| > 1986 USSR bureaucracy didn’t fail only for a lack of expertise either. I think you're talking Chernobyl here, without actually saying Chernobyl. Again they were arguably pushing ideology over science -- in many ways to save cost. Then making any criticisms about safety state secrets so no one could know about them. It's worth noting that Gorbachev believed that Chernobyl led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, six years later. > If anything, public misinformation being amplified in influence through social media affects expert based political will negatively insofar the topic is ripe for emotional biases, not lack of real experts. True, but that cuts your argument. As it turns questions of science into ideological ones. If you're a farmer you can go to your local extension office, and ask questions about herbicide and fertilizers and planting schedules without government interference -- essentially expanding knowledge. If Russia ran ads on FB that said the best time to plant corn was in November of the following year, there would be a lot of laughter. There is no such thing as extension offices for nuclear science -- ergo making it even more ripe for the idea that you're talking about. On the other hand, people trust vaccines less, and there has been a concerted effort to cause public distrust. Imagine what would happen if that happened to nuclear scientists. Worse, there would be only few people to make that argument against it. With vaccines there were lots of people that could, and still largely failed. |
Yes.
> True, but that cuts your argument. As it turns questions of science into ideological ones.
That’s fair enough. If I am understanding correctly, you’re saying the institutional mistrust and failing public discourse we are experiencing today would render existing nuclear dangerous too. No matter if we have expertise or not (I believe we do) we can’t navigate our way to it in the presence of so much other BS.