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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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And if everyone here is pro-nuclear, why is that? Are mottizens just more rational than everyone else, or is it because of chronic contrarianism?

Remember The Motte is an intellectual offshot of a movement that finds torturing someone for fifty years to prevent 3^^^3 people from getting dust in their eye a compelling moral dilemma. Ask the average Jane on the street. She'll choose dust and not even think about it.

We're in a filter bubble that selected for people inclined to considerations like "the realistic alternative to a new nuclear plant now is coal, and coal emissions will cause Y QALYs lost to cancer, compared to Z risk of a nuclear accident causing a few thousand deaths and making a 30mi by 30mi area around the plant uninhabitable for 3000~ years". Even doing these calcuations mentally and filling in made-up statistics, I think the case for nuclear ends up looking rosy.

Most people, even most pro-nuclear people, do not think this way.