It's interesting to me the way consensus seems to emerge on long-tail risks. Even just looking at the very technical crowd here on HN, I bet a significant major

It's interesting to me the way consensus seems to emerge on long-tail risks. Even just looking at the very technical crowd here on HN, I bet a significant majority would agree that nuclear power is a good idea and we can manage the long-tail risks safely. But the same people would also argue that giving the government a crypto backdoor would be a terrible idea because the risk of hackers eventually gaining access to that backdoor is too high. Why are we so sure that we know how to manage the risks of nuclear power? People just assert it like fact these days if they're on the pro-nuclear side of The Discourse, but it just seems to be that long-tail risks are really really hard for society to deal with and we get them wrong all the time. Just look at covid. Or look at plane crashes - we put a lot of resources into air safety and we have gotten really good at it, but planes do still crash once in a while. If you want to argue that the benefits of nuclear outweigh the risks, that seems a very reasonable position to take. But insisting that the risks are truly 0 and anyone who points out the risk is fearmongering just doesn't seem that productive.