On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 12:23 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sunday 27 November 2011 23:34:27 Binand Sethumadhavan wrote: >> On 27 November 2011 23:12, Dinesh Shah (દિનેશ શાહ/दिनेश शाह) >> >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > BTW, far more number of people die in road and rail accidents in India >> > and around the world than nuclear reactors going bust. >> > >> > Should we ban all road and rail travel? after all auto-mobiles and >> > rail are also considered technology. >> >> This particular meme seems to be absolutely standard around the world, >> to be used in all scenarios where one wants to enforce one's point of >> view. And of course, it is plain wrong. >> >> Road accidents can be certainly reduced by banning road travel, and >> that is obviously not a decision you want to make. So you will start >> by identifying particular stretches of roads that seem to be more >> dangerous than others and (a) ban traffic on those stretches, or (b) >> improve those stretches to eliminate the accident-causing factors. >> Since banning is still not an option, you will turn to the latter. >> >> If you do that in a structured way, you will also further emerge with >> metrics like "accidents per 1000 vehicles" or "accidents per 1000 >> route-km" and so on, that will allow you to meaningfully compare two >> separate stretches of roads. >> >> And then you will attempt to do a similar analysis with a planned >> nuclear reactor. You will end up realizing that in terms of the metric >> that can be meaningfully compared - like "deaths per 1000 population" >> or "deaths per year of operation" - your average nuclear reactor is >> several orders of magnitude more dangerous that your average state >> highway. >> >> Now you will start factoring in the probability of a failure. At which >> point, after investigating the geological and other factors, you will >> hopefully realize the killer legacy our current incumbent in the PMO >> is hell bent on leaving for our children. > > Well said. > > There was a similiar strawman argument "more people die of shark bites than > nuclear accidents''. Ofcourse ofcourse. BUT the death rate is near 100% when > your boat meets with an accident in shark infested waters. And more > importantly it stops with you. You see, your wife on the beach does not get > killed 30 years later automagically.
It looks like whatever argument put forward here is not convenient to your, it becomes "strawman argument". :-) Since you don't like road accident argument I will change to fire. We have learned a great deal to use and control fire. Still fire causes death and destruction. We sure don't want to stop using fire for current and future gen? > > Unfortunately one has to deal with these type of factually wrong statements > all the while. Really? I would like to know which are wrong statements? (so I can learn to make right statements :-) ) What I am trying to put forward is simple case - all technology, including nuclear is inherently neutral in nature. It's the way it's uses that makes it either branded good or bad. Simple point here - this forum itself is and can be used or/and misused. Does this make this forum/mailing list bad or evil? With regards, -- --Dinesh Shah :-) Shah Micro System Pvt. Ltd. +91-98213-11906 +91-9833-TICKET http://www.shahmicro.com http://iopt.in http://crm.iopt.in Blog: http://dineshah.wordpress.com -- http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
