> The only way to mediate between them is by discussing non-objective things like how we value fish and the services provided by electricity. No, it's not the

> The only way to mediate between them is by discussing non-objective things like how we value fish and the services provided by electricity. No, it's not the only way. It's the easy way. The hard way is to consider other consequences of both choices, including long-term effects, including changes that aren't 0%-100%, but slightly change probability of other events. Hurting the ecosystem might increase the probability of flooding the area, which will hurt some of the people that you are trying to comfort by giving them cheaper energy. So, maybe it's objectively irrational to build the dam, no matter whether you value people or fish more? Maybe the population in the area is decreasing anyway and cheap power won't help? We can predict such things pretty reliably. So why build a huge dam and hurt environment if in 40 years it will be useless? It's impossible to know for sure, but it's possible to estimate. Abandoning the rationality altogether just because it's not immediately obvious what to do is very irresponsible. I know it was just an example, but IMHO it's a representative example. Many of the issues in the center of the public debate now are objectively scientifically solved, or so close to be solved, that it doesn't matter what the exact details are. Yet people continue to argue about them because of tribal thinking, religion, corporate interests, etc. See global warming, equality for sexual orientations, war on drugs, public vs private healthcare, etc. OC proposed that human element is inherently unpredictable, so rationality isn't the solution. Yet - thanks to the law of big numbers - big groups of people are more predictable than small groups of people or individual people. So we may not know who will vote X or Y, but we can predict how many people will vote X and Y with reasonably small error. We have big data, that can predict you're pregnant before you know you're pregnant, just basing on you browser history FFS.