It also allows us to weight the consequences in order to, in fact, suffer them by choice, with the notion that suffering of certain consequences has other payoffs.
It also lets us take enormous inferential leaps to good consequences, without needing to muddle through intermediate steps empirically. Without such great leaps of prediction, what are the odds that we would discover, say, controlled nuclear fission? Or the precise sequence of burns needed to take a rocket to the moon?
The fission reaction was stopped long before things got dodgy. The problem was the decay heat of fission products still left in the fuel.
Containment is still in place. The worst radiation releases have been some very short-lived isotopes in steam, at low concentrations.
Radiation exposure to the workers is well within safe limits, as measured by their dosimeters, and they’re the ones closest to the reactors.
Japan has been hit by a huge earthquake, with a death toll of more than a thousand people. To fixate on a (nuclear, and therefore scary) power plant accident that hasn’t endangered the public , when there are so many worse things to be worrying about, is exactly the kind of irrational double standard that Less Wrong readers should endeavor to recognize and avoid.
If you want to improve safety, focus on the things that are actually dangerous.
Roger Peters, Practical Intelligence
It also allows us to anticipate ill consequences which don’t happen, and suffer them in advance. Sometimes repeatedly.
(And by “allows us to”, I also mean “it often does so automatically”).
It also allows us to weight the consequences in order to, in fact, suffer them by choice, with the notion that suffering of certain consequences has other payoffs.
It also lets us take enormous inferential leaps to good consequences, without needing to muddle through intermediate steps empirically. Without such great leaps of prediction, what are the odds that we would discover, say, controlled nuclear fission? Or the precise sequence of burns needed to take a rocket to the moon?
“controlled nuclear fission”? try telling that to the Japanese at the moment, as they struggle to prevent a meltdown!
You realize, I hope, that the following are true?
The fission reaction was stopped long before things got dodgy. The problem was the decay heat of fission products still left in the fuel.
Containment is still in place. The worst radiation releases have been some very short-lived isotopes in steam, at low concentrations.
Radiation exposure to the workers is well within safe limits, as measured by their dosimeters, and they’re the ones closest to the reactors.
Japan has been hit by a huge earthquake, with a death toll of more than a thousand people. To fixate on a (nuclear, and therefore scary) power plant accident that hasn’t endangered the public , when there are so many worse things to be worrying about, is exactly the kind of irrational double standard that Less Wrong readers should endeavor to recognize and avoid.
If you want to improve safety, focus on the things that are actually dangerous.
And succeed, if the worst that’s released is irradiated steam. Failing non-catastrophically is also a part of control.