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My argument is not, that we should not enhance security. We definitely should, the fact, that even the most developed industrial powers can not handle it in a m

My argument is not, that we should not enhance security. We definitely should, the fact, that even the most developed industrial powers can not handle it in a manner that satisfies me personally is my argument for eliminating it. I am personally just not comfortable with even a tiny chance of a massive and unfixable catastrophe. This is just my subjective feeling. To your second point: I always forget how this rhetoric figure is called and I would be grateful for a link, but it is easily dismissed: Something even worse does not justify not acting on something bad. We have quite a few people on this earth and can tackle multiple issues at once.

mikeash 12y ago
Does that mean the free rider problem does not apply? If the argument is that it can't be handled with sufficient safety regardless, that's a reasonable one (albeit one I disagree with), but separate from the shared resource/free rider thing. For the waste, I apologize, I didn't mean it as the usual "X is worse, so Y can be ignored." What I meant to say by that was that the dangers of waste are exaggerated, and it can be dealt with without a great deal of difficulty. The "generations to come" stuff is generally stated to make nuclear waste sound really bad, much worse than other things, but in fact that makes it a lot better than more mundane sorts of waste. The fact that we can deal with waste that is much more poisonous, generated in much greater quantity, and lasts much longer than nuclear waste tells me that nuclear waste isn't a difficult problem to solve (except for the political aspects). I don't mean to argue for not acting on it, merely that acting on it isn't a showstopper.
- allendoerfer 12y ago
  I thought of the free rider in this way: If we stop, everybody else is still doing it (free riding on our reduced risk) and we would be still affected by the risk they produce, but without the benefits of the energy, so lets just keep doing it.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Right. My point is just that it applies both to stopping (other people might just keep using it) and to improving safety (other people might not spend the money on safety like we do). So while it's a problem, it doesn't seem to be an argument for one choice over the other.

mikeash 12y ago

Does that mean the free rider problem does not apply? If the argument is that it can't be handled with sufficient safety regardless, that's a reasonable one (albeit one I disagree with), but separate from the shared resource/free rider thing. For the waste, I apologize, I didn't mean it as the usual "X is worse, so Y can be ignored." What I meant to say by that was that the dangers of waste are exaggerated, and it can be dealt with without a great deal of difficulty. The "generations to come" stuff is generally stated to make nuclear waste sound really bad, much worse than other things, but in fact that makes it a lot better than more mundane sorts of waste. The fact that we can deal with waste that is much more poisonous, generated in much greater quantity, and lasts much longer than nuclear waste tells me that nuclear waste isn't a difficult problem to solve (except for the political aspects). I don't mean to argue for not acting on it, merely that acting on it isn't a showstopper.

allendoerfer 12y ago
I thought of the free rider in this way: If we stop, everybody else is still doing it (free riding on our reduced risk) and we would be still affected by the risk they produce, but without the benefits of the energy, so lets just keep doing it.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Right. My point is just that it applies both to stopping (other people might just keep using it) and to improving safety (other people might not spend the money on safety like we do). So while it's a problem, it doesn't seem to be an argument for one choice over the other.