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gwern comments on Rationality Boot Camp - Less Wrong
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That would be much better. 22 years can make a huge difference. (Imagine discussing flaws in the Internet in 1982 versus 1960.)
Allowing, of course, that another hundred years has made a difference in just how huge a difference 22 years can represent!
Ok, so the exercise will be to design a safe nuclear reactor using only information and knowledge available in 1920.
The scariest thing (abstractly speaking) about the situation in Japan is that the early reactors were sited before people knew very much about plate tectonics. What are other important unknown unknowns about other things we're doing?
And what is the likelihood that there exist important unknown unknowns?
In 1920, could anyone have known that one of the key aspects of nuclear power plant design was that you need a very reliable backup cooling system?
Could they have at least assessed the probability that they were not considering something important?