Thanks for the post. I’m afraid the conclusion (that you need inside info and influence to affect policy and decision making) is right—but I already believed it even before the examples. However, I don’t think Bohr and Szilard would be regarded as anywhere close to being naïve or powerless… I mean, Szilard is the guy who gets to convince people that a controlled chain reaction could be feasible in the first place; they had way more influence than the average scientist (though Szilard was not in Los Alamos)… I think they failed because it was a really hard task.
Moreover: they were regarded as experts concerning the development of the bomb, but not on its deployment. As Feynman remarks in his memoires, the military (and other hawks) were not stupid—actually, he praises their decision-making abilities. They had no reason to see the opinion of Szilard and others as authoritative on this matter.
Maybe sometimes there are too many pressures and interests for one to succeded in such tasks—but I’m afraid this hypothesis might be unwelcome to those who embrace Great Founder Theory. And contingencies: Szilard says that
[...] I was therefore much relieved when he told me that he hoped I would get the memorandum into the hands of the President and that it would receive the attention of the President. I then went back to my own office, and I hadn’t been there for more than five minutes when there was a knock at the door and there stood Dr. Norman Hilberry. “We have just heard over the radio that President Roosevelt died,” he said. For a while I was at a loss to know how to bring my memorandum to President Truman’s attention. I knew many people who knew Roosevelt, but President Truman didn’t seem to move in the same circles.
If Roosevelt had died some days later, perhaps Szilard would have succeeded.
And yet, Asilomar Conference succeeded, and the Montreal protocol… I’m not sure if I’d call it a success, but the Warnock Report on embryology also did it. I don’t think these people were more influencial than Bohr and Szilard—it’s just that the interests of government decision-makers coincided a bit more with their conclusions.
it’s just that the interests of government decision-makers coincided a bit more with their conclusions.
Yeah I buy this. There’s a report from FHI on nuclear arms control [pdf, section 4.8] that concludes that the effort for international control in 1945⁄46 was doomed from the start, because of the political atmosphere at the time:
Improving processes, with clearer, more transparent, and more informed policymaking would not likely have led to successful international control in 1945⁄46. This is only likely to have been achieved under radically different historical circumstances.
On the other hand, I have to disclose that I sometimes (e.g., when I think about Schelling Nobel Lecture) consider a “dismal hypothesis”: given human nature, if the world hadn’t seen what happened to Hiroshima, it’s quite possible that people wouldn’t have developed the same level of aversion to nukes, and we might have had something like a nuclear WW III.
I guess people often need a concrete “proof of concept” to take risks seriously—so they can regard them as imminent . Possibly that’s an additional factor in the explanation of why we succeeded with smallpox and CFCs, and why biosecurity gained more track after covid-19.
Thanks for the post. I’m afraid the conclusion (that you need inside info and influence to affect policy and decision making) is right—but I already believed it even before the examples. However, I don’t think Bohr and Szilard would be regarded as anywhere close to being naïve or powerless… I mean, Szilard is the guy who gets to convince people that a controlled chain reaction could be feasible in the first place; they had way more influence than the average scientist (though Szilard was not in Los Alamos)… I think they failed because it was a really hard task.
Moreover: they were regarded as experts concerning the development of the bomb, but not on its deployment. As Feynman remarks in his memoires, the military (and other hawks) were not stupid—actually, he praises their decision-making abilities. They had no reason to see the opinion of Szilard and others as authoritative on this matter.
Maybe sometimes there are too many pressures and interests for one to succeded in such tasks—but I’m afraid this hypothesis might be unwelcome to those who embrace Great Founder Theory. And contingencies: Szilard says that
If Roosevelt had died some days later, perhaps Szilard would have succeeded.
And yet, Asilomar Conference succeeded, and the Montreal protocol… I’m not sure if I’d call it a success, but the Warnock Report on embryology also did it. I don’t think these people were more influencial than Bohr and Szilard—it’s just that the interests of government decision-makers coincided a bit more with their conclusions.
Good points!
Yeah I buy this. There’s a report from FHI on nuclear arms control [pdf, section 4.8] that concludes that the effort for international control in 1945⁄46 was doomed from the start, because of the political atmosphere at the time:
On the other hand, I have to disclose that I sometimes (e.g., when I think about Schelling Nobel Lecture) consider a “dismal hypothesis”: given human nature, if the world hadn’t seen what happened to Hiroshima, it’s quite possible that people wouldn’t have developed the same level of aversion to nukes, and we might have had something like a nuclear WW III.
I guess people often need a concrete “proof of concept” to take risks seriously—so they can regard them as imminent . Possibly that’s an additional factor in the explanation of why we succeeded with smallpox and CFCs, and why biosecurity gained more track after covid-19.