I’m not sure what would be the best tack to take; knowing everything I do about the subsequent course of history, I think delaying the bomb program as much as possible would have been best, but I don’t know if that was the best decision one would’ve made at the time.
This is another issue with wagers on speculative propositions, its unclear what actually should be done, besides secrecy which they’d already apply to any results involving secondary neutrons upon obtaining said results. edit: though, French obtained and published these results anyway. Which leaves the issue of carbon’s neutron absorption cross-section, which Fermi measured as late as 1940 , after secondary neutrons (and thus well after the quote, at the point when self sustaining chain reaction was much less speculative).
Sure, the expected |utility| is huge, but expected utility is only huge when you can make predictions of what’s best with good accuracy.
Suppose I did assign 10%. Then you cannot defend my inertia and ostrich attitude at 10% because the actual probability is lower!
And how’d you know that, I wonder? You have gamma ray emitting nuclear isomer that you can maybe trigger with x-rays. You have another nuclear isomer that can be triggered like this. It’s not like fission’s unknown-at-the-time secondary neutrons which are maybe released promptly (or maybe stay in the decay products which then undergo beta decay).
By the way, right here is your problem. “actual probability”, which doesn’t even meaningfully exist in such cases. You guys flip between subjectivist probability that lets you assign arbitrary numbers to the end of the world, and some intuitive notion of actual probability which is under which acting upon probabilities is the sanest thing.
if a doctor told me I had a 10% chance of dying this year of a rare disease
But the doctor did not tell that. Secondary neutrons do not necessarily imply the self sustaining chain reaction, which doesn’t necessarily imply the bomb, which doesn’t necessarily imply any effect on the course of the war! (Specifically the war that these European scientists cared about). This makes me wonder what exactly they were even talking about—maybe Szilard was worried they’d irradiate themselves fatally or blow themselves up doing experiments, and Fermi was like “Nuts!”.
edit: also some background on quote is necessary—exact date down to the day, as the conclusions were moving really quick at that point.
This is another issue with wagers on speculative propositions, its unclear what actually should be done, besides secrecy which they’d already apply to any results involving secondary neutrons upon obtaining said results. edit: though, French obtained and published these results anyway. Which leaves the issue of carbon’s neutron absorption cross-section, which Fermi measured as late as 1940 , after secondary neutrons (and thus well after the quote, at the point when self sustaining chain reaction was much less speculative).
Sure, the expected |utility| is huge, but expected utility is only huge when you can make predictions of what’s best with good accuracy.
And how’d you know that, I wonder? You have gamma ray emitting nuclear isomer that you can maybe trigger with x-rays. You have another nuclear isomer that can be triggered like this. It’s not like fission’s unknown-at-the-time secondary neutrons which are maybe released promptly (or maybe stay in the decay products which then undergo beta decay).
By the way, right here is your problem. “actual probability”, which doesn’t even meaningfully exist in such cases. You guys flip between subjectivist probability that lets you assign arbitrary numbers to the end of the world, and some intuitive notion of actual probability which is under which acting upon probabilities is the sanest thing.
But the doctor did not tell that. Secondary neutrons do not necessarily imply the self sustaining chain reaction, which doesn’t necessarily imply the bomb, which doesn’t necessarily imply any effect on the course of the war! (Specifically the war that these European scientists cared about). This makes me wonder what exactly they were even talking about—maybe Szilard was worried they’d irradiate themselves fatally or blow themselves up doing experiments, and Fermi was like “Nuts!”.
edit: also some background on quote is necessary—exact date down to the day, as the conclusions were moving really quick at that point.
edit2: a timeline: http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/ANFINFO8.pdf