[godelski]

The website is purely to see electric energy production (note the care or words). It is but one of many metrics, which I think we both agree aren't even enough to adequately answer the question of "country emissions" but is the part of that conversation that most people are familiar with.

But I think we need context, as that's likely where things got lost. C0llusion's comment above my "fun fact" comment was the critical aspect. They got causality wrong in their final point. Last year (2022) France's output was ~70% of their 10 year average. I think they confused 50% with their goal for only 50% dependence on nuclear power. The cracks is also a bit weird because while not wrong, it isn't complete and not the causal issue since all nuclear power plants have cracks in the same way all damns do. Here's a "short" writeup by world nuclear[0]. It also briefly mentions how France wanted to be energy independent post oil crisis. But for complexity sake, we can't say counterfactually that Germany made the "wrong" move (or "right") one because you can make an argument about geopolitics and Germany's strategy. If their actions did starve off war then that's a better climate strategy. To complex for me to speculate tbh, just recognizing that it's part of the equation.

I think a big difference in our framing is that you're putting things as if there is a universally optimal strategy by a single nation. Even strictly just on the energy domain. The world is just too complex and it is a multi-agent system that isn't zero sum. Strategies don't work like that when there's so much coalition building. And it is hard for me to properly explain what I'm thinking in just a few comments. I think unfortunately I have a different view than most are used to and so I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the inference gap. I do sincerely appreciate the reinforcement and if you have any additional advice in how I can better communicate. I truly take this idea of complexity to heart, it is a core belief of mine. And if we're being honest, climate is one of the most complicated existential crises that humans have faced. Certainly no single person is able to understand even a relatively complete story except from orbit. But details matter so much that I think we do a great disservice ignoring the complexities (not just around climate). What I can't figure out how to communicate correctly yet is how to discuss a metric but not imply that it is the only thing we should look at. If you have any suggestions I'd really appreciate it. Not sure how to juggle a ton of things but pause to talk about one because talking about everything all at once is fucking chaotic and I'm already verbose as it is. I'm not sure how well this came off but I hope you can see that there's a communication breakdown (admittedly I'm not doing a great job).

[0] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

[cauch]

> I think a big difference in our framing is that you're putting things as if there is a universally optimal strategy by a single nation.

That's exactly the opposite of my point. I explicitly say that nation A going into direction X may lead to nation B failing when going into direction Y while it would have succeed if nation A would not have gone into direction X.

As advice, I would say that you should not provide any "counterfactuals" to not-deep-details-enough, because those counterfactuals are also not-deep-details-enough. For example, in C0llusion's comments, you react on the causality error, which is just too simplistic anyway. But you react by opposing their not-deep-details-enough argument with a not-deep-details-enough argument. Both of these arguments are not useful. What you need to do is to show the complexity and why concluding while not having a deep enough overview is stupid. What you have done here in part of your comment is stepping down to their level and arguing with a similarly not-deep-details-enough argument as if this argument is somewhat not as bad. At least you could have added a lot of disclaimer around it, such as "please don't use this argument to jump to the opposite conclusion, as it is as bad, but as a naive example contradicting your logic ..."

[godelski]

> That's exactly the opposite of my point. I explicitly say that nation A going into direction X may lead to nation B failing when going into direction Y while it would have succeed if nation A would not have gone into direction X.

I guess I'm confused then because this still reads to me as if you're suggesting there's strictly competing strategies. I get that you are discussing different strategies but to me this reads as optimizing for independent strategies rather than optimizing for dependent ones (which is the usual common way people frame things: look at x country, copy their model; no other nuance needed).

> I would say that you should not provide any "counterfactuals"

I'm also confused because I don't know where I presented any counterfactuals. I know where I said we can't place counterfactuals with insufficient information, but not where I claimed a counterfactual.

Really I'm a bit confused because I didn't claim anything that isn't simply fact, the rest is just mentioning of variables not considered and that this is still an even incomplete picture.

> But you react by opposing their not-deep-details-enough argument with a not-deep-details-enough argument.

Yes. We're still operating from orbit. I'm responding to "look at this island" with "but consider the archipelago." I'm not sure what more you expect, as this is HN. We can get some nuance but even just saying to look in a broader sense (which we haven't even seen everything that's still highly important) takes so much writing. Compression is useful, but not when we don't agree we're working in compression or localized discussions. But abstract discussions can also be useful. The "detail" you're criticizing is different from the one I was: words are overloaded.

> What you need to do is to show the complexity and why concluding while not having a deep enough overview is stupid.

I simply do not have time to write a novel, and even if I wanted to could not do so on HN. I'm sorry, we can only discuss at high levels and specifics can only be localized. But resolution will always be fairly low. I am only trying to increase the scope of the discussion because I have faith in my fellow users to increase resolution on their own time.