contaminated regions large enough to require the permanent evacuation of entire cities?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:05PM (1 child)
When was the last year that windmills or solar panels produced uninterrupted power? An occasional nuclear meltdown (once every few decades) seems sort of acceptable. The land can go back to nature, and people can settle somewhere else. If you believe the global warming projections, a lot more land will be lost from CO2-induced sea level rise.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:41PM
Not solar panels, but here's a molten salt plant that can operate for 10 hours without sunlight: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/ [scientificamerican.com]
Or imagine if we had 70 years of refinement behind this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar_Thermosolar_Plant [wikipedia.org]
All that on 480 acres of land. Fukushima sits on 840 acres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant. [wikipedia.org] A time plot of energy per acre, including the time Fukushima will be uninhabitable, would certainly favor molten salt.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:26PM (5 children)
> The only reason nuclear power is at all economically viable is because the costs are socialized: the costs to build, the costs to operate, and the costs to cleanup. It is the golden child of moral hazards, socializing losses and privatizing profits.
The question is, is it worse on those points than fossil fuels and coal, whose fatality count is at least a few orders of magnitude above nuclear.
I'm for nuclear energy, but not because I think that it's cool or cheaper, but because it's an improvement over what we have now.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:54PM (3 children)
One wonders if the money spent lining GE's pocket for faulty designs such as Fukushima had been spent on solar/wind/geothermal research, how much farther along those other technologies would be. It seems there is a bit of elitism here where interesting technologies are discounted merely because hippies embraced them. All of these other technologies are just as cool tech-wise and have great potential without the risks associated with nuclear (like what _do_ you do with a 1000 year poison?), but hippy-punching is fun I guess.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:07PM (2 children)
Was Fukishima known to be faulty at the time it was built? (Yes, given the placement of the backup power supply it *should* have been, but was it?)
I'm rather strongly in favor of continued development of nuclear power. Especially of reactors that can run on the wast produced by the current plants. But I question that they deserve more subsidy than do solar or wind plants, and tide generators of various kinds should receive continued low level development support.
The ones I *don't* think should be subsidized are coal, gas, and oil. And the subsidies for hydro should be directed to ensuring that the stuff already built continues to work...dredging out reservoirs, ecological remediation, etc. Ideally maintenance Including dredging) should be paid out of returns on investment. If it can't be, perhaps it's time for the managing company to shut it down. But ecological remediation is something that companies have proven that they won't do on a voluntary basis, so the money to do it should be taxed out of them. And if bankruptcy happens, the remediation should be in line to be paid before the CEO.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
The reactor design itself has been known dangerous since the mid 70s.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge-scientist/story?id=13141287 [go.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:35PM
But by the mid-1970's the reactor was already in operation. It may well not have been known to be dangerous at the time it was built.
That said, there were clear design mistakes such that they *should* have known that this particular reactor was unsafe including, as I mentioned, the siting of the backup power supply. And this is the kind of mistake that causes *me* to be hesitant about ALL nuclear reactors. They had good reason to know that the particular implementation of the design that they were building was unsafe, but they either didn't notice (i.e., those who had the authority to stop construction didn't notice) or they went ahead and built it anyway.
One can thing of lots of large projects with fatal flaws that aren't canceled because the people who had the authority to cancel them either didn't understand the problems, or stood to gain too much to allow ethics to override economic benefit.
I rather trust the technology, if not those who push it, but I don't trust the human administration of the projects.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:38PM
Coal is obsolete. The number of jobs in coal, already small, continues to diminish.
Trump's mentioning coal jobs shows what a complete fool he is.
Anyone who mentions fossil fuels in this context is a fool or a shill for old-style energy.
Mentioning burning crap to make electricity in the 21st Century is a complete red herring.
...meanwhile, 42 percent of registered USAian voters didn't vote in 2016.
If those folks had turned off their TeeVees (or at least tuned away from the corporate channels), unsubscribed from their Reactionary rag newspapers, and gotten USEFUL information from alternate media about the candidates stands on actual issues (ALL of the candidates), we might now be talking about President Jill Stein and her Green New Deal, which would have gotten fracking outlawed (ending artificially cheap natural gas) and moved us on to (new-jobs-intensive) renewable energy.
...and nuclear remains the most expensive way ever devised to boil water.
As hemocyanin already noted, if it wasn't for the subsidies and free passes given by government (and I'll add weapons building here), nuclear would never have been a thing.
Toshiba bought Westinghouse, which builds nukes, and they damned near went broke because of that.
In-progress nukes in USA have been canceled.
...meanwhile, renewables keep becoming a bigger and bigger part of the energy picture.
Some places around the globe have essentially skipped over the fossil fuel/nuke era.
California produces so much electricity that we have to effectively give away the excess to Arizona.
Why the nukes at Diablo Canyon (sited on the confluence of several earthquake faults) are still in operation is a huge mystery to me.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday August 29 2017, @10:33PM
Here are three concepts for you "The Swedish Nuclear Tax", "Studsviksfonden" (Studsvik fund) and "Kärnavfallsfonden" (Nuclear Waste Fund).
Those are three taxes in sweden, and together maxes up about 30% of the cost of nuclear in that country. Luckily the bigger one (the nuclear tax) is in the progress of being abolished (it leeched off about 20-60million usd per year for a few decades).
To summarize what they do
* The Nuclear tax: Pure fiscal tax, in the process of being abolished, bigger than the other two combined.
* Studsviksfonden: To pay for cleanup from the initial research into nuclear done in sweden [1öre, recently increased from 0.2öre]
* Kärnavfallsfonden: To design (look up KBS-3), build and operate a geological nuclear depository. [4öre, recently increased from 2öre (initially at 1öre)].
Note how we tax it. Cleanup and depository is done via a tax, initial research done before some of the reactors was even built are being reimburshed via a tax, and on top of that we also have/had a fiscal tax.
Funnily enough - once the nuclear tax was decided to disappear about half (6 out of 10, and one of the 4 closed down was considered viable by its minority owner) of the reactors here was considered financially viable despite needing a 50-100million usd safety upgrade each.
Oh btw, here in sweden electricity is expensive, average over the year is in the ballpark of about 25öre/kWh (~3c usd) (when being sold to the grid [consumer pays about 1sek (100öre [13c]) per kWh after taxes and transmission]). Vattenfall currently has a stated aim to reduce the costs for Forsmark NPP to 19öre/kWh (2.4c) [from current 30öre/kWh (3.8c)] (about 6öre [0.76c] of that decrease is the abolishment of the nuclear tax).
A close look at the number will reveal that the nuclear tax alone pushed nuclear from being profitable to bleeding money, and the cleanup costs will in the future make up about 25% of the cost of operating.
(Btw: Kärnavfallsfonden (waste fund) has so far used 43bn sek, has 60bn sek, and are expecting to need some 38bn sek more (141bn sek [~17.5bn usd] in total)).
Just pointing out that they can make economic sense even when they carry their own costs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:20AM (2 children)
You either trust experts and data or you take your chances with "common sense" and your own ignorance. Most of the time the experts and data are a better choice.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:40PM (1 child)
Except then you get shite like this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/stop-bashing-gmo-foods-more-than-100-nobel-laureates-say.html [nytimes.com]
Sounds great: sounds official!
Until you dig below the surface:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/07/04/1249257 [soylentnews.org]
You get a big announcement about "Experts say...."
But then you dig and you find that they ain't really experts, or they have a bias, or they have an agenda. Or they've been bought.
I think it goes to show you JUST because these nobel winners allowed their name to be attached to the whole "GMO's are safe" thing. Most of them probably know NOTHING about GMO's, but "Hey, i'm a nobel winner, and you just stroked my junk enough to make me say 'Hey GMO's are safe!'"
Some experts are garbage: in the way that in old wars, Lord so-and-so bought his rank of Major even though he'd never seen battle before. Because he was a Lord, he was supposed to know more about war than a rank and file peasant.
You can't just trust them because they are supposed to be experts. You need to be cynical and question.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:48PM
Allowed, hell! I've had no end of stupid, lying scumbags wanting to claim that I said what they want to hear, approved some terrible plan or design, because I have credentials they feel are impressive. They'll happily push a pen into my hand and move my arm to make me write a signature, if I let them. When I won't play along, I get threats, starting with vague ones about how I'm not being a "team player", but soon getting more and more specific in case I'm such a moron I can't understand that they'll fire me unless I change my mind. A few times I've had to deal with them just going ahead and claiming I approved something that I did not approve.
It's worse to go along to get along. Then my reputation very quickly becomes mud, and they fire me anyway because my approval is no longer worth spit and I'm useless for impressing others. Just one disastrous project is all it takes, and you're toast. Plenty of competitors out there ready to cut your throat the moment they see a weakness, see a project that can be branded a failure even if it actually is a success. All it has to do is fail to succeed fast enough, and, bam, it's a failure and you're out. Perception matters.
Bias is a very persistent, insidious problem. Very hard for anyone to be unbiased when they have a personal stake in the outcome. I see that one all the time with medical doctors. I know Big Pharma's pill pushers bombard them with messages, explicit and implicit, and suasions to prescribe more patented, brand name drugs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:22AM (3 children)
pay them the same whether you like the answer or not, and they will have no bias for personal profit.
whether a nuclear scientist works in industry or in academia, they should get the same salary.
whether they are employed by the company owning the nuclear plant or not should again have no influence on their assessment.
therefore if the company goes bankrupt they should still be paid afterwards (by the state, obviously).
science works because scientists trust each other.
1) you should have some laws in place, stating that the trust should not be violated.
2) you should be able to find experts in the same field who have absolutely no common financial interests.
3) you should pay scientists decent amounts of money, so that they have a lot to lose, but not a lot to gain, if they do yield to corruption.
with this, society should be reasonably safe when trusting scientists.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:45AM
That'll be 30 years or so worth of a nuclear engineer salary - that's the incentive to provide the answer in the positive, this is how long one would expect as active professional life if you go ahead and build the nuclear plant and hire that person.
In the conditions the answer is negative, you won’t dare to go ahead an build a nuclear plant, but you'd still pay that wage.
Mmmm... isn't this actually an incentive to provide a negative answer? I mean, good money for nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:06PM
2) Consider the statement you've made there. How are you going to find experts in a field who have no financial interest in the field? Sure you can find people who've trained for a field and then left it (much as I have with math research to give an example), but then you have the problem that they're no longer experts because they're no longer in the field. It will be impossible.
3) Where's this money coming from? Sure, I can see huge funding transfers, from say the US military or Social Security to something sciency would be superficially more useful. But the key problem with the approach is that you are paying people for being scientists rather than for what they do. We already have too much trouble with governments paying scientists to do useless work.
Consider the nuclear industry example. A business trying to design and build new types of plants has to struggle even more to find viable talent because scientists can just suck low risk public funds instead. And any scientist willing to give it a go with the business has to worry about the effects on their career since they are now subject to "trust" regulation and liabilities, and create legally recognized conflicts of interest, both which can sabotage their future career. It makes an already dysfunctional environment worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:17PM
You have zero idea about how "science" actually works.
You really don't need a law for this. What you are trying to get at is "professional reputation". Believe me, good quality scientists care very much about their professional reputation. And in the business, reputation is very hard to get back once you have lost it. What is a bit harder to suss out is which scientists have the best professional reputations. Even for those of us who work in a particular field, it can take a bit of time and experience to figure out who is who.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by caffeine on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:46AM (1 child)
And, we rely on journalists who rely of sensationalism to sell newspapers to tell us the truth.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:56AM
Never fear. The Great Orange One will tell us the Truth.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:52AM (3 children)
Whoever wrote that article has no understanding of science, nor of statistics.
Regarding nuclear energy, there are 450 nuclear plants running right now world wide. The number of individual reactors tops 1000. There were reactors in use for more than 50 years and only a handful accidents. This technology is safe, but one cannot say that nothing can go wrong under any circumstances.
A problem with the "experts" is that we cannot independently verify that someone is indeed an expert in some field and that that person has no monetary interest in supporting a particular theme.
There are other confounding factors as well: politics and special interests. These actors try to influence the public's opinion to fit their agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:06PM (1 child)
Yes, it is safe, but when something goes wrong, it can go real bad. It's like saying, yes we can provide you unlimited wealth, food, housing, peace over the world and even teleportation or whatnot, but once every millennium, the whole planet may blow up. Cool, no?
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:40PM
Depends, can we teleport to other planets?
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:21PM
The first awareness of Chernobyl by The West was IN SWEDEN (hundreds of miles away and hours afterward).
They evacuated a big part of Fukushima Prefecture because of the contaminations due to the explosions.
USA's corporate friendly "regulators" didn't do their actual fucking jobs and didn't clear out that part of eastern Pennsylvania when Three Mile Island spewed radioactivity (because of the plant's badly designed systems and poorly trained personnel).
...which resulted in increased cancer rates, premature deaths, miscarriages, and birth defects.
Cancer and Infant Mortality at Three Mile Island [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
The problem with nukes is that when they go bad it affects large areas.
Yes, Cancer Rates DID Increase Around Three Mile Island After The Incident [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [stanford.edu]
The thing about nukes is that when they go bad they affect large areas.
...but what would you expect from an industry that was started in order to produce bomb material?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:04PM
I don't know, usually the association of "spin" and "nuclear" lead me into thinking about fermions and energy states.
(a little while and those pseudo-journos will drown the meaning of another term - nuclear spin - that's gonna take the same way as "hacker" and "begs the question".
A good think we have the chromodynamics with flavoured quarks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:07PM (2 children)
If you don't like trusting experts, because sometimes they can be wrong, try trusting non-experts for a while, and see which has the better outcomes.
Even better, do a randomised controlled trial, where you don't know if the person you are talking to is an expert or not and get someone independent to compare outcomes.
Experts don't always give 100% accurate, unbiased advice. This is true. The gold standard is proper evidence-based policy/decision making: but that can be hard (or impossible/unethical) to do. Ideally, you get answers from a panel of experts who are independent of each other (the 'Delphi method [wikipedia.org]') to try an eliminate bias and group-think. Most experts tend to reflect the current (scientific) consensus in their field at the time, and if that consensus is wrong, you have a problem (which is why there is a saying in academia along the lines of 'new theories are only accepted when the proposers of the current theories have died').
Don't trust men in white coats because they look old and wise, look to see if what they is is based on good evidence. Note that evaluating the quality of evidence is hard, and often requires deep knowledge of statistics, where is it possible to fool yourself as well as fool others.
On balance, over the long term, following decisions based on good evidence will have better outcomes, and an expert is someone who consistently does this, usually with a career in the field you are investigating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
But we (laypeople) don't usually hear directly from experts. We hear from the people who journalists say are experts. Among scientists, those are the ones who produce quotes that generate clicks and sell newspapers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:20PM
Mod parent up!!!
The people you hear on the news are rarely actual experts in the problem under discussion. And that may be putting too positive a spin on things, because when you do hear from a genuine expert, he's usually someone who is bought and paid for by an interested party. And it's a bit worse than that, because the news has a strong bias in favor of stories that are exciting.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:12PM (4 children)
Which society is that you speak of, precious?
Some of them (USofA for example) haven't yet finish their descent into the bigoted "my faith is as good as your science" darkness, much less to recover (proof: Trump is still... ummm... leading)
Other societies (e.g. Europe) haven't even started on this path, so what's to recover from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)
Ignorance and bigotry are not the sole province of America. SEE: Everywhere.
It's also quite ahistorical to posit that Europe, the continent that gave us both world wars and every flavor of (Christian) religious persecution, has no experience with those qualities. Historically speaking, it's more like the place is taking a break rather than turning over a new leaf.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:24PM
Historically speaking, 10 years - since GFC, the moment US started to turn acceleratingly bigoted** - is a blink, indeed.
---
** Until then, the Koch brothers needed to pay serious money to promote "the controversy" as a presence in the societal consciousness.
10 years later, controversy is the everyday life reality and many would be happy to remain at the controversy level instead of escalating into hysteria.
It's not only that it doesn't need sustaining any more, for many [wikipedia.org] it's serious [wikipedia.org] profit generating [wikipedia.org] business [theguardian.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:23PM (1 child)
look up opposition to vaccinations in romania, germany, italy (and possibly a couple of other countries) --- in particular the current epidemic that has killed few dozen children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:40PM
You didn't mention south Asia, where the CIA queered the "we're medicos and we're here to help" thing (using that as a pretense to find people to murder).
The world was on the way to eliminating disease (polio, in particular) and these assholes had to fuck that up.
I hope that the lot of those involved get an ugly, painful, protracted, not-easily-communicated disease and die in agony.
Evil bastards.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by crafoo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:45PM (1 child)
Confidence has taken a hit? Really? I don't think so. Maybe among poorly-educated poly-sci majors.
The rest of us, with even a tiny bit of critical reasoning skills are perfectly capable of checking the scoreboard.
How does following quack pseudoscience, feel-good new-age bullshit, and making life decisions according to the untested theories of a career academic communist agitator work out? Why, let's just take a look. I'm sure you can find a few around town that are pushing 40+ now. Look for the bitter tat'ed up cashier at Burger King. Or check out Steve Jobs EoL decisions. LOL!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:35PM
FTFY - it's good to have a perspective, makes one realize that "the ability to check the scoreboard" is inconsequential - today, their ignorance is better than your knowledge and capability (at least on short term).
(no, it's not an elitist position. I'd be ecstatic to be an insignificant one of a majority able to think critically)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:02PM (1 child)
and you'll end up paying court fees.
And don't be too surprised when a carpenter ends up fixing your carburetor using his hammer, a couple of nails and some plywood.
And just between you and me, next time you ask your priest for advice, be sure there isn't anything good on Sunday.
compiling...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:21PM
Ah yes: knowing the right question to ask, of whom, is half the battle. It is not for nothing there is a saying that for someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail - similarly, for every politician the false syllogism:
is dangerous.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:27PM (2 children)
It's easy enough for any news outlet to both sensationalize and put a narrative-friendly spin on any newsworthy event. Any any lawyer who doesn't trot out as many expert witnesses as his client can afford is guilty of malpractice.
There's a whole industry of tabloid-grade brains for hire, who will, for a fee, happily substantiate any claim short of a green-cheese moon, and there are probably even some of those.
In this kind of situation, no, there cannot be any restoration of trust. The panoply of actual and phony experts, with there perfectly understandable motivation to whore their reputations for a quick buck, give the masses an overload of good and bad information.
Who will arbitrate what constitutes valid expertise? Let's ask the experts!
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:31PM (1 child)
Should have been "their perfectly understandable..."
Need more coffee.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:32PM
A LOT more coffee.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lcall on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:48PM
It seems that deciding whom to trust, while being willing over time to look at new information and always integrating/synthesizing, seems to be a very important part of developing personal maturity. Casting a wide net, corroboration among trusted sources, personal evaluation of competence and agreement with already-trusted (well-verified) info, and gauging motivation are key parts of that. Trust, unlike forgiveness, must be earned, based on behavior over time; it is not based on appearances, bluster, nor earnest promises. It's also good to be humble enough to know conclusions have to be tentative as there is always more to learn.
(This makes much "news" seem a bit fluffy after a while, and makes it clear that some sources can be ignored, starting with "this just doesn't sound right...", until the whole "fake news" meme becomes less important for an individual, and more of a societal problem, IMO.
--
My project: record, manage and share any knowledge: fast, free, flexible, and open: http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by leftover on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:49PM (3 children)
One factor never mentioned in media-reported discussions is the massive difference between "nuclear power could be safe" and "do we build NP plants that are safe". It is a small but significant side spur of a vastly larger issue with construction and manufacturing in general. Engineering team says "Build it just like this". MBAs say "Use cheaper materials, take shortcuts, and give me the difference in bonuses." Contractors low-ball to win projects. Labor unions undermine compliance with standards. In the end, the result is not at all what the engineers specified. Anyone who follows stories of failures all the way to the actual findings sees this pattern everywhere. And after each disaster, when the smoke clears nothing changes. No Cxx executives lose their jobs, no MBAs lose even their bonuses. And nobody says "Maybe building nuclear power plants is not a good venue for the race to the bottom."
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:02PM
I'll be back to mod you up when I my points recycle. This is undoubtedly an enormous problem -- to make nuclear safe requires so much money as to make it economically unfeasible so the solution is shortcuts and hoping for good luck. When the thing goes kaput (or we just need to store the waste safely), the public picks up the expense and the cancer. This is why I think of NP as the gold standard of economic moral hazard. The people get all the expenses, monetary and otherwise, and the MBAs get first class vacations far far away.
(Score: 2, Informative) by curril on Tuesday August 29 2017, @10:56PM
Overall a great and insightful comment but I beg to differ on the labor union bit. Labor unions are typically strong on standards compliance from an employee safety perspective. If labor unions hindered safety at nuclear power plant in any way, it might be in reducing job flexibility, making it harder for workers to handle unanticipated changes in the environment.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:15PM
Yeah, this is what took me from anti- to pro- to anti- nuclear again. We already can't trust corporations with our food, water, housing, and medical systems. There would have to be a lot of back tracking from our current state of regulatory capture before I'll be pro-nuclear again. Maybe if coal mine managers responsible for killing 38 miners got more than a few months in Club Fed where they have to endure the inhumanity of not being able to choose the TV channel they watch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:25PM
That said I've seen the average person and many are even more likely to be wrong about stuff than most Nobel prize winners (except the peace prize which is often a political bullshit award- e.g. Obama got a peace prize when he hadn't even done anything to deserve it).
Some "normal" people are so stupid they're not much smarter than dogs with more advanced speech hardware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
ha!
Nobel prizes are popularity contests among the liberal elite and their opportunity to virtue signal their politics.
You should never trust "laureates" beyond their background and expertise in their particular field.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:11AM
While not trusting people beyond their field is a good idea, your paranoia birders on a mental disorder.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:05PM
Studies show that babies are more likely to die from SIDS when sleeping on their stomachs than their backs. So now, all of the pediatric expert advice says to make them sleep on their backs on a firm mattress. But other studies show that they don't sleep as deeply when on their backs, and may get a flattened skull.
I think the benefits of deep sleep outweigh the slim risk of SIDS. It can be perfectly rational to disagree with experts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:50AM
Yes, you can't trust "the experts".
That's why we are opposing climate change policies. And cutting taxes on billionaires. And subsidizing fossil fuels industries. And say goodbye to your healthcare.
Experts are the problem, see? Look over there.