[HN Gopher] No Experience Necessary (2003)
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No Experience Necessary (2003)
Author : Tomte
Score : 26 points
Date : 2024-04-13 07:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.sagepub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.sagepub.com)
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| My understanding is that it isn't enough to know how to build a
| nuclear weapon, or even to have the materials. Uranium and
| plutonium will kill you very quickly in a machine shop setting if
| you don't also have the right protective equipment and a whole
| lot of practical experience.
|
| Don't underestimate how hard it would be to assemble an actual
| working bomb.
| mike256 wrote:
| It depends on your goal. If you want to build the bomb and
| survive in the long run, it will be difficult. If you just want
| to make a big bang with no other requirements, unfortunately
| it's pretty easy to do.
|
| We could be happy about the two things that it is not that easy
| to get enough plutonium in the required purity and that most
| people love their lives.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| Is it possible that most terrorist groups understand the
| cost/benefit trade off? In other words, if you have folks
| capable of designing and/or assembling a nuclear device,
| those aren't people you just throw away.
|
| I understand that terrorists don't value lives highly, but
| you don't see experienced bombmakers actually conducting
| suicide attacks for a reason. They're valuable alive.
| blindstitch wrote:
| At the risk of getting us all put on a list, could you say some
| more about what machining the stuff safely involves?
| petermcneeley wrote:
| And yet there has never been a single nuclear device used or
| tested by non state actors. Why?
|
| The answer is that anyone with the ability and resources has no
| incentive. If you are smart and driven enough to build a device
| you can certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig.
| mjevans wrote:
| A very solid argument for making emigration of productive
| workers easier.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > If you are smart and driven enough to build a device you can
| certainly go out and get pretty good programming gig.
|
| The job market/job opportunities for programmers is/are much
| worse in many other countries. Also consider that many
| programming jobs that exist are actually quite boring (think
| into the direction of implementing LoB applications in a
| department that is considered a cost center instead of profit
| center). In my experience, there exist not that many
| programming jobs that give satisfaction to highly smart people,
| and getting such a job often requires some very specific traits
| that are quite different from raw intelligence.
| krisoft wrote:
| > there has never been a single nuclear device used or tested
| by non state actors. Why?
|
| Simple. Because to enrich the required materials you need a big
| operation which sticks out like a sore thumb. There are people
| actively looking for these with the intent to distrupt them. By
| the time you are big and sophisticated enough to evade these
| efforts you are basically a state actor in anything but maybe
| name.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| I agree with you that this is certainly a challenge but I
| dont think this is an insurmountable obstacle for a very
| intelligent individual.
| fragmede wrote:
| David Hahn respectfully disagrees
| kirubakaran wrote:
| How do you explain that most countries that want to become
| nuclear powers aren't able to do it?
| Tomte wrote:
| Because they need to get the materials, which the PhDs in the
| experiment didn't have to, since it was all hypothetical.
|
| And because all the other countries actively work against you
| getting the bomb.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| And brain drain.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| And it is hard to control this kind of emigration
| kirubakaran wrote:
| If all it takes is 3 smart motivated post-docs with no
| experience, then wouldn't the brain drain need to be 100%
| for it to be the reason?
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The problem is that many things are correlated. The
| possibility that one has the capacity (in all its forms)
| to achieve such a project while at the same time
| harboring such socially hostile goals is like zero.
|
| The calculus is not simply 95% brain drain so 5% not
| drain so 5% will behave in this way. There is correlation
| between being in each group.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| I have the same optimistic belief as you, but I wonder if
| the world really works like that. Meta employees (who are
| by definition smart enough to get the job) haven't all
| quit after reading the studies that show that Instagram
| usage results in teen depression and suicides.
|
| Or perhaps that supports your point. The smart people
| with fluid morality are vacuumed up by the Metas of the
| world, leaving none that would build a nuke for a third
| world dictator.
| krisoft wrote:
| > that most countries that want to become nuclear powers aren't
| able to do it
|
| How do you know this?
|
| The thing is that most countries don't want to become nuclear
| powers because there is a carefully setup and maintained set of
| incentives against it. This involves both carrots (you get good
| things if you don't want nukes) and sticks (bad things happen
| to you if you do want nukes).
|
| This set of incentives failed a few times and that is how we
| got nuclear proliferation. Almost everyone who wanted nukes
| enough despite this set of incentives were able to do it.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| > How do you know this?
|
| I can't know for sure of course. But it seems reasonable to
| me to think that at least most of the dictators would want to
| have nukes to keep their hold on power. And there are many.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/dictators...
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Most dictators are not being over-thrown by foreign powers.
| Nukes as a deterrence would seem to have little impact
| there.
|
| Unless you have a clear and immediate use, having a nuclear
| program seems like a very expensive money sink.
| jart wrote:
| Five eyes probably kills anyone who tries.
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