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[Heron TSG]

You've a problem there, Mr. Palau. Anti-nuclear activists tend not to know shit about nuclear power. Almost every one I've spoken to (many) have tried to tell me that they produce more radiation than coal plants (wildly untrue), that this new 'Fusion' stuff they're trying is going to be 'even more destructive' (It won't even leave byproducts), and that reactors are dangerous at all times. (Only when they are never maintained a la Chernobyl or the inspectors were lazy bastards a la Fukushima.) I would put far more trust in the nuclear scientists. On the other hand, better to have anti-nuclear activists than politicians who don't even have an interest in the matter.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In addition, Chernobyl is pretty much the perfect storm of nuclear catastrophe. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

Inspector incompetence aside, Fukushima was also kind of an extreme situation.

[Mr. Palau]

You've a problem there, Mr. Palau. Anti-nuclear activists tend not to know shit about nuclear power. Almost every one I've spoken to (many) have tried to tell me that they produce more radiation than coal plants (wildly untrue), that this new 'Fusion' stuff they're trying is going to be 'even more destructive' (It won't even leave byproducts), and that reactors are dangerous at all times. (Only when they are never maintained a la Chernobyl or the inspectors were lazy bastards a la Fukushima.) I would put far more trust in the nuclear scientists. On the other hand, better to have anti-nuclear activists than politicians who don't even have an interest in the matter.

Yeah I know, they are just there as devils advocates. I was thinking maybe 60-40 Nuclear engineers, with the activists just there to kill anything that didn't have a strong majority of engineers and just bug the engineers about anything that could coneivably(wow speeling fail) go wrong.

If it was all nuclear engineers and no other side I feel like they could become too centered on the self interest of nuclear engineers and advance their interests at the expense of other people. The other purpose of the activists is to act as a fail safe agianst this. Some engineers would be bound to be moral and hence if the rest were immoral the moral ones could team up with the activists to stop the immoral engineers from just catering to their self interest.

[mainiac]

Why not just have traditional representatives and let get experts to testify if they have any questions?

[Frumple]

I think the response to that is, "How well has that been working out so far?"

General answer: "Not as poorly as it could be."

Personal stance: We could seriously use more expert influence when dealing with technical or specialized fields. I.e. some degree of educational experience required for school board position, some degree of technological exposure required to chime in on issues of technology, ditto that for particular technological fields -- Internet infrastructure, nuclear engineering, etc., so forth.

Actually knowing head from arse re. the matter at hand seems important to me, and it's not something traditional representatives guarantee

[kaijyuu]

Well one of the basic tenants of representative governments is the people having a voice in matters. Often matters they know nothing about. So while it would be nice to have experts always chiming in, constituents are an important factor as well.

If the majority of the people don't want nuclear power, why should the representative vote for it? It's not what the people they're representing want, even though it might be superior to other alternatives.

[Mr. Palau]

Yeah thats why soritition is based on represting the group you are slecting represntatives from. There would finally be a goernment made up of mostly woman (51% of population so 51 percent of seats in every committie or body).

[mainiac]

I personally would much rather a random Joe over a nuclear engineer when deciding these things.  An average joe is coming at it tabula rasa or as close to that as you can expect.  A nuclear engineer is someone who is very much inclined towards nuclear energy.  It's the same reason that we don't compose juries of cops.

I can see the merits of soritition.  But the main appeal is that it's directly without filtering.  It's the only system that gives a millionaire and a hobo equal voice.  If you start biasing the system in favor of people who are members in good standing of elite fields you are merely replacing one oligarchy with another.  Much better to just go with proportional representation where there is at least an incentive to represent any view that isn't being represented.

[Realmfighter]

I personally would much rather a random Joe over a nuclear engineer when deciding these things.  An average joe is coming at it tabula rasa or as close to that as you can expect.

What?

No really. What. random Joe is not only going to be biased from all the Nuclear fear mongering that goes around, but will have his perspective shaped not by actual knowledge of what's going on but the crap that get spewed when new hosts try to sound smart. How about a monkey then? just put it in front of two button and let it pick. That's as unbiased as you can get, seeing as unbiased is apparently more important then actual knowledge in this situation.

[lordcooper]

Yeah, power to the people sounds like a great idea until you take a long hard look at said people

[Bauglir]

When the topic is a thing that can be plausibly understood by an average citizen without additional education beyond a few minutes' explanation, then you probably don't need to bias toward expert involvement. Otherwise, you get people on Education committees that think biological evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics*.

*Does not represent an opinion one way or the other on the overall validity of biological evolution, but a claim about the validity of one particularly stupid argument attempting to debunk it. This thread, much like the rest of the Internet, is not the place for discussing the larger topic.

[mainiac]

I personally would much rather a random Joe over a nuclear engineer when deciding these things.  An average joe is coming at it tabula rasa or as close to that as you can expect.

What?

No really. What. random Joe is not only going to be biased from all the Nuclear fear mongering that goes around, but will have his perspective shaped not by actual knowledge of what's going on but the crap that get spewed when new hosts try to sound smart. How about a monkey then? just put it in front of two button and let it pick. That's as unbiased as you can get, seeing as unbiased is apparently more important then actual knowledge in this situation.

Unbiased does not mean ignorant.  An unbiased jury means one without a prior interest in the case, not one that doesn't see any evidence.  Just because we want unbiased doesn't mean we fetishize it.

It's not like we'd pick them off the street and tell them to make decisions without any additional information.

When the topic is a thing that can be plausibly understood by an average citizen without additional education beyond a few minutes' explanation, then you probably don't need to bias toward expert involvement. Otherwise, you get people on Education committees that think biological evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics*.

*Does not represent an opinion one way or the other on the overall validity of biological evolution, but a claim about the validity of one particularly stupid argument attempting to debunk it. This thread, much like the rest of the Internet, is not the place for discussing the larger topic.

That's because they are ideological, not stupid.  Yes some of them are stupid but plenty of them are smart enough to understand if their ideology didn't get in the way.

[Bauglir]

Lemme point out that "What should be done" decisions don't generally require any sort of expert opinion, except when explicitly dealing with a highly technical topic. So for what I'm saying, you don't (for instance) need a bunch of generals deciding whether you go to war over some international incident, but you would want them for figuring out how you do it and what's a feasible option or acceptable cost. This is already what is done, by my understanding of the military, you basically just extend this principle to information technology, education, environmental regulation, etc. (EDIT: If it worked the way I'd like it to, which it doesn't since the "This is done in some areas already" part of my last sentence doesn't apply to the rest of this post) The non-experts contribution goes as far as, "Yeah, we think there needs to be less smog," and mutual veto power (the non-experts for impractical costs, the experts for impractical goals, though that's an extension of existing principle).

Also, everybody would get a pony because it is equally plausible and will probably work out about as well.

[Descan]

When he said nuclear engineers are biased towards nuclear energy, I think he means: Why would an engineer get into that field, and stay there, if he didn't think it was a swell idea?



If that didn't need clarification, I'll just be sitting in the corner of the thread. Watching.

[Nadaka]

The average person is incredibly misinformed and biased about nuclear energy from decades of exposure to anti-nuclear media, propaganda and outright lies.