So far, as much as anyone knows, that part isn't true. Which isn't to say it will never be true if Google hits a roadblock and needs a quick source of cash, but for the moment it seems like all Google does with your data is feed it into its ad system (and to the government when they're forced to, but that's not generally Google's prerogative and they're among the companies most fiercely fighting government data coercion since it hurts their reputation and therefore their business.)
I'm not sure how distanced the ad system is from the advertisers using it (technically speaking,) or how much if anything they could potentially glean from people just having the ads shown (but not clicked.) Its definitely far far less than feeding them detailed information about each user though.
So far, he's appointing people that seem to want to deregulate everything. So we'll end up with blisteringly fast internet for the 1% who can afford it, and everyone else will be as good as cut off as providers zero-rate their preferred services and blackball basically everything else with slow lanes and whatever other schemes they come up with.
I'm just hoping some of his appointments change their tune once they've seen what things are like from the other side. Trump himself surprised everyone so maybe a couple of his cronies will do the same.
Tell him to stop using it for a month and see what life is like when his work is pissed and his wife isn't happy.
Its not "necessary" in the same way that electricity isn't "necessary," but that's only relevant if you want to live like its 1800 again.
Cars and medicine and flushing toilets aren't "necessary" either but nobody really wants to live like it was the dark ages again either.
The only thing that's strictly "necessary" is for a sufficient number of people to survive to breeding age and pass their genes on to the next generation -- and that's only if you think its necessary for the species as a whole to continue. Everything beyond that is comfort.
I suppose it depends what you consider "the boonies," but if we take those numbers at face value we have:
~6% says that US urban population is ~81%. So we've got a 30% gap there even if we assume every rural person everywhere is stuck with slow internet due to purely geographic issues.
They may not have specified the percentage of urban vs rural people they checked up on, but the numbers suggest it doesn't really matter because even in the best case scenario, things still stink with regards to internet speeds across the population.
the concept exists without the US being involved at all.
Sure, but Facebook or whoever is still completely within their rights to ignore that concept. My point is that the government is the only organisation that's strictly obliged to give a crap about free speech, "concept" or otherwise.
It just isn't illegal when Facebook does it.
Yes that's my point. And if its not illegal then they're quite happy to not bother when it suits their needs (and hell even when things are illegal, companies aren't exactly shy about doing them anyway if they figure the profits will outweigh the risk of getting caught.)
Stop trying to pretend that the PTBs at Facebook or Twitter are not censoring your content.
I'm absolutely 100% confident that they aren't censoring my content. Though that's mostly because I don't post anything to either of those services.
Sort of. When they're doing it all cloak and dagger, they have two fairly strong restrictions: 1) A slap on the wrist if anyone finds out. 2) Inadmissible in court.
When they're doing it in public, they only have the one restriction: That a judge sign off on it. And given that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of jurisdictional restrictions, they only really have to find one judge somewhere in the country who's willing to sign off on whatever with minimal convincing.
Countries like Russia, China, etc.. hell even friendly countries like Canada or the UK.. should be super annoyed with this though as the FBI is effectively claiming jurisdiction over their most-definitely-not-American computer systems (and the citizens operating them.)
It may not be "released" in the sense of sitting in a public archive somewhere, but it usually only takes a quick email to the researcher to get more information. Most university researchers have their email listed somewhere on the faculty pages (and often listed on the paper itself these days, for just this reason.) Corporate scientists might be a little harder to connect to since companies only like to talk about their C-level employees but its not like its impossible there either. If nothing else, pick up the phone and ask for them by name.
They may not release full data (IP issues and all) unless you're another known scientist in the field, but you'll almost certainly be able to get clarifications on anything that you found non-obvious in their papers.. this is their life's work and they're happy to talk about it night and day if you let them! Most are, anyway. I mean they're still people and you'll run into the odd grumpy asshat but generally speaking they love it when someone's interested in their work.
So the proper order to follow up on something that interests you is: Press release -> actual paper -> open a discussion with the researchers.
Most people stop after the first step. Of course press releases are entirely lacking in data since they're intended for laymen.
Many that remain stop after the second step. But that third step still exists for the few people who care to actually delve into the details before they start running their mouths.
Free speech is a right granted to you (or in US constitutional negative-speak, a right the government isn't allowed to revoke.)
Of particular interest is that private entities, no matter how large, are NOT bound by any free speech restrictions. Its their site and if they want to turn it into a liberal echo chamber that's their prerogative. Those companies are only "representing the public commons" in your head. The only thing they represent in reality is their bottom line and _maybe_ the opinions of their board of directors if they can manage to agree on anything beyond "more money!"
There's definitely an argument to be made that when a company is large enough to effect social change that they should have social responsibility applied to them, but that's an unlikely thing to happen in the US where we distrust the officials we elected ourselves yet are happy to believe corporations can do no wrong because capitalism, fuck yeah!.. Never mind that capitalism is based entirely on greed and self-interest and definitely not based on the interests of the public good. And that's when its working as it should which is a rarity in itself.
Americans are pretty good at their own special brand of doublethink.
I'm pretty sure this phenomenon has been around as long as people have known how to communicate with each other.
The difference now is that there's just so much of it that you can completely saturate your information desires without ever having to leave your chair never mind breaking out of your bubble. Previously you would have eventually hit a wall (or a fist) when you ran out of people that agreed with you, long before you had overloaded yourself.
Not super surprising: In 2008, this was a new concept and everyone was shocked and amazed at how well it worked.
In 2016, we have a better handle on the hows and whys and we've realized that its a lot more insidious and easy to abuse than we would have thought possible back in 2008.
This caveat makes all the difference. Most peoples' definition of "asshole" is "someone I don't like." If you're a hardcore racist, you probably think the guy constantly telling you to open your mind is an asshole while to that guy (and ok, most everyone else..) you're the asshole.
Everyone is free to subscribe to what he wishes to
That's kind of the problem. With traditional media, even TV, you "subscribed" to whatever the editor or broadcaster decided you should hear about. You could "unsubscribe" in broad strokes by avoiding entire newspapers that tended to lean a little the opposite direction from you, but you could never fully avoid hearing about things you didn't want to hear about.
With the algorithmic news feeds, that's simply not as true. Where an editor may question an article and ask the journalist to strengthen their sources or whatnot before publishing, the algos just punch it right through. That has two implications:
First, there's enough news available that they can selectively remove things they don't think you want to see and still leave you with plenty of content.
Second, much of that news is minimally- or even un-vetted and therefore of very questionable quality. But of course there's no easy way for a reader to determine whether or not any particular article is truthful. Especially when it comes to things like Donald Trump's campaign where he legitimately said or did do enough crazy things that nobody would think twice about seeing a report of another crazy thing.
And its not just news media. You periodically hear about scientific journals and university exams and job applications and whatnot where some researcher intentionally submitted garbage (and not even always carefully-crafted garbage..) to see if they'll make it through the process (ie: past the algorithms.)
Of course most of those would hopefully be caught by humans after the algos flagged them as interesting (and the ones we hear about are the ones where the humans failed as well) but that brings us back to the original problem: Facebook and Google News and whatnot don't have that second human double-check. As soon as an article satisfies the algo its published with no further scrutiny.
I don't see on what basis you can assume this
Lots and lots of anecdotal evidence as well as no small amount of actual research. While he technically _could_ subscribe to things that don't agree with his viewpoint, history (and science) has shown time and time again that the vast majority of people tend to prefer avoiding the cognitive dissonance and stick to things that they already believe as much as they can.
I don't think anyone hates tribalism. They might dislike the word itself as it makes us think of uncivilized people fighting each other on the plains of Africa 3000 years ago or whatever, but very few people hate "tribalism" as the concept of a group of people with shared identity working toward a common goal.
As you say, we still do this constantly. Its more an issue that we're using the same word for two essentially different meanings, and that can confuse people. Especially since the latter usage (the concept) was originally based on the earlier usage.
The only difference is: scores aren't determined by the state.
That's a pretty massive difference though. It gives us the illusion of being able to change our lot in life. Of course downwards is a lot easier to go than upwards, but I assume that part is probably the same under China's new system as well.
Also, being poor in itself doesn't tend to lead to armed men disappearing you in the night in the same way that criticizing hyper-authoritarian governments can.
This is the most relevant point. Honestly, most of the data these systems collect on you could be collected by a sufficiently skilled investigator. To that end, the amount of data that they collect isn't _really_ an issue in itself. I mean it is, but its definitely not the biggest issue.
The biggest issue is how secure that data is. If you have to go out an hire an investigator to dig up information on someone, that involves a significant amount of trust on your part, and usually lots of time and/or money as well. That tends to put a damper on spurious uses of investigative powers.
If you just have to punch a name into a computer and its suddenly all in front of you though, it becomes second nature to just dig into anyone you feel like -- whether or not you have legal justification for doing so. Time and money are gone from the equation.
That leaves trust. We're told constantly that these systems have strong access restrictions and abuse prevention -- but we're stuck just believing that since there's no independent audits done never mind public audits.
And even if we trust that abusers are being caught, we have to then believe that they're being punished in any sort of significant manner. Certainly these abuses occasionally makes the news and those guys will be punished just to save face, but how many instances go unnoticed by the media and therefore minimally or even unpunished? Again, there's no independent auditing done so we just have to take them at their word.
And then even if you get past all of that, there's the whole hacker issue to deal with. The news is constantly littered with reports of hackers breaking into our largest and (supposedly) most secure databases, both corporate and government. Why should we believe this new database is any safer?
Sure the government will have a few wide-net filters like searching for bomb threats on Twitter or whatever but for the most part the data will just sit there until someone who has access to it takes a personal interest in you. A hacker gaining access to that kind of data though will be trolling for things like blackmail subjects that even the most untrustworthy government would have no reason to do on a large scale.
Your fallacy is assuming America has an "American style" democratic system. Sure the people get to choose who sits in the president's chair, but they have little to no say in who their (two!) candidates are. Throw in the fact that elections these days are won and lost more by media frenzies than policy platforms and they're definitely not sitting in a "best man for the job" situation either -- more of a "hopefully not absolute the worst person for the job" scenario.
Absolutely true. The problem is that this isn't a black and white issue, or even a simple high/low spectrum. Its a curve. Too much "protection" and people start fearing the police and military just as much as too little protection has them fearing criminals.
Most people don't want to be slaves. They just want to be left the hell alone -- by all sides.
The only way you can reproduce "this will destroy the planet," is by destroying a planet. Which isn't really a possible thing to do.
Where's the planet that climate-alarmists used to prove their theory, if a planet-wide experiment is necessary to disprove it?
That's exactly my point -- there is no way to "prove" anything here, for either side. All we can do is gather evidence and form theories and models based on that evidence. And pretty much all evidence so far points to climate change being both a thing and a problem.
Yes, which is why they're supposed to be stupidly overdesigned and are given shutdown dates and whatnot.
Trouble is, we haven't been shutting them down. Strong political resentment makes it hard to build replacement plants (and those things produce a lot of power that has to be replaced in some manner.)
And if you get past that you get the beancounters looking at the multi-billion dollar price tags of a new reactor and they start wondering if the existing ones can't hold on just a few more years.
And when you get past that, you get the NIMBYs doing their best to make sure that the only place you can build the new plant is on the moon.. and someone would still likely complain about it.
Unfortunately the world has turned away from the idea of long-term investments in things like infrastructure. Anything that looks bad in the next quarterly report is highly questioned and anything the government gets involved in has to be able to show positive results by the next election season.
A project that won't show a profit for 10 or 20 years (or worse doesn't show a profit at all and is only being done because we don't want bloody nuclear explosions all over the place) is simply not given any political or economic weight these days.
Throw in the uphill battle I mention above and its hardly surprising that we keep trying to retrofit and upgrade existing ancient plants. Its nearly impossible to do anything else. But unfortunately there will be the odd occasion when "good enough" just isn't good enough anymore. And unfortunately when that occasion happens to hit a nuclear power plant, things get very ugly very fast.
Nuclear is still our cleanest, safest form of large-scale power. But only if its properly maintained, spent fuel properly reprocessed and properly disposed of when it can no longer be reprocessed, replacement schedules are followed and so forth. Unfortunately we've got an absolutely horrific track record on basically all of those points. Frankly its kind of amazing that we haven't had more disasters.
Well since even TFS suggested that compensation was the lion's share of that amount, a quick Googling brings me to this article: which suggests, as of last year, that there was "still" 250,000 people displaced (the phrasing of which suggests that there was previously even more.)
So that's quite a bit larger than the 10k people you were suggesting. $200B/250k people works out to $800k per person. Which is still quite a lot, but not nearly as insane as it sounds if you'd been assuming only 10,000 people.
And of course that's not counting people who hadn't been displaced but may be getting compensated for some reason or other anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
selling it to the highest bidder
So far, as much as anyone knows, that part isn't true. Which isn't to say it will never be true if Google hits a roadblock and needs a quick source of cash, but for the moment it seems like all Google does with your data is feed it into its ad system (and to the government when they're forced to, but that's not generally Google's prerogative and they're among the companies most fiercely fighting government data coercion since it hurts their reputation and therefore their business.)
I'm not sure how distanced the ad system is from the advertisers using it (technically speaking,) or how much if anything they could potentially glean from people just having the ads shown (but not clicked.) Its definitely far far less than feeding them detailed information about each user though.
So far, he's appointing people that seem to want to deregulate everything. So we'll end up with blisteringly fast internet for the 1% who can afford it, and everyone else will be as good as cut off as providers zero-rate their preferred services and blackball basically everything else with slow lanes and whatever other schemes they come up with.
I'm just hoping some of his appointments change their tune once they've seen what things are like from the other side. Trump himself surprised everyone so maybe a couple of his cronies will do the same.
Tell him to stop using it for a month and see what life is like when his work is pissed and his wife isn't happy.
Its not "necessary" in the same way that electricity isn't "necessary," but that's only relevant if you want to live like its 1800 again.
Cars and medicine and flushing toilets aren't "necessary" either but nobody really wants to live like it was the dark ages again either.
The only thing that's strictly "necessary" is for a sufficient number of people to survive to breeding age and pass their genes on to the next generation -- and that's only if you think its necessary for the species as a whole to continue. Everything beyond that is comfort.
Damn you slashdot tags! This bit:
~6% says that US urban population is ~81%.
Was supposed to be:
~6% less than 3mbps
~28% less than 10mbps
~52% less than 25mbps
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/ says that the US urban population is ~81%.
I really should learn to use the preview button.
I suppose it depends what you consider "the boonies," but if we take those numbers at face value we have:
~6% says that US urban population is ~81%. So we've got a 30% gap there even if we assume every rural person everywhere is stuck with slow internet due to purely geographic issues.
They may not have specified the percentage of urban vs rural people they checked up on, but the numbers suggest it doesn't really matter because even in the best case scenario, things still stink with regards to internet speeds across the population.
Air _is_ an insulator. Its the same idea as double pane windows.
the concept exists without the US being involved at all.
Sure, but Facebook or whoever is still completely within their rights to ignore that concept. My point is that the government is the only organisation that's strictly obliged to give a crap about free speech, "concept" or otherwise.
It just isn't illegal when Facebook does it.
Yes that's my point. And if its not illegal then they're quite happy to not bother when it suits their needs (and hell even when things are illegal, companies aren't exactly shy about doing them anyway if they figure the profits will outweigh the risk of getting caught.)
Stop trying to pretend that the PTBs at Facebook or Twitter are not censoring your content.
I'm absolutely 100% confident that they aren't censoring my content. Though that's mostly because I don't post anything to either of those services.
Sort of. When they're doing it all cloak and dagger, they have two fairly strong restrictions:
1) A slap on the wrist if anyone finds out.
2) Inadmissible in court.
When they're doing it in public, they only have the one restriction: That a judge sign off on it. And given that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of jurisdictional restrictions, they only really have to find one judge somewhere in the country who's willing to sign off on whatever with minimal convincing.
Countries like Russia, China, etc.. hell even friendly countries like Canada or the UK.. should be super annoyed with this though as the FBI is effectively claiming jurisdiction over their most-definitely-not-American computer systems (and the citizens operating them.)
It may not be "released" in the sense of sitting in a public archive somewhere, but it usually only takes a quick email to the researcher to get more information. Most university researchers have their email listed somewhere on the faculty pages (and often listed on the paper itself these days, for just this reason.) Corporate scientists might be a little harder to connect to since companies only like to talk about their C-level employees but its not like its impossible there either. If nothing else, pick up the phone and ask for them by name.
They may not release full data (IP issues and all) unless you're another known scientist in the field, but you'll almost certainly be able to get clarifications on anything that you found non-obvious in their papers.. this is their life's work and they're happy to talk about it night and day if you let them! Most are, anyway. I mean they're still people and you'll run into the odd grumpy asshat but generally speaking they love it when someone's interested in their work.
So the proper order to follow up on something that interests you is: Press release -> actual paper -> open a discussion with the researchers.
Most people stop after the first step. Of course press releases are entirely lacking in data since they're intended for laymen.
Many that remain stop after the second step. But that third step still exists for the few people who care to actually delve into the details before they start running their mouths.
How "terms of service" abridge free speech
Free speech is a right granted to you (or in US constitutional negative-speak, a right the government isn't allowed to revoke.)
Of particular interest is that private entities, no matter how large, are NOT bound by any free speech restrictions. Its their site and if they want to turn it into a liberal echo chamber that's their prerogative. Those companies are only "representing the public commons" in your head. The only thing they represent in reality is their bottom line and _maybe_ the opinions of their board of directors if they can manage to agree on anything beyond "more money!"
There's definitely an argument to be made that when a company is large enough to effect social change that they should have social responsibility applied to them, but that's an unlikely thing to happen in the US where we distrust the officials we elected ourselves yet are happy to believe corporations can do no wrong because capitalism, fuck yeah!.. Never mind that capitalism is based entirely on greed and self-interest and definitely not based on the interests of the public good. And that's when its working as it should which is a rarity in itself.
Americans are pretty good at their own special brand of doublethink.
I'm pretty sure this phenomenon has been around as long as people have known how to communicate with each other.
The difference now is that there's just so much of it that you can completely saturate your information desires without ever having to leave your chair never mind breaking out of your bubble. Previously you would have eventually hit a wall (or a fist) when you ran out of people that agreed with you, long before you had overloaded yourself.
Not super surprising: In 2008, this was a new concept and everyone was shocked and amazed at how well it worked.
In 2016, we have a better handle on the hows and whys and we've realized that its a lot more insidious and easy to abuse than we would have thought possible back in 2008.
(What ever your definition may be)
This caveat makes all the difference. Most peoples' definition of "asshole" is "someone I don't like." If you're a hardcore racist, you probably think the guy constantly telling you to open your mind is an asshole while to that guy (and ok, most everyone else..) you're the asshole.
Everyone is free to subscribe to what he wishes to
That's kind of the problem. With traditional media, even TV, you "subscribed" to whatever the editor or broadcaster decided you should hear about. You could "unsubscribe" in broad strokes by avoiding entire newspapers that tended to lean a little the opposite direction from you, but you could never fully avoid hearing about things you didn't want to hear about.
With the algorithmic news feeds, that's simply not as true. Where an editor may question an article and ask the journalist to strengthen their sources or whatnot before publishing, the algos just punch it right through. That has two implications:
First, there's enough news available that they can selectively remove things they don't think you want to see and still leave you with plenty of content.
Second, much of that news is minimally- or even un-vetted and therefore of very questionable quality. But of course there's no easy way for a reader to determine whether or not any particular article is truthful. Especially when it comes to things like Donald Trump's campaign where he legitimately said or did do enough crazy things that nobody would think twice about seeing a report of another crazy thing.
And its not just news media. You periodically hear about scientific journals and university exams and job applications and whatnot where some researcher intentionally submitted garbage (and not even always carefully-crafted garbage..) to see if they'll make it through the process (ie: past the algorithms.)
Of course most of those would hopefully be caught by humans after the algos flagged them as interesting (and the ones we hear about are the ones where the humans failed as well) but that brings us back to the original problem: Facebook and Google News and whatnot don't have that second human double-check. As soon as an article satisfies the algo its published with no further scrutiny.
I don't see on what basis you can assume this
Lots and lots of anecdotal evidence as well as no small amount of actual research. While he technically _could_ subscribe to things that don't agree with his viewpoint, history (and science) has shown time and time again that the vast majority of people tend to prefer avoiding the cognitive dissonance and stick to things that they already believe as much as they can.
I don't think anyone hates tribalism. They might dislike the word itself as it makes us think of uncivilized people fighting each other on the plains of Africa 3000 years ago or whatever, but very few people hate "tribalism" as the concept of a group of people with shared identity working toward a common goal.
As you say, we still do this constantly. Its more an issue that we're using the same word for two essentially different meanings, and that can confuse people. Especially since the latter usage (the concept) was originally based on the earlier usage.
The only difference is: scores aren't determined by the state.
That's a pretty massive difference though. It gives us the illusion of being able to change our lot in life. Of course downwards is a lot easier to go than upwards, but I assume that part is probably the same under China's new system as well.
Also, being poor in itself doesn't tend to lead to armed men disappearing you in the night in the same way that criticizing hyper-authoritarian governments can.
Of course they will. Its called "Bribery."
As usual, only the rich really get access to it though.
to any interested inquiry
This is the most relevant point. Honestly, most of the data these systems collect on you could be collected by a sufficiently skilled investigator. To that end, the amount of data that they collect isn't _really_ an issue in itself. I mean it is, but its definitely not the biggest issue.
The biggest issue is how secure that data is. If you have to go out an hire an investigator to dig up information on someone, that involves a significant amount of trust on your part, and usually lots of time and/or money as well. That tends to put a damper on spurious uses of investigative powers.
If you just have to punch a name into a computer and its suddenly all in front of you though, it becomes second nature to just dig into anyone you feel like -- whether or not you have legal justification for doing so. Time and money are gone from the equation.
That leaves trust. We're told constantly that these systems have strong access restrictions and abuse prevention -- but we're stuck just believing that since there's no independent audits done never mind public audits.
And even if we trust that abusers are being caught, we have to then believe that they're being punished in any sort of significant manner. Certainly these abuses occasionally makes the news and those guys will be punished just to save face, but how many instances go unnoticed by the media and therefore minimally or even unpunished? Again, there's no independent auditing done so we just have to take them at their word.
And then even if you get past all of that, there's the whole hacker issue to deal with. The news is constantly littered with reports of hackers breaking into our largest and (supposedly) most secure databases, both corporate and government. Why should we believe this new database is any safer?
Sure the government will have a few wide-net filters like searching for bomb threats on Twitter or whatever but for the most part the data will just sit there until someone who has access to it takes a personal interest in you. A hacker gaining access to that kind of data though will be trolling for things like blackmail subjects that even the most untrustworthy government would have no reason to do on a large scale.
Your fallacy is assuming America has an "American style" democratic system. Sure the people get to choose who sits in the president's chair, but they have little to no say in who their (two!) candidates are. Throw in the fact that elections these days are won and lost more by media frenzies than policy platforms and they're definitely not sitting in a "best man for the job" situation either -- more of a "hopefully not absolute the worst person for the job" scenario.
They want to feel safe above all else.
Absolutely true. The problem is that this isn't a black and white issue, or even a simple high/low spectrum. Its a curve. Too much "protection" and people start fearing the police and military just as much as too little protection has them fearing criminals.
Most people don't want to be slaves. They just want to be left the hell alone -- by all sides.
I fail at slashdot markup. Article is http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/09/japan-tsunami-radiation-fourth-anniversary-fukushima/24254887/
Hyperbolic-strawman, much?
Yes, exactly what you asked for:
verifiable, reproducible, proof
The only way you can reproduce "this will destroy the planet," is by destroying a planet. Which isn't really a possible thing to do.
Where's the planet that climate-alarmists used to prove their theory, if a planet-wide experiment is necessary to disprove it?
That's exactly my point -- there is no way to "prove" anything here, for either side. All we can do is gather evidence and form theories and models based on that evidence. And pretty much all evidence so far points to climate change being both a thing and a problem.
Because its a lot easier to order a $200 drone on Amazon than it is to to build your own.
Terrorists may be insane, but most of them are just as dumb and lazy as the rest of us.
Yes, which is why they're supposed to be stupidly overdesigned and are given shutdown dates and whatnot.
Trouble is, we haven't been shutting them down. Strong political resentment makes it hard to build replacement plants (and those things produce a lot of power that has to be replaced in some manner.)
And if you get past that you get the beancounters looking at the multi-billion dollar price tags of a new reactor and they start wondering if the existing ones can't hold on just a few more years.
And when you get past that, you get the NIMBYs doing their best to make sure that the only place you can build the new plant is on the moon.. and someone would still likely complain about it.
Unfortunately the world has turned away from the idea of long-term investments in things like infrastructure. Anything that looks bad in the next quarterly report is highly questioned and anything the government gets involved in has to be able to show positive results by the next election season.
A project that won't show a profit for 10 or 20 years (or worse doesn't show a profit at all and is only being done because we don't want bloody nuclear explosions all over the place) is simply not given any political or economic weight these days.
Throw in the uphill battle I mention above and its hardly surprising that we keep trying to retrofit and upgrade existing ancient plants. Its nearly impossible to do anything else. But unfortunately there will be the odd occasion when "good enough" just isn't good enough anymore. And unfortunately when that occasion happens to hit a nuclear power plant, things get very ugly very fast.
Nuclear is still our cleanest, safest form of large-scale power. But only if its properly maintained, spent fuel properly reprocessed and properly disposed of when it can no longer be reprocessed, replacement schedules are followed and so forth. Unfortunately we've got an absolutely horrific track record on basically all of those points. Frankly its kind of amazing that we haven't had more disasters.
Well since even TFS suggested that compensation was the lion's share of that amount, a quick Googling brings me to this article: which suggests, as of last year, that there was "still" 250,000 people displaced (the phrasing of which suggests that there was previously even more.)
So that's quite a bit larger than the 10k people you were suggesting. $200B/250k people works out to $800k per person. Which is still quite a lot, but not nearly as insane as it sounds if you'd been assuming only 10,000 people.
And of course that's not counting people who hadn't been displaced but may be getting compensated for some reason or other anyway.