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Is it ethical to expand nuclear energy use?
simonfriederich1y3
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Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts! Your summary seems adequate. Our main focus was on the ethical argument, not so much about whether there is reason for optimism regarding cost development. To some extent, this question is discussed in our references, though.

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JP Addison
1y
Cool, that makes sense. However, here's a point I want to make: in effective altruism (and I would say, in the world at large) one needs to focus on tractability to make the base for an intervention to be an ethical priority. Otherwise, you as an agent with non-infinite resources would do better to focus on another way of achieving your goals. To a large extent you can say, "yep, if we had more space we would devote more effort to that." But to this audience, who is already sympathetic to the in-theory benefits of nuclear energy, I doubt you have done much to convince me / them.
Is it ethical to expand nuclear energy use?
simonfriederich1y3
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Thanks for your thoughtful response!

You are right that investing in new nuclear tends to score rather badly according to QUICK. We say the same in the paper. However, as we explain, we tend to regard out two other criteria as more important, because of lock-in and path dependency risks if we focus mostly on short-term emission reductions. (Considerations about harm from emissions being cumulative count in the other direction, though.)

You are also right about other technologies potentially being able to play a similar role. Hydropower especially often does ... (read more)

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The Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition
simonfriederich2y4
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Right, it sounds absurd and maybe hilarious, but it's actually what I had in mind. The advantage is internal coherence. The idea is basically to let "ecomodernism" go mainstream, having a Greenpeace-like org that has ideas more similar to the Breakthrough Institute.  It's far from clear that this can work, but it's worth a try, in my view. About your suggestion: I love it and voted for it. 

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Jackson Wagner
2y
Maybe so... like an economics version of the ACLU that builds a reputation of sticking up for things that are good even though they're unpopular. Might work especially well if oriented around the legal system (where ACLU operates and where groups like Greenpeace and the ever-controversial NRA have had lots of success), rather than purely advocacy? Having a unified brand might help convince people that our side has a point. For instance, a group that litigates to fight against nimbyism by complaining about the overuse of environmental laws or zoning regulations... the nimbys would naturally see themselves as the heroes of the story and assume that lawyers on the pro-construction side were probably villains funded by big greedy developers. Seeing that their opposition was a semi-respected ACLU-like brand that fought for a variety of causes might help change people's minds on an issue. (On the other hand, I feel like the legal system is fundamentally friendlier terrain for stopping projects than encouraging them, so the legal angle might not work well for GMOs and power plants. But maybe there are areas like trying to ban Gain-of-Function research where this could be a helpful strategy.) We'd still probably want the brand of this group to be pretty far disconnected from EA -- groups like Greenpeace, the NRA, etc naturally attract a lot of controversy and demonization.
The Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition
simonfriederich2y3
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Interesting thought. FWIW, I think it's more realistic that we can turn around public opinion on fission first, reap more of the benefits of fission, and then have a better public public landscape for fusion, then that we accept the unpopularity of fission as a given but will have somehow popular fusion. But I may well be wrong.

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The Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition
simonfriederich2y33
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Advocacy organization for unduly unpopular technologies

Public opinion on key technologies.

Some technologies have enormous benefits, but they are not deployed very much because they are unpopular. Nuclear energy could be a powerful tool for enhancing access to clean energy and combating climate change, but it faces public opposition in Western countries. Similarly, GMOs could help solve the puzzle of feeding the global population with fewer resources, but public opinion is largely against them. Cellular agriculture may soon face similar challenges. Public o... (read more)

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Andreas F
2y
Since Lifecycle Analysis show that it most likely is the best option, I fully agree on the nuclear Part.  I also agree on the GMO part, since huge Meta Analysis show no adverse effects on the environment (compared as yield/area   & Biodiversity/dollar & Yield/dollar  labor/ yield), in comparison with other agriculture. I have no Assessment on Cellular Agriculture, but I do think, that it is fair to support such schemes ( at least until we have solid data regarding this, and then decide again).  
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Jackson Wagner
2y
Probably want to avoid unifying all of these under one "we advocate for things that most people hate" advocacy group!  Although that would be pretty hilarious.  But funding lots of little different groups in some of these key areas is great, such as trying to make it easier to build clean energy projects of all kinds as I mention here.
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Peter S. Park
2y
Note: Wanted to share an example. I think that while nuclear fission reactors are unpopular and this unpopularity is sticky, it is possible that efforts to preemptively decouple the reputation of nuclear fusion reactors with those of nuclear fission reactors can succeed (and that nuclear fusion's hypothetical positive reputation can be sticky over time). But it is also possible that the unpopularity of nuclear fission will stick to nuclear fusion.  Which of these two possibilities occurs, and how proactive action can change this, is mysterious at the moment. This is because our causal/theoretical understanding of the science of human behavior is incomplete. (see my submission, "Causal microfoundations for behavioral science") Preemptive action regarding historically unprecendented settings like emergent technologies---for which much of the relevant data may not yet exist---can be substantially informed by externally valid predictions of people's situation-specific behavior in such settings.
A full syllabus on longtermism
simonfriederich3y2
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Great list, thanks!

I link to it in my newly posted syllabus on existential risks:

Example syllabus "Existential Risks" - EA Forum (effectivealtruism.org)

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jtm
3y
Terrific, thanks!
Example syllabus "Existential Risks"
simonfriederich3y2
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Great that you like this testing idea, Siebe!

I just tried out the judgment calibration test  with my Munich students, with 25 relatively difficult-to-assess statements.

Main finding: Roughly half score better and half score worse than they would have done if they had just uniformly answered "50%". I guess that this indicates that the test was slightly too difficult. Notably, I had included many statements about orders of magnitude (e.g. energy released by the sun in a year, or time scales), and those seem challenging.

But the best students had a mean square deviation of the estimate from the truth value of about 16%, which I guess is quite good.

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The NPT: Learning from a Longtermist Success [Links!]
simonfriederich3y8
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Great post -- and I fully agree that understanding the success of the NPT is hugley interesting and promising, and I also agree with this comment on the importance of this question regarding nuclear energy deployment!

There seems to be one line of thinking according to which almost any facilitating  of a country's starting a civilian nuclear energy programme increases proliferation risk and another line of thinking according to getting ahead of the curve in exporting comparatively  proliferation-resistant technology might actually reduce prolifera... (read more)

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DannyBressler
3y
Yes, I think it is. There is a literature on whether nuclear assistance  and technology sharing for peaceful uses tends to promote or hinder nuclear proliferation, that I mention and cite a bit in my second CSIS piece.