Reply #21: My point isn't about promoting automatic trust... [View All]

[Silent3]

...it's about the diametric opposite, distrust so reflexive and automatic that, where you wouldn't have even worried about something at all if no one said anything, as soon as a government or company says something's safe or "an acceptable risk" you're in a panic... perhaps even in some cases doing stuff to yourself that's more dangerous than any real risk, like taking iodine tablets when you live in New York.

I can easily see people "protecting" their families by fleeing a radiation leak in such numbers and so recklessly that the traffic fatalities from the ensuing panic easily end up outweighing the real risk the radiation turned out to pose.

At any rate, I'm not even pro nuke. I'm not so anti-nuke that I would shut off every reactor totally disregarding the health hazards of fossil fuel replacements either. The best alternative is renewable energy, but we haven't developed that enough yet for it to meet our current energy needs.

"Agent Orange, Ground Zero, Chernobyl....pardon me if I don't trust a damn thing the government or EPA say."

What about the thousands upon thousands of things that people have been reassured weren't a danger... and they turned out NOT to have been a danger? Counting the failures (which are spectacular) and discounting the successes (which are boring and uneventful) leads to a distorted perspective. (See "confirmation bias".)