I didn’t want to publicly shame anyone, but it was once on Clearer Thinking and once on FLI’s podcast, I think. There just seemed to me to be this meme spreading and I thought it would be good to nip it in the bud as at least to me the statements seemed overconfident (even though I think in one or perhaps both instances the speakers did preface the statement with “I think”). In general I perceive this weird thing to be going on with nuclear in EA/rationalist circles where there seems to be some sort of I think unsupported and uninvestigated bias towards nuclear. The first time I became suspicious of something odd was on this question I forecasted on on Good Judgement Open where even in the face of clear evidence, most forecasters simply refused to believe there would be delays in opening UAE’s first nuclear power plant.
Yes that seems plausible. But I still think we as a world, and especially we as Effective Altruists, would be better off adjusting to something more neutral and nuanced. My main call is for us to stop overextending and land somewhere closer to a nuanced, evidence-based stance on nuclear power, and ideally also something that does not unnecessarily raise eyebrows from mainstream people. As a movement I think we have enough eccentric takes for the mainstream as it is.
Which podcasts were that?
I didn’t want to publicly shame anyone, but it was once on Clearer Thinking and once on FLI’s podcast, I think. There just seemed to me to be this meme spreading and I thought it would be good to nip it in the bud as at least to me the statements seemed overconfident (even though I think in one or perhaps both instances the speakers did preface the statement with “I think”). In general I perceive this weird thing to be going on with nuclear in EA/rationalist circles where there seems to be some sort of I think unsupported and uninvestigated bias towards nuclear. The first time I became suspicious of something odd was on this question I forecasted on on Good Judgement Open where even in the face of clear evidence, most forecasters simply refused to believe there would be delays in opening UAE’s first nuclear power plant.
I think it’s mostly an overextended / unnuanced contrarian reaction to the mainstream environmentalists’ anti-nuclearism.
Yes that seems plausible. But I still think we as a world, and especially we as Effective Altruists, would be better off adjusting to something more neutral and nuanced. My main call is for us to stop overextending and land somewhere closer to a nuanced, evidence-based stance on nuclear power, and ideally also something that does not unnecessarily raise eyebrows from mainstream people. As a movement I think we have enough eccentric takes for the mainstream as it is.