But some things are that simple, and one of them is energy. The amounts we require to support our population are determined more by physical forces than by economic or social ones, and if we suddenly fall short of energy (as we could we do in a future oil crisis) then the consequences, whilst not being predictable through equations, would be horrific.
I want future generations to be able to fret about social issues such as this. They won't be able to do that if mechanized agriculture collapses.
Proliferation is a political issue not a technical issue. Its basically a position that first world nations should keep nuclear technology to themselves, and for me has always held a nasty undercurrent of racism, or at the very least 'white mans burden'
So we change. At one point slavery was a cultural norm in our societies, and we changed. At one point women were political, social and economic non-entities, and we changed. The idea of a fixed and constant human nature, against which it is futile to fight, is a tool of those clinging to the current order of things.
Yeah, but you can't blame windscale entirely on the scientists. There was a lot of political pressure on them to cut corners and produce enough plutonium for a British A-bomb, and then enough tritium for a British H-bomb. Some of the shit they did to meet those deadlines was insane, even for people who had built an air cooled graphite reactor that vented into the atmosphere. Had it not been for 'Cockroft's folly' Lancashire would probably be a dead zone.
Its generally management and politicians who fuck things up. In such accidents there is always a dissenting voice beforehand saying 'hold on a minute...' and they are always dismissed for political reasons. It is made worse in the nuclear industry, because the culture of secrecy around nuclear technology breeds a lack of transparency.
You are singing the same tune as me. On top of handing over a second term to Bush, I despite Senator Kerry for leading the charge to cancel this plan. Not that it would've affected me much if it had continued; the proliferation crap would've been raised as a reason not to allow the technology to leave the US.
Nuclear power has a massive, massive externality attached to it. You let private industry run it without interference your tap water will glow in the dark before long.
Its cost efficient to burn fuel for a bit then dump it. Its better for society, both now and in the future, to keep burning the stuff until its broken down into safer isotopes. The market has no mechanism to represent this, and by Goodhart's law trying to apply one would likely be futile.
He is trying to hold this problem up as a reason for discontinuing or slowing efforts to advance nuclear power, that is what I object to. If it weren't for people like him, the United States would've developed a reactor where all the waste leaving the site would be reduced to the activity of the original ores within 200 years. But oh no, we can't have an elegant technical solution where there is sociology to be done...
I've only got a degree in Computer Science, am working towards a masters in physics whilst developing a satellite, and I have no idea what that sentence means. Therefore, this guy must be looooads smarter than me and I will therefore accept his ideas without question!
The dollar changes, the Joule is forever. Regardless of whether or not the power from a nuclear plant can cover the costs of its construction and decommissioning at the present time is irrelevant. We aren't designing plants to come online in a year, we are designing them to come online in 10-15 years. Thermodynamically, nuclear is worthwhile. When oil starts to really bite that is all that will matter, whether or not we have an energy source that can sustain us. Market forces are subservient to physical forces.
We could. In fact, we could do that right now using the Integral Fast Reactor, except that its apparently a proliferation risk. We are willing to give up probably the cleanest source of nuclear energy developed so far, just because we are afraid of petty despots and terrorists getting their hands on a nuke. We are letting a tiny, tiny minority of small minded psychopaths determine the technological evolution of the human race, simply because we are scared.
Ulrich Beck is author of World Risk Society and professor of sociology at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University and the London School of Economics
I can't think of a better person to solve our energy crisis than a sociologist. They have insights that we scientists and engineers simply lack. They understand how to guide policies based on feelings and such, whilst we are just stuck with our equations and physical laws.
I disagree with him, but that is probably due to my dogmatic, close minded acceptance of the laws of thermodynamics. Clearly, his subjective interpretation of mass human behaviour gives a much better insight into future energy policy.
We simply wrap high grade nuclear waste in blocks of gold and help future generations by wiping out all the greedy fuckheads who ruin it for everyone else
Given the level of international cooperation, the guy who named the project almost certainly speaks good English and has had enough contact with Americans to pick up slang, and maybe figured the guys who signed the cheques didn't.
Your signature, however, gives me something else to focus on. Fucking software patents! Idiotic corporate pandering EU! Grrrrrr! I'm not afraid of flying, I'm angry about IP abuse!
I am flying to Florida tomorrow, it will only be my fifth plane flight in total and my first transatlantic flight. Despite being a rational scientist, who knows how safe it is statistically, I am having trouble suppressing my anxiety.
And at this point, fate sees fit to bombard me with horror stories about flying. This news about air traffic control comes on the heels of a headline I just saw on the front page of the Independent about pilots not reporting faults on aircraft and thus unsafe ones still flying about. I can't remember the exact wording because my brain parsed it as "TOMORROW YOU WILL DIE IN FLAMES"
Rich billionaires have yet to put anything into orbit. Big inefficient government has been doing it for 50 years. Reality contradicts your ideology, and I can take a wild guess which one you are going to disregard...
Its an organisational one. They themselves are already complaining about their budget and they haven't even got a rocket off the ground yet. They've got teams off their own engineers who disagree so strongly with the direction NASA is taking they are designing an alternative rocket on their own time (DIRECT/Jupiter/Ares 2 or 4 or whatever). They've got staff airing their complaints to the press rather than their supervisor. I'd say the wheels have come off the plan to return to the Moon, buy NASA probably haven't even settled on what size wheels those would be yet.
I've mentioned this before. We can't do scale. Everyone is so invested in the orthodoxy of competition that cooperation automatically falls flat on its face. The idea of man as selfish and rational is a self fulfilling prophecy - if you believe that about other people it makes it almost impossible for you to trust and work with them.
So, in my humble opinion, neither the Americans nor anyone else is getting back on the interplanetary horse until we figure out the systemic, structural problems in our societies.
I am cynical enough to believe that they only act against business interests on behalf of other business interests. In the cases you mention, I think its a simple case of protectionism.
Incidentally, you are saying that the more democratic branch of the EU is more prone to slapping down silly laws, whilst in the UK its the less democratic house that mostly does that. That means its fairly odd that Britons are taught to despise the EU for its lack of democracy.
Had they any sense, they would've stopped their compulsive litigation when it became apparent they were no good at it. Obviously they are just incapable of seeing how stupid they appear.
They can claim copyright for a bazillion years, still won't address the issue that it is impossible to enforce without crushing peoples freedom of speech. Knowing the EU, which is every bit as much a tool of business as the US government, they will do exactly that.
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But some things are that simple, and one of them is energy. The amounts we require to support our population are determined more by physical forces than by economic or social ones, and if we suddenly fall short of energy (as we could we do in a future oil crisis) then the consequences, whilst not being predictable through equations, would be horrific.
I want future generations to be able to fret about social issues such as this. They won't be able to do that if mechanized agriculture collapses.
Proliferation is a political issue not a technical issue. Its basically a position that first world nations should keep nuclear technology to themselves, and for me has always held a nasty undercurrent of racism, or at the very least 'white mans burden'
So we change. At one point slavery was a cultural norm in our societies, and we changed. At one point women were political, social and economic non-entities, and we changed. The idea of a fixed and constant human nature, against which it is futile to fight, is a tool of those clinging to the current order of things.
Yeah, but you can't blame windscale entirely on the scientists. There was a lot of political pressure on them to cut corners and produce enough plutonium for a British A-bomb, and then enough tritium for a British H-bomb. Some of the shit they did to meet those deadlines was insane, even for people who had built an air cooled graphite reactor that vented into the atmosphere. Had it not been for 'Cockroft's folly' Lancashire would probably be a dead zone.
Its generally management and politicians who fuck things up. In such accidents there is always a dissenting voice beforehand saying 'hold on a minute...' and they are always dismissed for political reasons. It is made worse in the nuclear industry, because the culture of secrecy around nuclear technology breeds a lack of transparency.
You are singing the same tune as me. On top of handing over a second term to Bush, I despite Senator Kerry for leading the charge to cancel this plan. Not that it would've affected me much if it had continued; the proliferation crap would've been raised as a reason not to allow the technology to leave the US.
Nuclear power has a massive, massive externality attached to it. You let private industry run it without interference your tap water will glow in the dark before long.
Its cost efficient to burn fuel for a bit then dump it. Its better for society, both now and in the future, to keep burning the stuff until its broken down into safer isotopes. The market has no mechanism to represent this, and by Goodhart's law trying to apply one would likely be futile.
He is trying to hold this problem up as a reason for discontinuing or slowing efforts to advance nuclear power, that is what I object to. If it weren't for people like him, the United States would've developed a reactor where all the waste leaving the site would be reduced to the activity of the original ores within 200 years. But oh no, we can't have an elegant technical solution where there is sociology to be done...
I've only got a degree in Computer Science, am working towards a masters in physics whilst developing a satellite, and I have no idea what that sentence means. Therefore, this guy must be looooads smarter than me and I will therefore accept his ideas without question!
The dollar changes, the Joule is forever. Regardless of whether or not the power from a nuclear plant can cover the costs of its construction and decommissioning at the present time is irrelevant. We aren't designing plants to come online in a year, we are designing them to come online in 10-15 years. Thermodynamically, nuclear is worthwhile. When oil starts to really bite that is all that will matter, whether or not we have an energy source that can sustain us. Market forces are subservient to physical forces.
We could. In fact, we could do that right now using the Integral Fast Reactor, except that its apparently a proliferation risk. We are willing to give up probably the cleanest source of nuclear energy developed so far, just because we are afraid of petty despots and terrorists getting their hands on a nuke. We are letting a tiny, tiny minority of small minded psychopaths determine the technological evolution of the human race, simply because we are scared.
Future Hindus might consider it a holy site...
Welcome our new sociologist overlords
From the article:
I can't think of a better person to solve our energy crisis than a sociologist. They have insights that we scientists and engineers simply lack. They understand how to guide policies based on feelings and such, whilst we are just stuck with our equations and physical laws.
I disagree with him, but that is probably due to my dogmatic, close minded acceptance of the laws of thermodynamics. Clearly, his subjective interpretation of mass human behaviour gives a much better insight into future energy policy.
We simply wrap high grade nuclear waste in blocks of gold and help future generations by wiping out all the greedy fuckheads who ruin it for everyone else
Given the level of international cooperation, the guy who named the project almost certainly speaks good English and has had enough contact with Americans to pick up slang, and maybe figured the guys who signed the cheques didn't.
You know they play it in Russia too. This must be an engineer having a chuckle...
Depends, was the pilot at your house?
Damn thats cold
Your signature, however, gives me something else to focus on. Fucking software patents! Idiotic corporate pandering EU! Grrrrrr! I'm not afraid of flying, I'm angry about IP abuse!
I am flying to Florida tomorrow, it will only be my fifth plane flight in total and my first transatlantic flight. Despite being a rational scientist, who knows how safe it is statistically, I am having trouble suppressing my anxiety.
And at this point, fate sees fit to bombard me with horror stories about flying. This news about air traffic control comes on the heels of a headline I just saw on the front page of the Independent about pilots not reporting faults on aircraft and thus unsafe ones still flying about. I can't remember the exact wording because my brain parsed it as "TOMORROW YOU WILL DIE IN FLAMES"
Rich billionaires have yet to put anything into orbit. Big inefficient government has been doing it for 50 years. Reality contradicts your ideology, and I can take a wild guess which one you are going to disregard...
Its an organisational one. They themselves are already complaining about their budget and they haven't even got a rocket off the ground yet. They've got teams off their own engineers who disagree so strongly with the direction NASA is taking they are designing an alternative rocket on their own time (DIRECT/Jupiter/Ares 2 or 4 or whatever). They've got staff airing their complaints to the press rather than their supervisor. I'd say the wheels have come off the plan to return to the Moon, buy NASA probably haven't even settled on what size wheels those would be yet.
I've mentioned this before. We can't do scale. Everyone is so invested in the orthodoxy of competition that cooperation automatically falls flat on its face. The idea of man as selfish and rational is a self fulfilling prophecy - if you believe that about other people it makes it almost impossible for you to trust and work with them.
So, in my humble opinion, neither the Americans nor anyone else is getting back on the interplanetary horse until we figure out the systemic, structural problems in our societies.
Is it cruel to laugh at the mentally ill? Cause I'm pissing myself right now!
I am cynical enough to believe that they only act against business interests on behalf of other business interests. In the cases you mention, I think its a simple case of protectionism.
Incidentally, you are saying that the more democratic branch of the EU is more prone to slapping down silly laws, whilst in the UK its the less democratic house that mostly does that. That means its fairly odd that Britons are taught to despise the EU for its lack of democracy.
Had they any sense, they would've stopped their compulsive litigation when it became apparent they were no good at it. Obviously they are just incapable of seeing how stupid they appear.
Outside your market-based fantasy world, artists don't have such a choice. They have to do as the record company says or get a job in a shop.
They can claim copyright for a bazillion years, still won't address the issue that it is impossible to enforce without crushing peoples freedom of speech. Knowing the EU, which is every bit as much a tool of business as the US government, they will do exactly that.