An Apology to the Insiders

We may be the only source of higher intelligence in the cosmos, but our act of avoiding nuclear power generation is one of auto-genocide.[James Lovelock, 2019]

The choir includes some insiders, men who unlike me have spent their entire careers in nuclear power. Some of them are quite unhappy with the Gordian Knot News. The ones I've heard from don't dispute the facts. They agree that the system is horribly screwed up. Their problem is not even the GKG solution, although some can't bring themselves to agree with UCert. What bugs them is the style. As one put it "your accusatory finger-pointing at the people who comprised the budding nuclear industry back in the day".

I don't point fingers at people. I point fingers at an autogenocidal system. I sympathize with the people that devoted their lives to that system. Almost all of them thought they were doing the right thing. That's what a bad system does.

There is no nice way of saying you were duped. There is no nice way of saying the world would be a better place if your job disappeared. But someone with better people skills would have prevented your-blaming-the-people interpretation of my argument.

I could have pointed out, if I were part of that tragically misguided system, I would probably have behaved similarly. In fact, there is strong evidence that I would have done just that. Early in my career working for the US Navy, I uncovered a computer error that was costing the taxpayers $500,000 1962 dollars per year in salaries. Far more importantly, it was resulting in ships that did not perform to Spec, and could result in dangerous situations.

I wrote up a report and gave it to my boss. The problem was, if this error were corrected, his 15 man group would have no reason to exist. He quashed the report. To my eternal shame, I did not attempt to go around him.

I know what it's like to be caught up in a screwed up system. I should have made it much clearer to the insiders, that my target is an autogenocidal system, not them. For that I apologize.