The only way to win here is to make it expensive to produce lies . Make people take responsibility of the consequences and punish them .
Who has the truth though?
Prediction markets
Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
21–30 of 76 posts
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even so, you still have to do it. The only alternative is unchecked bullshit, and that is highly corrosive to polite society. It's basically information guerilla warfare. Lies are cheap and easy to produce, while the facts require investigation and analysis. Lies lead to conspiracy theories which lead to radicalization which lead to destruction of society.
I guess what I'm getting at is that checking bullshit is far less effective than choking it out with the truth. Nobody believes the moon landing happened because they read a fact-checker's piece on the hoax, they believe it because there's so much positive evidence just floating out there that the conspiracy theory can't take hold except in teeny tiny little pockets.
And how do you do that when the bullshit is in some new direction where there is no truth?
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#23The only way to win here is to make it expensive to produce lies . Make people take responsibility of the consequences and punish them .
The consequences already exist, but are not enough to prevent the fraud. The linked article speaks of criminal charges. And here is a CEO going to prison for similar charges of fraud over nuclear construction:
https://www.powermag.com/former-scana-ceo-will-land-in-priso...
Nuclear projects tend to attract fraudsters that are not intimidated by the possibility of jail time.
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#24Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The incentives are against good fact checking. There are 3 broad kinds of misinformation: 1) Stuff that just isn't true and is kinda stupid. Flat earth territory (you can literally see the sea curve, c like). Barely worth debunking because nobody who cares about the truth is going to hold on to an opinion like that, but something for fact checkers to do. 2) Stuff that is not true but has powerful interests pushing it…
I guess it all depends on the distribution/business model of fact checking. News magazines and classical broadcasting can actually decide what to publish. Other might call it censorship if non-verifiable stuff does not happen there, but that is clearly a matter of scaling and money. I agree that fact checking the internet is useless. However, that is why I heavily rely on our well financed national public broadcastin…
I'm in the same camp w.r.t. national public broadcasting, but obviously there could be interests there too. It's different in different countries, and one red flag is if an election changes the governing majority and as a result, the leadership of the broadcaster is exchanged (like happened in Poland the previous election and the most recent as well), or if its a more authoritarian country anyway with elections mainly being a sham (like in Russia).
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#26"Fact checking" as a means of combating mis/disnformation is kinda doomed from the start. The whole reason you're fact checking in the first place is because some nugget of bullshit was put into some large distribution channel and the damage is already done. Nobody reads the retraction, fact checkers by their very nature have smaller reach than the misinformation they're chasing. The Wikipedia list of common misconce…
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From that article: "In fact, the only real purpose the guidance served was as a justification to suppress Americans’ free speech."
Criticising fact checkers is one thing and can get me partially on board, but any article sprinkling in such conspiracies automatically disqualifies itself to me as it is just clearly a propaganda machine with its own political agenda.
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#27It really does seem relatively easy to raise money in nuclear power for making a few dubious claims about factory production, reactor performance, and delivery timeline. In the industry, we call the 10 years it takes to realize that it's a lot harder than newcomers initially think, and that the people who tried in the past didn't fail merely because they were idiots who didn't think about economics: "getting run over…
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Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#28The only way to win here is to make it expensive to produce lies . Make people take responsibility of the consequences and punish them .
The consequences already exist, but are not enough to prevent the fraud. The linked article speaks of criminal charges. And here is a CEO going to prison for similar charges of fraud over nuclear construction: https://www.powermag.com/former-scana-ceo-will-land-in-priso... Nuclear projects tend to attract fraudsters that are not intimidated by the possibility of jail time.
I would claim that the whole construction industry tend to attract fraudsters that are not intimidated by the possibility of jail time. It is, if I remember right, the largest source of human trafficking in the world.
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#29It really does seem relatively easy to raise money in nuclear power for making a few dubious claims about factory production, reactor performance, and delivery timeline. In the industry, we call the 10 years it takes to realize that it's a lot harder than newcomers initially think, and that the people who tried in the past didn't fail merely because they were idiots who didn't think about economics: "getting run over…
Is that true in any country or just US? I have the impression that in China is not so difficult to build nuclear power plants.
Re: Fact checking of claims about nuclear power projects
#30It really does seem relatively easy to raise money in nuclear power for making a few dubious claims about factory production, reactor performance, and delivery timeline. In the industry, we call the 10 years it takes to realize that it's a lot harder than newcomers initially think, and that the people who tried in the past didn't fail merely because they were idiots who didn't think about economics: "getting run over…
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This has been completely disproven by the entire history of nuclear power.
Rickover's letter about paper versus real reactors has been linked in the comments already. You're talking about paper reactors, but unfortunately we need real reactors if we want electricity.