Joanna: My Dad was not able to answer this question. He got angry about his decades of working on nuclear waste disposal and its politic death.
Joanna
Karma: 197
What I’d really like to know before I die is that we made some progress within our own country in two critical areas. One is a safe disposal site for high level waste. And second is the acceptance of recycle as a way of producing a very safe waste form for such disposal. A very stable, non-threatening waste form that can be buried and safe for mankind for 100,000s of years, which I believe is possible.
What was his personal impression of why the Baruch Plan failed? For a few years, it seems almost that the U.S. would have voluntarily limited its nuclear monopoly, if only it had been able to get the other major powers to agree
The Soviets went all out after the Americans developed nuclear weapons and within a very few years had their own. Stalin was still alive. There was no hope for the Baruch plan or any other until his death. I’m afraid the initiative was on the basis on a US superiority in nuclear weapons, which was not a good basis.
Ultimately, the reason the IAEA came into being was the Russians could see advantages to themselves and one of them was certainty the East West split. The IAEA did not cause the tearing down to Berlin wall, but it provided a period of stability in Europe, coupled with Stalin’s departure, that made broad cooperation exemplified by the IAEA mutually beneficial on both sides.
Relatedly, what political actions do you remember as being most important for U.S.-USSR trustbuilding at the time (ex: Eisenhower giving his atoms for peace speech)
The person answered the question! Before he made it there had to be a lot of background work done. His speech was an important step towards international cooperation, but it was not the result of the speech, but rather the speech was a statement that we have together begun to visualize a path forward. Or another way of putting it, the speech didn’t cause the cooperation, the speech was evidence of the corporation that was building following Stalin’s death. I’m sure John Foster Dulles has a lot to do with it. I was not involved.
By the time I had my first trip to Russia, things had begun to move rather smoothly. I was able to visit there nuclear energy program offices and their laboratory and talk to people who were purely technical, not political. That was before the IAEA.
My second visit, again prior to the IAEA, was even broader it its scope, indicative of further progress, most of that coming out of the state department.
What was his impression as to why the IAEA took so long to found? It was 12 years after the first nuclear weapons test, and 8 after the Soviet’s acquired their own.
It required a joint effort by the major powers. There had to be on both sides a vision, a peaceful world in which atomic energy was used constructively and that vision came after Stalin. And I think more than anything else it required Eisenhower to really push it through because he worked constructively during WW2 with the Soviets to defeat Nazi Germany, and they knew him as a hero, as a peace maker because he engineered the Western Front. The nuclear cooperation required leadership that he provided. To me it was amazing how soon after this atoms for peace intuitive that there was an IAEA.
The person who asked the question doesn’t know the period of hostilities [between the US and Soviet Union] that existed after WW2. It had to wait for Stalin’s death as one criterion.
I think MAiD would be a hard sell.
He I had a conversation about it this week he’s not interested. But it was also his first time considering it.
Some people who are concerned about AI have studied the formation of IAEA and other steps that reduced the risk from nuclear weapons. My Dad would be happy to answer questions about his experience at that time.
My dad says: I was delighted to hear that the Secretary of Energy is no longer going to be using ALARA. The problem with ALARA is that it implies that any radiation is hazardous. The radiation in Tibet is much higher than the radiation at sea level, and there’s some evidence of hormethis.
My dad is 100, and worked on nuclear energy policy for the US government for 50+ years. He was one of the attendees at the conference[1] that led to the formation of the IAEA. He is also somewhat AGI pilled.
If anyone has questions they’d like me to ask him, let me know. He’d be happy to help in any way he can.
- ^
He attended the second of two conferences that lead to the formation of the IAEA.
- ^
You can change your top post right? Just click the edit button.
I agree that the feed and all post concept could be combined more elegantly. If I had had more time I would have thought about that more. Ruby, who designed the feed, had similar feedback.
The settings icon to the right of the feed is small and too easy to ignore, and also takes one too many clicks to access. Also, “All posts” tab is redundant with the “Posts” section of the Feed
I agree that the cog feels too subtle, and maybe not the right way to filter the feed. I tried version with tabs and again it drew attention away from the content. That said, I think the cog is too small and unbutton-like so it’s too easy to miss.
The feedback didn’t feel harsh to me. I’m wanting to share more about the intentions behind the first iteration of the design.
As context, I think it’s helpful to identify a primary user and scenario for a design because different design decisions trade-off against each other. In this case, I chose to have two primary users and scenarios because they seemed like mirrors of each other.
Primary users and scenarios:
A. Profile owners feel proud to share this. Feedback I heard on the previous page was that it was “kind of a mess”.
B. Someone who is not a lesswrong user, but interested in a person’s work, feels drawn to actually read it. More people who look at the profile click on an article and read it than before.
Secondary scenario:
People who use the page regulary can still still find the content they were looking for and their experience is not meaningfully harder day-to-day.
Oli told me there would be interactions like this.
It’s how it effects all pages, but good to know that it wasn’t clear.
The cog
Thank you, re: lie. I agree. Will note that.
Now that you tapped on feed once, anytime you go to someone’s profile it should automatically go there. Same if you filter by comments.
Sorry for the delay. I will ask him when I talk to him next.