"On Likelihood," by Tage Danielsson

             

Monologue from "Under the Double Cuckoo," October-December 1979 prior to the 1980 Swedish referendum on nuclear power. English interpretation by Ken Schubert.

  Likelihood? Now, that's got to mean something that is like truth. But, of course, it isn't so likely that something that is like truth would be as true as truth itself is likely to be, if you get what I mean.

In this day and age, when it's obvious that we no longer can afford to demand genuine truth, we must settle for calculations of likelihood. A crying shame, since those calculations don't quite measure up to actual truth. Not fully so reliable, you might say. For example, as opposed to truth, such calculations tend to vary according to when you make them.

  I mean, before Harrisburg it was highly unlikely that what happened at Harrisburg would actually happen, but right after it happened, the likelihood shot up to just about 100%, so that it was virtually certain that it had happened.

   But please note – only virtually certain. That's the strangest thing about it. It's almost as though they are trying to say that what happened at Harrisburg was so incredibly unlikely that it's still possible that it didn't actually happen at all.

  As it turned out, the entire Social Democratic party decided to wait more than six months to figure out if what happened at Harrisburg had happened or not, so that they could decide whether to believe that nuclear energy is as dangerous as it would be if what happened at Harrisburg had happened. Now they have apparently concluded that what happened at Harrisburg did not happen, but that, on the other hand, we must institute better safety precautions so as to prevent its happening here as well.

  It's easy to understand why they are so dubious, since, according to all calculations of likelihood, an accident of this type occurs but once every several thousand years, so that it certainly is highly unlikely that it would have happened already, given that it is much more likely that it will happen later on. And at that point it will obviously be an entirely different matter. It's most definitely something that we cannot pass judgment on right now. Only then. Right?

   Then there's the fact that if what happened at Harrisburg, against all odds, really happened, then the likelihood that it will happen again is so extraordinarily, so pitifully tiny that you are almost tempted to say that in one sense it is a good thing that what happened at Harrisburg happened, assuming that it did, that is. I mean, in that case you can be just about certain that it's not going to happen again, if you follow me.

  Not in the same place as on the last occasion, at any rate. And most certainly not at the same time.

  The likelihood of a re-occurrence is so small as to be negligible. Which is another way of saying that it doesn't even exist. Kind of.

   The thing is that all this is a little complicated for the average person, so really there's no point in holding a national referendum about it. The general public, in all its vulgarity, tends to think that what happened at Harrisburg actually happened. They take it as a self-evident truth. They fail to understand that something that isn't likely to happen at all is even less likely after it has already happened. Their logical faculties haven't managed to keep up with the latest developments.

  They learned from their parents to always speak the truth. Always speak the truth, children, that's what our parents told us. But we can't say that to our own children – no way, we must teach them to always speak the likelihood. The likelihood, the whole likelihood, and nothing but the likelihood.

   So that they will be able to grasp that what happened at Harrisburg can't happen here, since it didn't even happen there, which would certainly have been the more likely place, considering that it was there that it happened.