You point to a problem: “You can’t admit a single particle of uncertain danger if you want your science’s funding to survive. These days you are not allowed to end by saying, “There remains the distinct possibility...” Because there is no debate you can have about tradeoffs between scientific progress and risk. If you get to the point where you’re having a debate about tradeoffs, you’ve lost the debate. That’s how the world stands, nowadays.”
As a solution, you propose that “where human-caused uncertain existential dangers are concerned, the only way to get a real, serious, rational, fair, evenhanded assessment of the risks, in our modern environment,
Is if the whole project is classified, the paper is written for scientists without translation, and the public won’t get to see the report for another fifty years.”
Wouldn’t it just be easier to convince the public to accept a certain amount of risk, to accept debates about trade-offs? What you propose would require convincing that same public to give the government a blank check to fund secret projects that are being kept secret precisely because they present some existential threat. That might work for military projects, since the public could be convinced that the secrecy is necessary to prevent another existential threat (e.g., commies).
It just seems easier to modify public sentiment so that they accept serious discussions of risk. Otherwise, you have to convince them to trust scientists to accurately evaluate those risks in utter secrecy, which scientists will be funded only if they find that the risks are acceptable.
Anyways, I’m unconvinced that secrecy was the cause for the difference in rhetorical style between LA-602 and the RHIC review. What seems more plausible to me is this: Teller et al. could afford to mention that risks remained because they figured that a military project like theirs would get funded anyways. The authors of the RHIC Review had no such assurance.
Eliezer,
You point to a problem: “You can’t admit a single particle of uncertain danger if you want your science’s funding to survive. These days you are not allowed to end by saying, “There remains the distinct possibility...” Because there is no debate you can have about tradeoffs between scientific progress and risk. If you get to the point where you’re having a debate about tradeoffs, you’ve lost the debate. That’s how the world stands, nowadays.”
As a solution, you propose that “where human-caused uncertain existential dangers are concerned, the only way to get a real, serious, rational, fair, evenhanded assessment of the risks, in our modern environment,
Is if the whole project is classified, the paper is written for scientists without translation, and the public won’t get to see the report for another fifty years.”
Wouldn’t it just be easier to convince the public to accept a certain amount of risk, to accept debates about trade-offs? What you propose would require convincing that same public to give the government a blank check to fund secret projects that are being kept secret precisely because they present some existential threat. That might work for military projects, since the public could be convinced that the secrecy is necessary to prevent another existential threat (e.g., commies).
It just seems easier to modify public sentiment so that they accept serious discussions of risk. Otherwise, you have to convince them to trust scientists to accurately evaluate those risks in utter secrecy, which scientists will be funded only if they find that the risks are acceptable.
Anyways, I’m unconvinced that secrecy was the cause for the difference in rhetorical style between LA-602 and the RHIC review. What seems more plausible to me is this: Teller et al. could afford to mention that risks remained because they figured that a military project like theirs would get funded anyways. The authors of the RHIC Review had no such assurance.