> It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress.

I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite was true, at least with the theory part. AI didn't really go anywhere for decades, because people focused too much on theory.

Otherwise, there's a lot of data and hardware at your disposal, even from the comfort of your home.

> Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

You mean they guys that are training with videogames that people like John developed?

I don't think the power dynamics are that clear. The Saudi state is not at all under total control of MBS. Formally, his father is in power, there are other potential heirs to the throne. There is the possibility of intrigue.

In hindsight, it wouldn't make sense for MBS to order this killing, but it would make sense for a rival to blame the murder on him. That's hindsight of course. Equally plausible is the scenario where MBS is so self-absorbed, he orders the killing without regard to potential consequences.

> You've got to be kidding.

It is plausible in the sense of "plausible deniability". Imagine MBS saying something like "That Khashoggi guy, I wish somebody hacked him to pieces!".

You can interpret that as an order, or you can interpret that as a more casual remark of frustration. If you're ordering a murder, you may well want that kind of ambiguity in the order.

Furthermore, sometimes an unwise underling implements the perceived will of the dear leader in a way that is counter to their interest, e.g the assassination of Pompey "on behalf" of Julius Caesar.

There's no such thing as bad publicity.

Do you really think that's what he should have said? Because that sounds like a vastly dumber thing to say, even if it's "honest".

The "rogue operation" story is "good enough". It's plausible. That doesn't mean it's true of course. It doesn't have to be. Nobody has to actually believe it. It's just good enough so that everyone involved can save the minimum amount of face required to move on.

The reason that the murder can be considered "a mistake" is that the fallout was far greater than estimated. Consider that the Saudis are killing political opponents all the time with very few issues.

It's probably the grandeur of the plot that made the difference here. If Khashoggi had just been shot in the streets by "unknown assailants" (Putin style), it wouldn't have been that big a deal.

Look, as far as the broader argument for or against nuclear goes, we are one the same side. I actually want you to have strong position.

> Of course you can't calculate the risk of being run by an opressive regime like the soviet union or ignorance/incompetence by those who granted Fukushima rights to build.

You can not by decree avoid ignorant people and/or incompetent people and/or less-than-ideal political frameworks. You need the wrong people to do the right thing.

> Neither is an argument against nuclear and it's an unrealistic standard to set from my perspective and it's not a problem in the west.

This is really just moving the goalpost. What if due to incompetence/negligence some reactor in a politically/economically deteriorating France blows up? Are you going to say "it's not a problem in America"?

You just keep repeating the mantra that it "isn't an argument". In reality it is an argument that "the other side" uses all the time. You're hurting your own credibility. You may disagree that it's a good argument, but it is an argument.

Now here's my standpoint: We can't by law require operators to purchase insurance that cannot exist. This is an impossible demand of "the other side", presented as a "cost" argument. It just doesn't help to say "but there is insurance!" when that insurance doesn't cover what we're actually talking about.

However, while we cannot calculate an insurance plan, we can pit the actual costs of either wind/solar against nuclear, including potential disasters and including CO2 prices and including the required buffering. I'm fairly confident that nuclear could come out on top even with one or two trillion-dollar disasters in the estimation. Remember, "the other side" just made a cost argument.

At another level, the argument for nuclear changes as the technology changes, newer and safer designs should have exponentially less dramatic worst-case failure scenarios. If "the other side" keeps factoring in speculative cost reductions in both production and storage facilities, so can we.

> I am not ignoring anything I am simply pointing to the fact that when we talk wind and solar the true cost isn't calculated whereas with nuclear it is.

I agree with you on wind/solar. I'm just going one step further and admit that with nuclear, the true cost isn't calculated either.

> And with regards to the insurance of catastrophes then Three Mile Island was paid by the insurance.

That convinces absolutely no one of anything. It's not what I was talking about as insuring a nuclear disaster. Don't waste your time making this point, it's worthless.

> Fukushima disaster happened not because of the nuclear powerplant but because of a tsunami, it was also the tsunami not Fukushima that killed thousands of people and Tjernobyl was owned and operated by the state so who else should pay for it?

It doesn't matter to the argument if a nuclear reactor blows up because of a tsunami, or an earthquake or Homer Simpson. It's a catastrophic failure case of enormous cost, and it's not insured, no money is being put into a fund to cover it, those costs are not taken into account when calculating the economics of nuclear energy. If such an insurance existed, it would be vastly more expensive for reactors built in a risk area like the Tsunami coast of Japan, so Fukushima Dai-ichi may have never been built.

> All sources of energy have financial consequences if they go wrong, we use them anyway because the value they provide to society vastly outperform occasional disasters.

All energy sources aren't equal though. The value to society is cost/risk vs benefit. We're looking for the best deal here. The "catastrophic failure" scenario of wind energy is obviously completely different from that of nuclear power plants. That's a cost that's very difficult to estimate, but it is significant. You can't just ignore it.

> It's still not an argument against the safest and cleanest form of energy we have.

The fact that there's unfunded potential liabilities of enormous extent is an argument against nuclear energy. I'm not against nuclear energy at all, but let's be real here.

This isn't an insurance against catastrophic failure on the order of Fukushima or Chernobyl, which run into the hundreds of billions, if not trillions.

Of course you can have an insurance pool that covers arbitrarily small sums at arbitrarily low fees. That's missing the point.

The negative prices paid on EPEX did not exist until 2007 on the German/Austrian market[1], which clearly coincides with the green energy rollout in Germany.

The marginal cost of renewables isn't zero, producing it causes more wear and tear than not producing it. Furthermore, if you pay negative prices as a result of a renewable surge, that might as well be considered into the marginal cost.

Even if the marginal cost was zero, you gave coal/nuclear as the cause for negative energy prices, even though they didn't exist before renewables came into the picture. You may claim that the situation is better with the renewables in the mix, but you can't claim that renewables aren't the ultimate cause of negative prices in this case.

Similarly, you may claim that coal/nuclear are slow/expensive to regulate, but then must also concede that wind/solar can't be regulated up at all and couldn't provide a stable supply without e.g. natural gas, or a buffering solution that currently doesn't exist (at scale) and isn't priced into wind/solar.

> Negative grid prices are the consequences of power plants which cannot shut down in times of oversupply, that is mainly coal and nuclear.

Riddle me this, then: Why did negative energy prices emerge along with renewables[1]?

The problem isn't coal/nuclear, because the variance in demand is far lower than the variance in output of renewables. Furthermore, both coal and nuclear plants can be adjusted to react to seasonal variance.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-...

Insured by whom? You need to understand how insurance companies operate: They gather data, they calculate the risk vs. the cost of paying out, they add a markup - that's your price. There is not enough data to do this with catastrophic nuclear accidents.