4 ms·

No Experience Necessary (2003)

30 points by Tomte 3y ago

GlenTheMachine 3y ago
My understanding is that it isn’t enough to know how to build a nuclear weapon, or even to have the materials. Uranium and plutonium will kill you very quickly in a machine shop setting if you don’t also have the right protective equipment and a whole lot of practical experience. Don’t underestimate how hard it would be to assemble an actual working bomb.
- mike256 3y ago
  It depends on your goal. If you want to build the bomb and survive in the long run, it will be difficult. If you just want to make a big bang with no other requirements, unfortunately it's pretty easy to do. We could be happy about the two things that it is not that easy to get enough plutonium in the required purity and that most people love their lives.
  - GlenTheMachine 3y ago
    Is it possible that most terrorist groups understand the cost/benefit trade off? In other words, if you have folks capable of designing and/or assembling a nuclear device, those aren’t people you just throw away. I understand that terrorists don’t value lives highly, but you don’t see experienced bombmakers actually conducting suicide attacks for a reason. They’re valuable alive.
- blindstitch 3y ago
  At the risk of getting us all put on a list, could you say some more about what machining the stuff safely involves?
  - GlenTheMachine 3y ago
    You need to run your machine shop like a clean room. Laminar airflow, high grade air filters, glove boxes, etc. Anyone who has ever even walked through a machine shop will know how challenging that would be. You probably aren’t going to do it in your garage. For uranium there’s an actual public US government report. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4284913 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4284913 And here is an interesting write up on how hard it was to manufacture the plutonium spheres for The Gadget at Los Alamos: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2021.1913035 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2021.1...
petermcneeley 3y ago
And yet there has never been a single nuclear device used or tested by non state actors. Why? The answer is that anyone with the ability and resources has no incentive. If you are smart and driven enough to build a device you can certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mjevans 3y ago
  A very solid argument for making emigration of productive workers easier.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > If you are smart and driven enough to build a device you can certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig. The job market/job opportunities for programmers is/are much worse in many other countries. Also consider that many programming jobs that exist are actually quite boring (think into the direction of implementing LoB applications in a department that is considered a cost center instead of profit center). In my experience, there exist not that many programming jobs that give satisfaction to highly smart people, and getting such a job often requires some very specific traits that are quite different from raw intelligence.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > there has never been a single nuclear device used or tested by non state actors. Why? Simple. Because to enrich the required materials you need a big operation which sticks out like a sore thumb. There are people actively looking for these with the intent to distrupt them. By the time you are big and sophisticated enough to evade these efforts you are basically a state actor in anything but maybe name.
  - petermcneeley 3y ago
    I agree with you that this is certainly a challenge but I dont think this is an insurmountable obstacle for a very intelligent individual.
kirubakaran 3y ago
How do you explain that most countries that want to become nuclear powers aren't able to do it?
- Tomte 3y ago
  Because they need to get the materials, which the PhDs in the experiment didn‘t have to, since it was all hypothetical. And because all the other countries actively work against you getting the bomb.
  - petermcneeley 3y ago
    And brain drain.
    - ErigmolCt 3y ago
      And it is hard to control this kind of emigration
    - kirubakaran 3y ago
      If all it takes is 3 smart motivated post-docs with no experience, then wouldn't the brain drain need to be 100% for it to be the reason?
      - petermcneeley 3y ago
        The problem is that many things are correlated. The possibility that one has the capacity (in all its forms) to achieve such a project while at the same time harboring such socially hostile goals is like zero. The calculus is not simply 95% brain drain so 5% not drain so 5% will behave in this way. There is correlation between being in each group.
        kirubakaran 3y ago
        I have the same optimistic belief as you, but I wonder if the world really works like that. Meta employees (who are by definition smart enough to get the job) haven't all quit after reading the studies that show that Instagram usage results in teen depression and suicides. Or perhaps that supports your point. The smart people with fluid morality are vacuumed up by the Metas of the world, leaving none that would build a nuke for a third world dictator.

30 points by Tomte 3y ago

My understanding is that it isn’t enough to know how to build a nuclear weapon, or even to have the materials. Uranium and plutonium will kill you very quickly in a machine shop setting if you don’t also have the right protective equipment and a whole lot of practical experience. Don’t underestimate how hard it would be to assemble an actual working bomb.

mike256 3y ago
It depends on your goal. If you want to build the bomb and survive in the long run, it will be difficult. If you just want to make a big bang with no other requirements, unfortunately it's pretty easy to do. We could be happy about the two things that it is not that easy to get enough plutonium in the required purity and that most people love their lives.
- GlenTheMachine 3y ago
  Is it possible that most terrorist groups understand the cost/benefit trade off? In other words, if you have folks capable of designing and/or assembling a nuclear device, those aren’t people you just throw away. I understand that terrorists don’t value lives highly, but you don’t see experienced bombmakers actually conducting suicide attacks for a reason. They’re valuable alive.
blindstitch 3y ago
At the risk of getting us all put on a list, could you say some more about what machining the stuff safely involves?
- GlenTheMachine 3y ago
  You need to run your machine shop like a clean room. Laminar airflow, high grade air filters, glove boxes, etc. Anyone who has ever even walked through a machine shop will know how challenging that would be. You probably aren’t going to do it in your garage. For uranium there’s an actual public US government report. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4284913 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4284913 And here is an interesting write up on how hard it was to manufacture the plutonium spheres for The Gadget at Los Alamos: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2021.1913035 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2021.1...

petermcneeley 3y ago

And yet there has never been a single nuclear device used or tested by non state actors. Why? The answer is that anyone with the ability and resources has no incentive. If you are smart and driven enough to build a device you can certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mjevans 3y ago
A very solid argument for making emigration of productive workers easier.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> If you are smart and driven enough to build a device you can certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig. The job market/job opportunities for programmers is/are much worse in many other countries. Also consider that many programming jobs that exist are actually quite boring (think into the direction of implementing LoB applications in a department that is considered a cost center instead of profit center). In my experience, there exist not that many programming jobs that give satisfaction to highly smart people, and getting such a job often requires some very specific traits that are quite different from raw intelligence.
krisoft 3y ago
> there has never been a single nuclear device used or tested by non state actors. Why? Simple. Because to enrich the required materials you need a big operation which sticks out like a sore thumb. There are people actively looking for these with the intent to distrupt them. By the time you are big and sophisticated enough to evade these efforts you are basically a state actor in anything but maybe name.
- petermcneeley 3y ago
  I agree with you that this is certainly a challenge but I dont think this is an insurmountable obstacle for a very intelligent individual.

kirubakaran 3y ago

How do you explain that most countries that want to become nuclear powers aren't able to do it?

Tomte 3y ago
Because they need to get the materials, which the PhDs in the experiment didn‘t have to, since it was all hypothetical. And because all the other countries actively work against you getting the bomb.
- petermcneeley 3y ago
  And brain drain.
  - ErigmolCt 3y ago
    And it is hard to control this kind of emigration
  - kirubakaran 3y ago
    If all it takes is 3 smart motivated post-docs with no experience, then wouldn't the brain drain need to be 100% for it to be the reason?
    - petermcneeley 3y ago
      The problem is that many things are correlated. The possibility that one has the capacity (in all its forms) to achieve such a project while at the same time harboring such socially hostile goals is like zero. The calculus is not simply 95% brain drain so 5% not drain so 5% will behave in this way. There is correlation between being in each group.
      - kirubakaran 3y ago
        I have the same optimistic belief as you, but I wonder if the world really works like that. Meta employees (who are by definition smart enough to get the job) haven't all quit after reading the studies that show that Instagram usage results in teen depression and suicides. Or perhaps that supports your point. The smart people with fluid morality are vacuumed up by the Metas of the world, leaving none that would build a nuke for a third world dictator.