The United States won’t adopt thorium until circumstances force it on them. Honestly I don’t see it happening until post singularity unless someone in the thorium/nuclear community whips out a public relations salvo of a whole different type to what we’ve seen before.
Something that gets people emotional on both sides. Something that understands and accepts the realities of partisan politics.
We need a political apparatus like the libertarians had circa ron paul’s presidential bid. And we need a PR apparatus skill level on par with Edward Bernays.
The facts are already on our side and 99.999% of thorium and nuclear advocates think that more facts will help. Like using a tool box composed entirely of flathead screwdrivers trying to assemble a car.
I made Thorium Now as a layman to try and be an interface between the hard core science nerds and the rest of the species, but the same thing that keeps scientists from ruling the world keeps nuclear techs from being able to persuade anyone below (or even at) their intelligence level.
They are by definition specialists in the wrong field. What we need is advertising, but there’s no immediate profit in our “product” and our culture isn’t configured to parse situations like this anymore.
In the past this was exactly the kind of thing (long term diffuse profit, short term diffuse losses) that government took care of in opposition to market forces (tragedy of the commons) but because our market systems have in effect become our government via political corruption (ironically also a result of a public relations deficit on the part of government) (See also: www.mayday.us) that function is essentially no longer present in our culture except in a decadent way, the corpses of old programs now being picked apart by the vultures of immediate political expediency and the insatiable greed of the 1%.
Debate Citation:
I share this as an example of what I’m talking about. The only solution to the problem the nerds can come up with is “make them like us” (via) “education.” And having spent their entire lives in a fact based world the last thing they can handle is being informed that facts are powerless politically unless they are deployed as a technology. (Anything less, even an argument for a technology, is insufficient unless there is zero resistance and the cost is low, neither of which are true in thorium’s case.)
If it’s not obvious, I’m Brandon.
+Brandon Sergent
This is the kind of propaganda we need to stay away from. Let’s spread the word about nuclear technology because the truth does not need spin.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en
Did you guys just sleep through the last 50 years? Alvin HIMSELF couldn’t convince anyone of anything with facts alone.
Why do you think congress is nearly devoid of PHDs? (Honoraries don’t count.) Why are heads of state never scientists?
And Albert, you do realize I founded this place right? I’m very well educated on this topic. Proximity and post moderation alone forced it on me 🙂 Knowing the truth before most other people coupled with a desire to convey facts is why I made this place.
How much more evidence do you need that your view is the one in need of revision here? Still the same irony. No matter the length and density of the parade of facts I present to you, you’ll go right on thinking what you find comfortable to think.
For anyone else who wants to know why:
http://underlore.com/who-owns-your-limbic-system/
If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. And in nuclear case that means paranoia and medieval peasant pitchfork and torch grade fear.
Nuclear will not be adopted because of facts because the facts haven’t changed in 50 years.
For a little lesson in the power of propaganda: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16wwln-freakonomics-t.html?scp=1&sq=the%20jane%20fonda%20effect&st=cse&_r=0
Now granted they were willing to lie, but even if we aren’t we still have to bring emotion to the table because that’s the only way to counter people like Helen Caldicott.
We have to make this MATTER to people if we expect it to ever happen in the west before it happens in china/india, and frankly even then.
P.S. I was president of my college by the way, I saw proof of this with my own eyes from the inside, and the epic rise of college tuition prices and the pandemic replacement of PHD college administrators with MBAs is just one of dozens of facts that will do nothing to dissuade people from climbing into a five figure life debt for no good reason.
And my dad’s career is in the college system. I grew up back stage. Honestly I should have realized the impotence of facts much sooner, but that’s just evidence of how impotent they are isn’t it. Literally right in front of me all day for years, and still I kept blaming other stuff.
I mean seriously, how do you think demonstrably broken policy finds advocates? If facts were the only thing that mattered politics would be much more uniform by now. We all have library humanica in our pockets.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WillieZenk/posts/F98ziSLdqib?cfem=1You don’t even know what fascist means obviously. You remind me of Dave’s younger self in red dwarf calling everything he doesn’t like cryptofascist heheh.And you’ve presented no counter arguments. (Note my lack of shock.) Because you are terrified of me being right. And there are no counter arguments.
Persuasion is a science. You don’t know who Edward Bernays even is 😛
Your emotions are preventing you from parsing facts. And that’s why facts are basically meaningless as persuasion tools unless they are deployed via a technology to impact human self interest.
The irony here is like glacier thick. /giggles
P.S. I know what you meant by education. They’ve intentionally made the terms a false equivalence as part of the sales pitch.
It’s an intricate elegant hideous system.
To understand the difference between education and learning, explore the difference between a compulsory school and a library.
The entire philosophy is different as is beautifully explained in the post I reblogged that no one will read. 🙂
If we can frame these technologies as anti-cancer it would enable us to achieve a number of rhetorical victories:
1. Counter the notion that radiation=cancer in the public mind.
2. Open the door to challenging the Linear no-threshold model by pointing out the millions of cases of radiation being a safe and effective therapeutic and diagnostic tool.
3. Counter the FUD, and trump the abstract death cult hyperbole of the anti-nuke crowd with real contemporary lives saved and lives in need of saving. Seriously, if I had a child sick with leukemia and I realized that nuclear policy was denying or had denied my son or daughter an outright cure I would be a hurricane of rage and in your face activism. Counter-protest, child’s faces on placards, open letter to Helen and the like, etc.
4. We could use it as a filter to identify the fanatics by cornering them into admitting that they would rather people die of cancer than see a nuclear reactor go online somewhere in the desert.
And all that’s just off the top of my head and I’m not near as smart as the upper bounds in this community. We could do SO much better.
But first we have to fucking admit that facts alone vs this kind of entrenched bullshit is about as effective as geisha fans vs tornado season.