Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer": "That'll preach ...."

Christopher Nolan's film
Oppenheimer is based
on the Pulitzer-prize
winning book American
Prometheus by Kai Bird
and Martin J. Sherwin.

I've been sharing with colleagues the suggestion that the release of the new film about the leader of the atomic bomb project, J. Robert Oppenheimer -- Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan -- is an opportunity for preaching and faith discussions on vital issues. (See full announcement below.) 

What am I hoping for? This morning it dawned on me: the reason I think this is such an important opportunity is, "Maybe the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand when everybody has a conscience and stops being a gadget."

The story of Oppenheimer is the battle within J. Robert Oppenheimer between what he felt he wanted -- to do an amazing thing, to have glory, to have power -- and what his conscience told him was important: to lead people away from their destructive impulses. Oppenheimer was responsible, more than any other person, for the successful creation of nuclear weapons. But he also was the most stubborn voice calling for the renunciation of those weapons. And he paid the price for it.

What might happen if people come away from Oppenheimer saying, "This is not about somebody else, and some other time -- this is about me, this is about now!" -- ??

A few years ago I wrote a post about how often we surrender ourselves to the agenda or program or ambition set by others, and before we know it our only choice is to keep "going along" -- "In Whose Machine Will YOU Be a Cog?" In a way, Oppenheimer is about the battle against just being a cog in the machine, just being a "gadget." The call to action in the title of Jaron Lanier's book, You Are Not a Gadget, comes to mind -- as does the irony that the nickname of the first bomb developed in the Manhattan Project was "the gadget."

There's no telling exactly what will be in the film ... or how people will react to it. But one thing is certain. Oppenheimer: "That'll preach ...."

Oppenheimer: A Summer Blockbuster Offers an Opportunity

What will you be preaching about this summer? What will you be discussing in small groups? There will be an opportunity to “preach into the moment” when a unique cultural event occurs this summer with the release on July 21 of a major motion picture: Oppenheimer. The film is based on the choice to develop and use nuclear weapons as told in the book about the Manhattan Project leader entitled, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The $100 million production promises to deal issues of faith and conscience, and to stimulate a national conversation on dangerous technologies and social practices – nuclear weapons, but also AI and all environment-threatening behavior. “We imagine a future, and our imaginings horrify us. … I don’t know if we can be trusted with such a weapon. But we have no choice. Is anyone ever going to tell the truth about what’s happening here?” says Oppenheimer in the film’s trailer.

The mid-summer release is timed to coincide with the anniversary of the first atomic bomb test (“Trinity” – July 16, 1945) and the use by the United States of atomic weapons against Japan weeks later (Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9).

For more on the United Church of Christ (UCC) commitment to preventing the danger presented by nuclear weapons, see “Synod calls U.S. to pull back from brink of nuclear war.”

A Tale of Two Risks: Tsunami and Nuclear Weapons

Oregon coast - Summer 2018

In the summer of 2018, I enjoyed a wonderful visit to the coast of Oregon.

I have long wanted to show all of the photographs of marine creatures we observed while tide-pooling, and the pictures of the fresnel lens from the Yaquina Point Lighthouse, and the sea lions surfing at Cape Arago! It was one of those places where, even before you left, you found yourself planning your next visit; all you want to do is get back again and spend more time there.

Oregon coast - Summer 2018

Sometime after that visit, however, I read about the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the accompanying earthquake and tsunami risk, and I have now come to realize that what I need to show is a different set of images. I have been writing a lot about how bad we are at thinking about catastrophic risk, especially as it relates to nuclear weapons risk, and it seems to me that the Cascadia tsunami risk could be instructive to think about in this context.

Many people became aware of the risk associated with the Cascadia Subduction Zone by reading a 2015 New Yorker article by Kathryn Schulz, "The Really Big One." In it, Schulz describes the peculiar geologic plate characteristics of the Northwest United States coast, the way it leads to catastrophic tsunami risk, the evidence that has been amassed that such events will happen periodically, and the scale of death and destruction likely when human populations are in their path.

The article had a big impact, I think, because people reading it asked themselves, "How could I have not known about this?" -- and then, "I had an idea about earthquakes but this goes way beyond that!" -- and then, "Do I really want to make that trip to Seattle?"

Graphic from Oregon.gov public safety comic entitled
"Without Warning"

For those of us who benefit from seeing moving images, the documentary, "Shockwave: Surviving North America's Biggest Disaster," provides excellent footage of the simulations that scientists and public safety officials in the Pacific Northwest are doing to try to protect populations there. A brief (and rather understated) version of this information is in the video below from Oregon State University:

There is also good footage in this documentary from PBS, available on Youtube: "Will the Cascadia Earthquake be the Worst Disaster North America’s Ever Seen?"

I think it is significant that there is a consensus that over a time horizon that people can imagine -- the next 50 years -- there are odds of this catastrophic event -- about 1 in 3 -- that feel very real. It is interesting to think about what we might do differently if we were able to specify and quantify nuclear weapons risk in the same way.

There are three other things I think are important about this, particularly with regard to thinking about other hard-to-conceptualize catastrophic risks, such as nuclear weapons risk.

(1) Our existing institutions are insufficient. 

There is great work being done by scientists to quantify and otherwise define the associated risk, and by public safety officials to try to get people to prepare. The data has only become clear in recent years, and they are moving as fast as they can. Nonetheless, in our system of social organization, they cannot force anyone to get out of harm's way.

In particular, people's love of the ocean and the tendency to congregate in large number in low-lying coastal areas tend to undermine all of the efforts of scientists and officials to shoo people out of harm's way.

If scientists and officials emphasize the worst scenario, people accuse them of scare tactics. If they emphasize lesser scenarios, people say, "Well, I can handle that!"

(2) Our minds reject the horror associated with this risk. 

When I was in Oregon, I saw tsunami evacuation signs like this:

Tsunami Hazard Zone warning sign
(via OSU's Hinsdale Wave Laboratory)

At the time I thought that meant I might need to be sure to move a few feet inland or I might get my feet wet.

I now know that it referred to risk of the kind Schulz described in that original New Yorker article:

A grown man is knocked over by ankle-deep water moving at 6.7 miles an hour. The tsunami will be moving more than twice that fast when it arrives. Its height will vary with the contours of the coast, from twenty feet to more than a hundred feet. It will not look like a Hokusai-style wave, rising up from the surface of the sea and breaking from above. It will look like the whole ocean, elevated, overtaking land. Nor will it be made only of water—not once it reaches the shore. It will be a five-story deluge of pickup trucks and doorframes and cinder blocks and fishing boats and utility poles and everything else that once constituted the coastal towns of the Pacific Northwest.

I don't want to picture what this would look like. The State of Oregon has provided assistance in some of its public safety literature:

Oregon.gov public safety comic:
"Without Warning"

Or, you can check out another video -- it's got a goofy premise ("What If You Tried to Surf a Tsunami?") but it actually compiles simulations that seem to more closely match the conditions being described by Schulz:

(I notice the video with the goofy premise has been watched by over 6 million people, so maybe that's the way to get the word out . . . . )

I try to imagine myself confronting a tsunami wave like that. Then I try to imagine myself explaining to myself why I put myself in the way of that wave, even after I had known about the risk.

I often go to bed at night thinking, "Is it really true that I could wake up in the morning and hear that it finally happened? And that far from being able to be warned eight hours in advance, in fact, as a little as a few hours or minutes beforehand there would be no warning?" And I wonder how I would go to sleep if I lived there.

(3) People are stubborn. 

There is something about having a home or other structure that makes people resistant to change. I remember watching a documentary about the consequences of Hurricane Sandy in which an official commented upon the reflexive response to "Rebuild!" after natural disaster damage, instead of moving out of harm's way. How much more so do we resist retreat when the risk all lies in the future?

In our society, we tend to say, "everyone's entitled to their opinion," and "we can't tell people what to do." But it seems to me there's an enormous moral hazard generated by our tolerance of the stubbornness of people with respect to certain catastrophic risks. This is especially so when the society as a whole helps bear those risks.

I wonder what might be different about the efforts to protect against nuclear weapons risk if we could learn from the efforts to protect against tsunami risk in the Pacific Northwest, particularly:

(1) Not waiting for institutions to make sure we're protected.

(2) Facing up to what the horror would really look like.

(3) Start asking questions about the naysayers - who will pay the price when the worst really does come to pass?

Catsense (TM): "Because you only have one life to live .... "

 

Would you buy risk management products from this character?

It has been apparent to me for a long time that we have been failing to get people to deal sensibly with the risk of nuclear weapons harm. It's a kind of risk that is at the edge of what we humans are capable of grasping, mathematically ... and ... people don't want to think about it ... but it must also be admitted: we somehow haven't cracked the code on getting people to do what they are able to do!

Now, some have argued that our major weakness to date has been the absence of a suitable spokescat. There was a time when I simply didn't believe this, but I have at last taken this point of view to heart, and after a long series of interviews above have arrived at a provisional arrangement for representation with the feline pictured above.

The problem with getting into bed (so to speak) with a cat is that you can't avoid being subjected to their opinions. This particular cat -- who began referring to himself as "Nine" after viewing a popular series on Netflix -- has many opinions.

Before I had known Nine for very long, Nine began insisting that even if people aren't thinking about the risk of nuclear weapons harm, they are all acting on it. "Consciously or unconsciously, everyone is making a bet on whether they are placing themselves in harm's way," Nine says.

"That's ridiculous," I said to Nine, when Nine first suggested this to me. "The problem is that people don't know enough about the dangers."

"Au contraire," Nine replied. "No one doesn't know about the nuclear arsenals that the US and Russia (and a few other countries) have aimed at each other. Every school kid reads Hiroshima . . . ."

"But if that's true," I said, "how come they're not all working for nuclear disarmament?"

"Because they've placed a different bet," said Nine. "For every one person who's placed a bet on their personal ability to save the world by bringing about nuclear disarmament, millions have place a bet on spending as many of their days as they possibly can as far from trouble as they can get."

"You mean like somebody living in Arkansas with a fallout shelter in the backyard?"

"Well, far away from the National Command Center as possible, anyway?"

"National Command Center?"

"That's Washington, DC, to you."

"Okay, that's just crazy, because then how do you explain all the people who do choose to live and work in Washington, DC?"

"Look" said Nine, "there are all kinds of bets . . . . "

I must have looked glum, because then Nine said, "Hey, cheer up! The important thing, as far as you're concerned, is that whenever there are people making bets, at least some of them will be looking for ways to hedge their bets!"

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"Well . . . ," Nine continued, "I haven't worked out all the details, but there have got to be some ways to help people hedge the risk that they've exposed themselves to by living in a place that's economically robust but too dangerous ... or by living in a place that is safe but too remote. I've already got a name -- Catsense (TM) -- and a slogan: "Because you only have one life to live .... " 

To be continued . . . . 

 

RELATED:

RISK: We Are Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad at Talking About the One That Matters Most 

Taking the Indirect Route to Thinking About the Unthinkable 

Should New York City Get Real About Nuclear War Risk?

City on Fire: Why Chicago's Resolution Opposing the Nuclear Threat Is DIfferent

A Note on Groupthink (and COVID-19, Economic Bubbles, Climate Devastation, World War and Even Bigger Threats)

from the Kristof and Thompson article

We're all trying to wrap our heads around COVID-19 and the mathematics of epidemics.

There was a very good piece by Nick Kristof and Stuart A. Thompson in The New York Times that uses an interactive graph to help one understand how the numbers behave: "How Much Worse the Coronavirus Could Get, in Charts."

I've noticed that all of us have a difficult time sorting out the risk we face individually from the risk to society in aggregate. The problem seems to be that our minds have trouble holding different categories of numbers at the same time.

A related problem is what we are willing to think, and what we feel comfortable saying in conversation with other people.

I made a note of another article that appeared in The New York Times - "Why Did the Coronavirus Outbreak Start in China?" by Yi-Zheng Lian. Lian argues that things got out of hand because of a cultural tendency in China to defer to "the official line" -- or, more to the point, the fear of punishment meted out to anyone who contradicts the official line. Lian writes, "Punishing people who speak the truth has been a standard practice of China’s ruling elite for more than two millenniums and is an established means of coercing stability. It is not an invention of modern China under the Communists — although the party, true to form, has perfected the practice. And now, muzzling the messenger has helped spread the deadly COVID-19, which has infected some 75,000 people."

I have become very wary of broad brush characterizations of peoples and nations. (I come by this wariness honestly, as a recovering Orientalist.) But I was struck by echoes I found in Lian's article of a post I wrote about a decade ago about how the Chinese context sets up a "prisoner's dilemma" that squelches independent voices and independent action: "Merry Christmas, Mr. Liu: The Prisoner's Dilemma in China."

Coincidentally, a few weeks ago I watched an online lecture about the years leading up to World War II in the Pacific. Prof. Mark Ravina makes the case in "War Without a Master Plan: Japan, 1931-1945" (Lecture 19 in Understanding Japan: A Cultural History) that something similar was operating in Japan at the time: the facts showed plainly that Japan was embarking on a path that was doomed, but there was a cultural tendency to acquiesce to what was believed to be the group's overall view. No one wanted to dissent.

Groupthink: the same phenomenon that we see in Florida today, where no one dares utter the words "climate change."

Which brings me to the problem I spend the most time puzzling over: our inability to cope with the risk inherent in the current nuclear weapons regime, and our acquiescence in this state of affairs.

We are all huddled in our homes now. We have a lot of time to think. We have grown tired of watching the same talking heads on the TV news shows. We have begun to reflect, and to have heart-to-heart talks with people we can really level with. And some of us are even beginning to think that maybe we really can live our lives differently.

To do so will require us to think.

And to say what we think.

Is "North Korea" a Two-Word "Scissor Statement"?

I'm glad that Donald Trump is negotiating with Kim Jong-un about denuclearization -- including the inevitable reckoning over what "denuclearization" means. However, as a next round of negotiations about peace in Korea and denuclearization are pending, there is a dilemma that is much on my mind:

Right now, is it more important to do the (very necessary, long-term) work of debunking US prejudice surrounding Korea in general, and North Korea in particular?

Or is the best use of our time and effort to defer -- for the moment -- getting people to reform their thinking about Korea, and instead emphasizing the need to treat the overall nuclear weapons risk with the urgency called for?

Last spring, I devoted much time to writing about the need to overcome US prejudices surrounding Korea. (Links to posts listed below.)

And since last spring, there's been a little progress in the US media and other areas of foreign affairs discourse towards rational discussion of Korea. But just a little. This is the point driven home by an excellent article in The Nation: "US-North Korea Talks Are Moving Decisively to the Diplomatic Phase" by Tim Shorrock.

V @christineahn on Twitter
Naming it: orientalism and jingoism with respect to Korea.

And this dilemma is of some moment, since "North Korea" seems to claim a plurality of the mindshare when people think about (or attempt to think about) nuclear weapons risk. I was reminded of this disproportion reading Michael Lewis' new book, The Fifth Risk. When queried about what we should be worried about, the former Chief Risk Officer at the Department of Energy listed:

(1) Broken arrows (nuclear weapons that get out of control)
(2) North Korea
(3) Iran
(4) Attacks on the electrical grid
(5) Problems with Big Project Management (e.g. Hanford clean-up)

North Korea as the number two worry? That's a pretty big share of worry assigned to a pretty small proportion of the global nuclear weapons threat. A June, 2018, tally of 14,450 nuclear warheads worldwide attributes only 10 to 20 to North Korea:

June 2018 global nuclear warhead count
(each symbol representing FIVE weapons):
Russia: 6,850
US: 6,450
France: 300
China: 270
UK: 215
Pakistan: 140
India: 120 to 130
Israel: 80
North Korea: 10 to 20
(Source: Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki University)

The US and Russia each have at least 300 times as many nuclear weapons as North Korea.

So is it really possible that North Korea is a greater threat to the US than the US is to itself?

I recently learned about the concept of a "scissor statement" -- one that immediately serves to divide people into opposing camps. A scissor statement is so divisive that people stop thinking and stop communicating, and once that happens it is mighty difficult to work cooperatively. The concept is ably described by Scott Alexander in his piece "Sort By Controversial".

To me, it seems likely that "North Korea" is a sort of two-word "scissor statement." And just think what happens when it is combined with another two-word scissor statement -- "Donald Trump." Are we at risk of getting derailed before the conversation can even get started?

I am concerned that we need to do much more to get discussions about nuclear disarmament out of the weeds of disagreeing over "possible scenarios" and into the area of common sense -- that nuclear weapons pose a one-of-a-kind risk, one whose consequences truly threaten to end our world, and whose likelihood is practically unknowable (but certainly real). Maybe a good rule of thumb would be focusing 90% of our dialogue on that core danger, and only then -- possibly -- giving over some portion of our dialog into trying to revise US conventional wisdom (bias, prejudice) about specific contexts like Korea.

I trust I will be having many conversations with colleagues about this in the days ahead . . . .


Post about Korea on Scarry Thoughts

Korea: A History of Living Under Nuclear Terror

The Cynical American Scapegoating of Korea as a Cover for Nuclear Terror

Media analysis series:
A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea.
Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?
When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"
The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret
North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

#Nuclearban Game-Changer: South Korea?

North Korea and #NuclearBan

Who Has Been "Begging for War"?

Is Kim Jong-un giving the US its "Suez Crisis"?

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: "Korea's Place in the Sun" by Bruce Cumings

RISK: We Are Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad at Talking About the One That Matters Most

For citizens to meaningfully participate in eliminating nuclear weapons, there are a number of conversations we need to be prepared to have -- with our associates in the community, and with our representatives in government.

It seems to me that at the top of the list is a conversation about risk.

We tend not to be very good at thinking about risk. Perhaps the canonical example of our difficulty is contained in the question, "What is more dangerous -- flying or driving?" People tend to think of flying as more dangerous, but statistically, per mile traveled, driving is far more dangerous. (Coincidentally, today's New York Times summarizes an updated guide to everyday risks: "Opioids, Car Crashes and Falling: The Odds of Dying in the U.S.")

Two observations:

(1) Many risks -- such as those just mentioned -- represent frequently occurring events. There are specialists (actuaries) who tabulate past occurrences and calculate odds of future occurrences. They provide the basis for the insurance industry.

(2) Even such well-documented and well-described risks are generally met by ordinary people with a very human response: "Great, now can I put this out of my mind?"

In the spectrum of risks, there is another kind of risk: the non-frequently occurring event. To tear an example from today's headlines, what is the risk that a non-politician will be elected president of the US, and then force a government shutdown in order to obtain appropriations for building a wall on the US border with Mexico?

You can venture guesstimates of the likelihood, but there if very little prior information upon which to base them.

(The term "black swan" was recently popularized for the extreme form of such a non-frequently occurring event: something that nobody saw coming.)

Two more observations:

(3) Without actuarial analysis, it is not possible to insure against these kinds of risks in the ordinary way. Still, there are people (risk managers) who do their best to try to make guesstimates of the odds, and to come up with (cost-justified) ways of avoiding such risks.

(4) These kinds of events are particularly susceptible to the natural human response: "I don't have to think about this, do I?"

It was this second type of risk that I focused on when I wrote about the example of a piece of a church facade falling and striking a pedestrian. That example helped me understand how, in advance of an event, it may seem hard to justify devoting a lot of resources to worrying about it; but after the event occurs, its importance becomes all too clear and unavoidable.

How might this be helpful in informing conversations about nuclear weapons risk? Well, it does seem helpful to recognize that nuclear weapons risk is more like the second category of non-frequently occurring event, and less like the category of frequently occurring, actuarial, insurable risks.

But in another sense, we are still not there yet. The truth came home to me the other night when I watched the Errol Morris documentary about Robert McNamara, The Fog of War.  In it, McNamara stresses the point, "With nuclear weapons, there's no learning period." In other words, if and when nuclear weapons are used, there will be no second chance.

This led to an epiphany for me: nuclear weapons risk does not occupy a place within the spectrum of all other risks. It occupies its own unique place. Yes, it is like the other non-frequently occurring events, but it is also different in an important way: the consequences are world-ending. (There was a time when it was fashionable to talk about surviving nuclear war -- contemplating a range of "tragic but distinguishable postwar states" -- but most people have now shed that illusion.)

So: what to do about this unique risk?

*   *   *

It seems to me that the peculiar feature of this risk is that the consequences are so outsized that they obviate any value in trying to suss out the likelihood. For once, we can all agree that something is unknowable.

For instance, I may believe that, under the current circumstances, nuclear war could happen in the next ten years. Another person may believe it could very well happen within one year. Yet a third might say, "The best estimate is that there will be one occurrence in 1,000 years."

But the magnitude of the consequences should make it possible for us to set aside our different guesstimates and focus on the intolerability of the outcome.

(And -- funny thing -- once we set aside our guesstimates it becomes possible to admit to ourselves how little confidence we can have in anyone's assurances about the likelihood/unlikelihood of nuclear war.)

Truly, this is unlike any other risk.

*   *   *

By the way, it might help if this unique risk had a name. For now, I will call it Kappa Risk (like the Greek letter K).

Think of it as the apex or "cap" -- the most outstanding of all risks.

K also happens to be the first letter in Καιρός (Kairos or Caerus), the Greek god of risk.

(Greek letters are used heavily in risk management, though K does not (yet) have a prominent role.)

*   *   *

I guess there is the problem of what to do about people who think there is zero probability of nuclear weapons actually being used -- "It will never happen." In other words, people who believe Kappa Risk doesn't exist.

Perhaps that is a topic for another day.

*   *   *

Even better than a name for this type of risk, I suppose, would be a picture or symbol. If 2018 has taught me anything, it is that an emoji is worth a thousand words.

How to sum up visually the idea of a one-of-a-kind risk, one whose consequences truly threaten to end our world, and whose likelihood is practically unknowable (but certainly real)? Something short and sweet -- representing the need to put this risk squarely on the table and then more forward to eliminate it?

Herewith, a proposal:

Design for an emoji: Kappa Risk.
(The one-of-a-kind risk that characterizes nuclear weapons -
consequences that truly threaten to end our world, and
likelihood that is practically unknowable (but certainly real).)
(Image: Joe Scarry)

(With apologies to The Emoji Movie.)

Now: in what ways might we be able to better accomplish our work as citizens once we can converse clearly about the singular risk of nuclear weapons?