[PREV - FALSE_CENTER]    [TOP]

DYSON

                                                  March 15, 2001
Freeman Dyson is a
really interesting case.

As a teenager in the
thirties he was a
serious pacifist.

He then went to work for the RAF during
WWII, helping to plan bombing patterns,
attempting to re-create the Dresden firestorm.

Afterwards (was he involved at Los Alamos?
Don't think so, but don't remember) he
worked on developing some nuclear power plants.

He's now completely opposed to nuclear power,
at least using the conventional fission/water       December 2006:
circulating boiler systems that are in use          In a recent
today.                                              appearence at a
                                                    Long Now talk, he
                                                    mentioned in
It does not quite make                              passing being in
sense to call him                                   favor of nuclear
wishy-washy, I would not                            power.  Did I
accuse him of merely                                get him wrong five
blowing in the wind...                              years ago?  Or
                                                    is this another
   But all these changes do                         change?
   give me some pause.

I also don't think that it would make sense
to call him "unprincipled", unable to stick
to a cause over the long haul: there are many
cases you could point to where he has.

You could even say "this is good, he's not
dogmatic, he's willing to change his mind".

      Still.



  An advocate of bottom-up,
  distributed decision          MULTIPLICITY
  making,

  "economies of speed" over
  "economies of scale",

  and yet not an advocate of
  libertarian laissez-faire.

               FREEMAN_DOWN



--------
[NEXT - GLASS_KEY]