[Gerben42]

Hi, I'm looking for the Feynman quotation from the Challenger disaster. He said something along the lines that those who understand the technology are at the bottom of a large organisation, while those who don't know anything except how to manipulate the opinion of others are at the top.

Anyone have it? I only have it in German, it summarizes well the current situation about the decision to phase-out nuclear power.

Google translation back from German:

"Those who know something about the real world, form the lowest level in these large organizations, and those who only know how to influence other people by telling them how beautiful the world could be in the ideal case, form the top "

[helene_t]

Probably not what you are looking for, but I found this nice quote:

Quote

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

as the closing remark of
http://science.ksc.n.../Appendix-F.txt

[whereagles]

I don't live in Germany, but it sounds like phasing out nuclear only has to do with the coming general election, in which the CDU is set for an embarassing result. Merkel is desperately trying to turn the tide with some idiotic (but popular) measures, like nuclear and punishment of EU countries in a debt crisis.

This is to no avail. In times of economic growth, like the ones Germany is living, trade unions gain strength, thus the SPD is very, very likely to win.

[Elianna]

ETA: LOL, I missed Helene's post. I will leave mine up, anyway, because I included some websites.

Gerben42, on 2011-July-04, 10:23, said:

Hi, I'm looking for the Feynman quotation from the Challenger disaster. He said something along the lines that those who understand the technology are at the bottom of a large organisation, while those who don't know anything except how to manipulate the opinion of others are at the top.

Anyone have it? I only have it in German, it summarizes well the current situation about the decision to phase-out nuclear power.

Google translation back from German:

"Those who know something about the real world, form the lowest level in these large organizations, and those who only know how to influence other people by telling them how beautiful the world could be in the ideal case, form the top "

I have only found this quote:

Quote

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

on both a blog: http://timpanogos.wo...blic-relations/
and wikipedia: http://en.wikiquote....Richard_Feynman

(although just because they're on two different things does not mean that they're not made up by the same person.) They both cite the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, appendix (1986), so maybe that would be a good place to start looking? I have to finish making lunch!

This post has been edited by Elianna: 2011-July-04, 13:41

[Gerben42]

Elianna, hope the upvote compensates the lack of "like" button
Enjoy your day off!

@whereagles: Idiotic but popular summarizes it well. The government has now promised tax cuts in 2013. It will require two more years to figure out that the reason that they CANNOT make the tax cut is because they just shut down the safest nuclear power plants in the world and miss out on billions of sales tax, which will instead be paid in France and Czech Republic by operating NPP (which do not have to follow the German regulations). That is of course not counting the destruction of jobs and jeopardizing the stability of the European electricity system (thus endangering more jobs).

For those of you who think this is all just lobbyism, I can gladly provide the hard facts. There is a reason they are not out in the open: Inconvenient truths are rarely told by politicians.
If anyone wants to be informed about the stupidity of this, just let me know. The strange thing is, if any party would be brave enough to support reality instead of public relations (as Feynman suggests) and is able to sell it, they should be able to hope for a huge voter support. The fact that no party does this suggests that ALL political parties think that the voter is stupid on average, and is probably right...

[whereagles]

Well, probably it is also an inconvenient truth that nuclear power is much better for your health than dirty coal plants. Divide the total death toll per total kilowatt-hour production for both sources and I'm pretty sure nuclear blows away coal. Obviously, this must include indirect, cancer induced, deaths from both.

By the way, parties have this tendency to take people for fools, but people are not that stupid. A month ago we had a general election here in Portugal. The prime-minister at the time kept a farse over our country's real economic situation going on for like 2 years. The people started to realize it was all a fachade so when the time came, he was promptly sacked with the worst electoral result for his party in 22 years.

Bottom line here is, and I quote,

"You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

[blackshoe]

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." - Abraham Lincoln

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled" is the last line of Feynman's appendix to the Rogers Report.

Heh. I downloaded two allegedly accurate copies of the report. In one, the Feynman quote is also the last line of the Conclusions. In the other, it doesn't appear at all. Go figure.

[mgoetze]

Gerben42, on 2011-July-04, 14:52, said:

the safest nuclear power plants

Eh? You're saying the old German plants are safer than anything built in the past 10 years?

[Cyberyeti]

mgoetze, on 2011-July-05, 09:27, said:

Eh? You're saying the old German plants are safer than anything built in the past 10 years?

Well they're not likely to suffer from earthquake, tsunami or volcano so they're off to a good start

[Gerben42]

mgoetze, on 2011-July-05, 09:27, said:

Eh? You're saying the old German plants are safer than anything built in the past 10 years?

That would be my educated guess, yes. There is a reason that German NPP are many times world champion in availability and safety. Surely the anti-nuclear sentiments in the population are part of it, but most of it is German safety culture. Acceptable risk doesn't compute for most Germans. They don't like nuclear power, they don't like investing in the stock market and they absolutely don't like to play games of chance for money.

It is my opinion that Isar 1 (first light in 1977, now shut down) is safer than Temelin (plant in Czech Republic that went into service 2002 and is one of the places where my electricity now comes from in peak hours). How can this be? Because Isar has always kept up with new issues and has very elaborate emergency procedures. Almost every time when we brought up a scenario, the safety chiefs said: "Well, in that case we have a solution and it is documented in procedure X."

The Bavarian minister of environmental issues visited Isar early 2011 and praised the reliability and safety. 6 weeks later, he must have suffered amnesia as he was among the first to suggest that this plant should be shut down.

[y66]

From What Do You Care What Other People Think Bantam Edition November 1989 page 214

Quote

Meanwhile, I would guess, the engineers at the bottom are saying, "No, no! We can't make that many flights. If we had to make that many flights, it would mean such-and-such!" And, "No, we can't do it for that amount of money, because that would mean we'd have to do thus-and-so!"

Well, the guys who are trying to get Congress to okay their projects don't want to hear such talk. It's better if they don't hear, so they can be more "honest"—they don't want to be in the position of lying to Congress! So pretty soon the attitudes begin to change: information from the bottom which is disagreeable—"We're having a problem with the seals; we should fix it before we fly again"—is suppressed by big cheeses and middle managers who say, "If you tell me about the seals problems, we'll have to ground the shuttle and fix it." Or, "No, no, keep on flying, because otherwise, it'll look bad," or "Don't tell me; I don't want to hear about it."

Maybe they don't say explicitly "Don't tell me," but they discourage communication, which amounts to the same thing. It's not a question of what has been written down, or who should tell what to whom; it's a question of whether, when you do tell somebody about some problem,they're delighted to hear about it and they say "Tell me more" and "Have you tried such-and-such?" or they say "Well, see what you can do about it"—which is a completely different atmosphere. If you try once or twice to communicate and get pushed back, pretty soon you decide,"To hell with it."

So that's my theory: because of the exaggeration at the top being inconsistent with the reality at the bottom, communication got slowed up and ultimately jammed. That's how it's possible that the higher-ups didn't know.

[PassedOut]

y66, on 2011-July-08, 06:01, said:

From What Do You Care What Other People Think Bantam Edition November 1989 page 214

Quote

Well, the guys who are trying to get Congress to okay their projects don't want to hear such talk. It's better if they don't hear, so they can be more "honest"—they don't want to be in the position of lying to Congress! So pretty soon the attitudes begin to change: information from the bottom which is disagreeable—"We're having a problem with the seals; we should fix it before we fly again"—is suppressed by big cheeses and middle managers who say, "If you tell me about the seals problems, we'll have to ground the shuttle and fix it." Or, "No, no, keep on flying, because otherwise, it'll look bad," or "Don't tell me; I don't want to hear about it."

The same thing happens in large corporations unless the management is very strong. As a young middle manager, I had people take me aside and actually use the words, "Don't rock the boat." Many managers have gotten themselves into positions where they really depend upon the salary and bonuses from an employer, so find it hard to contradict statements they know to be (to put it gently) over-optimistic.

[y66]

Does anything suck more than people getting pushed back or ignored and saying the hell with it? Besides my poetry posts I mean, which, of course, I do not intend to abandon ever.

[PassedOut]

y66, on 2011-July-08, 07:27, said:

Does anything suck more than people getting pushed back or ignored and saying the hell with it? Besides my poetry posts I mean, which, of course, I do not intend to abandon ever.

Your poetry posts have changed my behavior (hard to do at my age). Never looked at Writer's Almanac before I saw those posts of yours, but now I go there on my own. A regular treat.