[HN Gopher] Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to t...
___________________________________________________________________
Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear
gambler's ruin
Author : SvenSchnieders
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-03-03 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unfashionable.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unfashionable.substack.com)
| geoka9 wrote:
| > Put differently, Putin does not roll a dice every morning and
| launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up. Even he himself
| cannot meaningfully answer the question "What's the probability
| that Russia will launch nuclear missiles 6 months from now"
| unless his answer is 100%. It depends on many factors, like how
| NATO reacts and how strong the Ukraine military is, none of which
| can be captured by probabilities.
|
| There's a guy[0] who spent a career analyzing and writing about
| these things.
|
| His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved
| in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it
| wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either. According to
| Piontkovsky, (to Putin,) there's no essential difference, and the
| (lack of) NATO membership reason provided by NATO is a lame
| excuse indicative of a lack of resolve to commit, NATO member or
| not. So Putin is willing to keep upping the ante until NATO folds
| and becomes irrelevant.
|
| [0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R..
| .
| nl wrote:
| > His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly
| involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's
| mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either.
|
| The link posted was from 2015.
|
| I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that indicates
| that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.
|
| Instead, on Twitter he shared this Feb 27 story (not by him)
| that indicated Putin has a great fear of NATO forces:
|
| _But this underestimates Russian respect for NATO's
| conventional military power, which is far greater than its own.
| The only language Putin understands is force, and Moscow did
| not retaliate after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane
| in 2015 or when the United States struck and killed Russian
| mercenaries in 2018_
|
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-26/m...
| geoka9 wrote:
| > I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that
| indicates that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.
|
| For now, I can only find sources in Russian, e.g. this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv-WB8AXLKs
|
| https://echo.msk.ru/blog/piontkovsky_a/2988037-echo/
| virgilp wrote:
| I don't buy this. The NATO message was clear & consistent that
| they will intervene in case of an attack on a member - there's
| 0 reason to believe otherwise. In fact, I'd say that current
| response in Ukraine enforces this (though it's not a NATO
| member it got plenty of offensive equipment, intelligence,
| money, support, etc. - basically everything possible short of
| direct declaration of war / direct military involvement from
| all NATO members).
|
| Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's
| no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this.
| And he probably knows it. This is the weakest position he can
| be in - if the west attacked him, he could at least mobilize
| the Russians to "defend against western aggression" and could
| even justify the nuclear bombs to his generals; As things
| stand, his rhetoric and position are very shaky (he's not being
| defeated by mighty USA, but by the "weak" Ukrainians who
| "aren't even a nation")
| geoka9 wrote:
| > The NATO message was clear & consistent that they will
| intervene in case of an attack on a member - there's 0 reason
| to believe otherwise.
|
| How did Putin take that message? I think that's the only
| thing that matters at this point.
|
| > Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces,
| there's no way he can (politically, if not physically)
| survive this.
|
| _If_ that mythos was blown to pieces, in the eyes of the
| Russian public. That remains to be seen.
| asah wrote:
| And _if_ the general public of Russia still matters...
|
| ...and _if_ a viable alternative leader exists...
| [deleted]
| kitrose wrote:
| I don't get the direct connection between response from a non-
| NATO country being attacked and a NATO member.
|
| If Putin tries to invade Latvia, the default assumption in this
| analysis is that NATO will just crumble rather than respond?
| geoka9 wrote:
| > I don't get the direct connection between response from a
| non-NATO country being attacked and a NATO member.
|
| The idea is that the lack of NATO membership is just a
| formality. In any other aspect, Ukraine is a much more
| important geopolitical asset than said Latvia (with all due
| respect to the Latvians - I'm just imagining the way it plays
| out in Putin's head. Or at least the way I understand
| Piontkovsy here).
|
| > If Putin tries to invade Latvia, the default assumption in
| this analysis is that NATO will just crumble rather than
| respond?
|
| Yep. Piontkovsky even describes a potential limited nuclear
| strike scenario as part of the raising of stakes by Putin.
| AKA "are you willing to die for Narva[0]?"
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narva
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean I find these analysis absurd, they seem based on the
| ideas not just that Putin is irrational but also that he
| knows nothing about the very things we would assume he
| knows about, stuff like how treaties and military alliances
| work.
|
| I could totally understand some guy on the street thinking
| hey Latvia is nothing, if they won't defend the Ukraine
| then they won't defend Latvia but why would a guy with
| supposed knowledge of military history and how alliances
| can often cause nations who are allied to come in to wars
| they would otherwise rather keep out of think such a thing.
|
| In fact I would assume his kneejerk opinion would be to
| believe that the only way to get all these weak nations to
| actually go to war would be if an attack happened on a NATO
| nation.
| geoka9 wrote:
| > why would a guy with supposed knowledge of military
| history and how alliances can often cause nations who are
| allied to come in to wars
|
| There's no military history of nuclear wars. This could
| be the difference in Putin's head.
| krisoft wrote:
| > His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly
| involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's
| mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either.
|
| That's a weird take. Ukraine is not a NATO member, NATO can
| choose to fight for them or can choose to not fight for them.
| Latvia is a NATO member. If Latvia is attacked and the NATO
| doesn't fight for them NATO stops being a thing immediately.
| The 5th article is a cornerstone of the whole aliance. It is
| not an optional "and one more thing" but the reason to join the
| aliance at all, if it becomes shaky that undermines the whole
| thing.
|
| I wouldn't dare to guess what goes on in Putin's mind, but I
| also don't see any reason why he would think that.
| geoka9 wrote:
| > If Latvia is attacked and the NATO doesn't fight for them
| NATO stops being a thing immediately.
|
| That's what he might be betting on. To be fair, a series of
| decisions[0] by the West over the last decades might have led
| him to believe the West may not have the stomach for war with
| Russia, especially when it comes to defending new NATO
| members.
|
| [0]
|
| - Invasion of Georgia in 2008: no meaningful response to
| Russia
|
| - Obama's "red lines" in Syria
|
| - Annexation of Crimea in 2014: no meaningful response to
| Russia
|
| - Invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014: ditto
|
| - Invasion of the rest of Ukraine (under way): response
| limited to sanctions for Russia and supplies for the
| Ukrainians
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think this take is exactly what needs to be considered.
|
| We draw a line, it's NATO. Russia steps right up to the line
| by attacking Ukraine, and NATO does nothing. Is he going to
| believe that the line is still there? Why not test it?
|
| In my mind it's perfectly plausible that NATO squirms out if
| Latvia is attacked. Then the line is "core NATO" or something
| like that.
|
| At the very least if he doesn't test article 5, he can take
| every country that isn't in NATO, and each time the question
| grows about whether NATO is actually a thing.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Why not test it?
|
| Be our guest. Test it.
|
| It doesn't start with "and then Russia attacked Latvia".
| They are not the Fire Nation. They need time to line up
| their logistics which will give time for NATO to detect
| their moves and amass troops in Latvia. Heck they were only
| lining up to attack a non-NATO country (Ukraine) and NATO
| sent extra troops to Latvia.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-nato-military-moves-
| send-...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Why not test it?
|
| Because it's not a thing where you say "let's test this out
| today." It takes months or years to get to this point. I'm
| hoping NATO would respond to a build-up on the Latvian
| border with a build-up of their own. Making it clear that
| there is no easy win.
|
| There's no reason to just sit there and wait for the tanks
| to roll across the line.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think, also, that faced with a similar situation with a
| NATO member as the target, the whole process would be
| different. NATO isn't going to wait for an invasion before
| responding, IMO. Pretty quickly after there is an obvious
| build-up of military equipment at the border with Latvia, I
| expect NATO would start matching it tank-for-tank. Might as
| well make it clear that even without nuclear weapons it's
| going to be a bloody fight.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| > I expect NATO would start matching it tank-for-tank
|
| I think you're being very optimistic here. Before the
| invasion, there were so many people in saying Putin was
| just bluffing. Certain US media, US political party.
| Ukraine tried downplay the risk. Even Germany had to get
| their arm twisted to do sanctions _after_ it happened.
| tyrfing wrote:
| An argument for nuclear war would be that Russia has paid nearly
| maximal non-military costs already, meaning the cost of further
| escalation is low and likely to be taken. The number of people
| involved in nuclear and military decisions in Russia is
| demonstrably low, see how many were surprised by the RU/UA war
| despite the blindingly obvious buildup, and their goals and
| interests don't align with long-run world prosperity. Actions at
| this point are likely bounded mostly by what they have the
| economic and military power to accomplish.
|
| The sanctions you mention as part of de-escalation have no clear
| offramp and can be viewed as fairly 'sticky' and one of the
| biggest drivers of this situation escalating. There are no direct
| incentives for de-escalation. It's a big mistake to view this
| conflict as bounded by the borders of Ukraine.
|
| Minimizing nuclear risk probably involves something like NATO
| abandoning the baltics and letting Russia take Finland, Georgia,
| etc. Is this probable? If Finland decides to join NATO and Russia
| says they will launch nukes the moment they are accepted, who
| blinks?
|
| Lastly, I'll note that nobody in power was around the last time
| nuclear weapons were used, which is a difference from prior
| "close calls". This will have some level of psychological impact.
| time0ut wrote:
| In a sense the dice are rolled constantly. Every time someone
| monitors a nuclear power's early warning system there is a risk
| that system will return a false positive. There is a chance the
| operator won't recognize it. There is a chance the geopolitical
| situation will cause leadership to believe it is a true positive.
| There is a chance they will choose to launch on warning rather
| than risk loosing the opportunity at a meaningful counter attack.
| I agree that it's probably impossible to estimate the
| probability, but it is definitely greater than 0. Eventually the
| dice will come up snake eyes. Hopefully not before we figure out
| how to stop rolling them.
| LeonB wrote:
| The original article does this straw man trick of pretending
| that the models act like every day is independent. That's not
| how it works at all. They're not modelling the chance of a
| spontaneous war erupting without cause on day X. Motivated
| authors just pretend that's what the models mean because it
| makes it easy to ridicule.
|
| Regarding this -- "it's probably impossible to estimate the
| probability" - ok - well. I think we have to unpack that a lot!
|
| I would say: "we can model the event." That's an absolute.
| (Anyone who disagrees with that statement just does not
| understand the statement)
|
| It does not mean the models are accurate. The model will
| provide probabilities. How much confidence can we have in the
| probabilities? Now this is where the difficulty lies. The
| probability itself will be a low number. And our confidence
| won't be very high. That's automatically creates an opening for
| any bad faith commentator to say launch an attack. And yet...
| what's the alternative? Pretend it cannot be modelled as
| various commentators in this page (but not you) have done?
| Pretend that a model with low probabilities or low confidence
| can be dismissed? The best response (if we agree that nuclear
| war is a Bad Thing and worth avoiding) is to improve the
| models, not ignore them - and of course in so doing --- to try
| and avoid nuclear war.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| John Kay wrote a good book about this called _Radical
| Uncertainty_. It 's annoying that there is an increasing tendency
| to frame what is a purely narrative statement in quantitative
| terms.
|
| As the author points out war is not historically predetermined,
| at least in any way we could convincingly figure out, and pulling
| numbers out of thin air only serves the purpose of trying to talk
| about the future with less uncertainty than is appropriate.
|
| Talking about events in terms of probabilities should be reserved
| for events that are not dominated by 'unknown unknowns'. You can
| attach a probability to a volcano outbreak, a transaction in an
| ordinary functioning market, a game of blackjack. That is to say
| 'small worlds' where outcomes are known, rules well defined and
| inputs quantified. You can't predict the overthrow a government
| in 5 years in numerical terms. That doesn't mean you can't talk
| about it. It's okay to say something is unlikely or very likely,
| but it makes more sense to explicitly talk about these things in
| qualitative terms rather than trying to be 'mathy' to make a
| prediction appear more objective than it is.
| LeonB wrote:
| In safety we try to prevent rare events (such as death) and these
| are rare enough that "past deaths" are not a useful way to
| predict the likelihood of a death.
|
| A crucial metric that occurs more more often and does help
| predict deaths is "HPI" - high potential incident. A worker eight
| metres in the air dropped a spanner. It thudded on the ground,
| harmlessly. No one was hurt. No problem, right? That's a HPI. A
| workplace that has a death will have had many HPIs. The dice-roll
| is not "it's a new day, we roll the dice". When a HPI occurs,
| that's when we roll the dice.
|
| Or in nuclear war estimates: a HPNWI occurs (high potential
| nuclear war incident). The Cuban missile crisis springs to mind
| as a particularly big example. But many many smaller HPNWI's have
| occurred. Border skirmishes between nuclear powers. Sabre
| rattling by nuclear powers. Elect a president who uses threats
| and brinkmanship. Do this year in, year out. The dice is rolled
| not because time passes but because risky decisions are made and
| risky actions are taken, over and over and over and over and over
| and over, year in, year out.
| baxtr wrote:
| I am not sure if I understand what the point is you're trying
| to make
| apendleton wrote:
| I took it to be: the original author's point was that nuclear
| attacks are so rare and our sample size so small that we
| can't use history to predict their occurrence in the future.
| This commenter is saying the typical way to handle situations
| like this is to look for more-common events that are proxies
| for the less-common ones in some predictable way.
|
| To give a different example of my own: on an intersection-by-
| intersection basis, pedestrians dying from getting hit by a
| car is relatively rare, so if it's perceived that a
| particular intersection is unsafe and the design of the
| intersection is modified with a goal of reducing the chance
| of death, it can be difficult to know if that intervention
| worked. Supposing last year there was one death there and
| this year there weren't any; was that because of the design
| change, or just chance? But we do know that, in aggregate,
| some relatively constant percentage of collisions will result
| in deaths, and collisions overall are much more common than
| deadly ones, so even if the policy goal is to reduce deaths,
| measuring all collisions is a very useful, less-noisy proxy
| for determining if an intersection has been made less deadly.
|
| So: original author is arguing that we can't meaningfully
| reason about these things because they're rare, and this
| commenter is saying "yes we can, if we find a more-common,
| less-noisy thing that's a good proxy for the rarer thing,"
| and proposes that nuclear close calls are such a proxy.
| LeonB wrote:
| Thank you, yes. As my buddy Jeeves would say "rem acu
| tetigisti"
| awb wrote:
| The author was saying we don't have enough data to make a
| prediction. OC is saying we do have enough data to make
| reasonable assumptions if you look at high risk situations
| (which can reasonably be assumed to be a prerequisite to an
| actual disaster like death or nuclear war).
|
| For example, take two people who have never been in a car
| accident. Driver A gets a speeding ticket a year and a DUI
| every 3 years. Driver B has never had a violation. It's
| reasonable to assume that Driver A is at higher risk of a
| future accident. We don't have to only look at the 0
| accidents data point, we can look at factors that are
| typically common in accidents like speed and alcohol.
| asah wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ah so that Lemmino video is just a rundown of this wikipedia
| page hah.
| splitstud wrote:
| noduerme wrote:
| Good piece. Typo in the last line: It's "stave off", not "stage
| off".
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| I would say that probability is 100%, having a corrupted system,
| with corrupted people and madmen, on all sides, it is not
| question of "will" but rather "when"...
| WJW wrote:
| The system being corrupted makes it less likely to have nuclear
| wars, not more? Idealists are willing to blow up everything for
| their ideals, people who are only in it for themselves have
| nothing to gain by destroying the world.
| panax wrote:
| While it is difficult/impossible to accurately quantify the
| probability of war, and that the ground truth is far more complex
| than these simple models, there still has been a long list of
| historical incidents in which the outcome was decided by
| sometimes random and even independent factors outside of anyone's
| control and makes the gambler's ruin argument compelling:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...
| yabones wrote:
| There's two particular incidents that are great examples of
| this. The '83 false alarm [1], and the 1980 missile silo
| explosion [2].
|
| In both cases, they were razor-thin near misses. If either
| accident happened even once more, we absolutely would have
| either a radiological disaster or accidental nuclear war.
|
| It's this sort of thing that makes me think maybe we shouldn't
| have any nuclear technology at all, the risks are just too
| high. Climate change is bad, but not as bad as burning our
| entire planet to the ground in under an hour, then poisoning it
| forever.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...
| Qem wrote:
| I wonder what if the Chelyabinsk meteor had fallen now,
| instead of some years ago. Could it have been mistaken for a
| nuke and triggered a "counterstrike"?
| retrac wrote:
| Given the universe's tasteless sense of comedic timing, I
| wouldn't be too surprised if a Tunguska-scale meteor lands
| right on DC, Moscow or Beijing at exactly the wrong time
| during an international crisis.
|
| Still, in principle, the Russians and Americans, and I
| believe the Chinese, have satellites that detect the
| distinctive radiation burst from a nuclear explosion.
| (There's a detector on each GPS satellite.) So it /should/
| fail to pass some of the automatic and manual thresholds
| before we're off to press the button. But in a tense
| situation, ambiguous data... one does worry a bit. There's
| been ambiguity with the detectors before. (Was there, or
| wasn't there, a nuclear explosion in the south Indian ocean
| in 1979? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident )
| post-it wrote:
| > If either accident happened even once more, we absolutely
| would have either a radiological disaster or accidental
| nuclear war.
|
| The Soviet incident sure, but the missile explosion was
| pretty much as bad as it could have been. You could explode
| the rocket fuel in every nuclear missile on the planet and
| you wouldn't get a single nuclear explosion, just scattered
| chunks of fresh nuclear fuel over a small area, which isn't
| really a huge deal compared to, for example, an oil pipeline
| leak.
| panax wrote:
| I think nuclear energy is mostly orthogonal to nuclear
| weapons. We should pursue more nuclear energy and seek to
| eliminate nuclear weapons.
| csee wrote:
| So this is basically saying that it's extremely hard to estimate
| these tail-event probabilities reliably, and therefore
| conclusions should not be taken as gospel. But we mostly knew
| that already?
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| What about asking what's the probability that nuclear-powered
| nation gets an autocratic leader who can decide on his own
| whether to launch the first strike?
|
| I think the current situation most strikingly points to the
| dangers autocratic governments pose to the whole planet. If
| people of a nation could vote on whether to start nuclear war I
| think they would vote no. But a crazy dictator? Not so sure. It
| should be the law everywhere: No nuclear first strikes. But that
| can only work if rule of law is the rule.
|
| The other great concern is misinformation and ability to keep
| most of the nation misguided enough to support a war. There
| should be international law to prevent spread of misinformation
| that can cause or lengthen wars.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear
| missile if a six shows up.
|
| You wish! The problem here is that Putin is not rational.
| SvenSchnieders wrote:
| He might not be rational, but surely nobody can argue that he
| is insane to that level - at least, I haven't seen anything
| that suggests that.
| raducu wrote:
| He's just a little bitch screaming to everyone's face "I'm
| gonna use nukes!" hoping we give him what he wants.
|
| What does he have to lose by alluding to using nukes right
| now?
|
| Nukes are the only thing stopping the West from rolling into
| Moscow, the magic wears off if the clock strikes 12. Nukes
| only work for the 15 minutes before they are used, Putin and
| Lavrov keep crying "Nuklear wolf!".
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Nukes are the only thing stopping the West from rolling
| into Moscow
|
| Yeah, tell Napoleon and Hitler how easy that is.
| raducu wrote:
| Napoleon and Hitler were not defeated by Russia.
| Napoleon/Hitler could have raised 3 more armies if they
| were fighting just Russia.
|
| On the contrary, Putin is the new insane and isolated
| Hitler.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| The Soviets destroyed 3 times as many German divisions as
| the western front allies combined.
| raducu wrote:
| So?
|
| Whoever is insaner wins?
|
| Nah, remind Putin that we all saw how much the russian army
| sucks and in case of nuclear war the US still wins after they
| get out of their bunkers.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| with the greatest respect, _this_ is the greatest evidence of
| insanity I've seen in this thread...
| raducu wrote:
| This is the only approach that works and won the US the
| Cold War. A credible threat that if the USSR dared to use
| nukes, NATO would use nukes against the USSR.
|
| Do you think Putin is a genious and it didn't cross other
| USSR leaders minds the same idea -- "surely, the USA would
| not use nukes again us if we used just a few nukes against
| a weaker NATO member"?
|
| The only sane answer is to absolutely make sure the other
| guy knows you're going to use nukes the second they use
| them.
|
| Macron's retort to Putin needs to be shouted from the
| rooftops -- we also have nukes, you're not that special.
| k__ wrote:
| Also, the question is: if Putin orders it, would it
| happen?
| altdataseller wrote:
| Nobody wins in a nuclear war.
| gpt5 wrote:
| This is actually exactly what Putin said - that NATO is
| much stronger, but if there is a nuclear war, it's going to
| be bad for everybody.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| People look like they make irrational decisions when viewed
| from the outside with little inside knowledge, there is
| definitely more to this than we are aware of.
| drusepth wrote:
| >You wish! The problem here is that Putin is not rational.
|
| "There is no greater danger than underestimating your
| opponent." - Lao Tzu
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to
| HN. The issue is not that you're wrong about you-know-who, the
| issue is that it has seriously degrading effects on internet
| threads, and we're trying to avoid that here. To the extent
| possible.
|
| If an article is substantive, it deserves better than this--
| much better, actually. And if it isn't substantive, it
| shouldn't be on HN's front page.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| all2 wrote:
| This makes me chuckle. The Bad Orange Man played the "insane
| king" role really, really well. Everyone was on their best
| behaviour until he left office. Peace talks in the Middle East
| progressed. Russia stayed in their borders. North Korea huffed
| and puffed and ultimately did nothing. Trade with China became
| more favorable to the US. It's almost like his foreign policy
| was effective.
|
| To your point: Putin isn't nuts. He's just a really good
| politician. He's pragmatic and knows the value of being seen as
| "crazy" and "he might actually launch a nuke".
| thechao wrote:
| Alternate take: all those participants _played nice_ in the
| hopes that it 'd lead to an autocratic take-over of the US,
| neatly getting rid of their major enemy. In that vein, Trump
| was just the "best moron" they'd seen in a long while.
| fassssst wrote:
| Syria
| cwaffles wrote:
| Trump also pushed the EU and the rest of Asia towards China
|
| https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trump-withdraws-
| ame...
| lukifer wrote:
| The problem is when you consider the game-theoretic
| incentives of "Greater Madman" posturing, through the len of
| Trivers' "Folly of Fools" [0]: that the most effective way to
| fool others is often to first fool yourself.
|
| It is entirely plausible that Darwinian selection pressures
| rewarded not just those who cynically postured as madmen, but
| those who actually _were_ madmen (within some bound of
| Minimum Viable Rationality). Such madness only has to beat
| the average; unlike the MAD dynamics of nuclear weapons,
| during most of evolutionary history, a catastrophic error of
| genuine madness didn 't result in destruction of the entire
| species.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Folly_of_Fools
| zabzonk wrote:
| The same was said about Nixon during the Vietnam war (which
| he inherited, but would never have started) but it is a
| really risky stratergy once you start ramping up the mania
| levels and passing them on to your nuclear forces, which
| Nixon (a good president, all in all) nor the Big Orange ever
| did.
| guelo wrote:
| Trump wanted to destroy NATO and European unity, he was doing
| Putin's job for him.
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| Could you do me a little favour? I'd like you to watch a
| short video[1] from CBS News and explain what exactly Trump
| was getting wrong about NATO/Russia/Germany.
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M5MJEMHZZsI
|
| (Disclaimer: I agree that orange man bad)
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Destroy it by pressuring its members to pay 2% GDP? Or what
| are you referencing?
|
| And how does sending Javelins to Ukraine or blocking
| Nordstream 2 help Putin?
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Trump tried to prevent military aid to Ukraine; dunno how
| you give him credit for "sending Javelins..."
| hunterb123 wrote:
| First off, I assume you're talking about the phone call
| that the Democrats impeached him for (leading to
| acquittal) to cover for the Burisma scandal. Accuse your
| enemy of what you're doing I suppose:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA--dj2-CY
|
| Second, that aid was never held up and is separate from
| the Javelins that were sent anyway.
|
| What other President sent Ukraine weapons (not blankets)
| before this fiasco?
| JohnGB wrote:
| What did the USA have to do with blocking Nordstream 2?
| Germany stopped certification, no the USA.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Germany just stopped it after Russia attacked Ukraine.
| Trump held it off with sanctions during his Presidency.
|
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/us-
| sancti...
| mc32 wrote:
| He wanted them to pay their fair share. They wanted the US
| to foot their security bill which he balked at.
|
| Now we see Germany at least say they will up their
| contribution and rebuild their military in order to be
| better prepared.
|
| That's pretty much in line with what he asked from them.
| guelo wrote:
| Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek
| NATO Exit in a Second Term
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-
| nato-wi...
|
| "Yeah, the second term," Trump had said. "We'll do it in
| the second term."
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/13/book-
| exce...
| ZGDUwpqEWpUZ wrote:
| Those articles are lying by omission, and so are you.
|
| Trump was certainly looking at getting out of NATO, which
| he saw as an arrangement where the US increasingly foots
| the bill for protecting other members. He openly
| criticised European dependence on Russian oil and gas,
| and Germany in particular for not paying their fair share
| towards defence.
|
| There's a fantastically awkward video [1] of him
| explaining all of this directly to NATO General Secretary
| Jens Stoltenberg. Germany announced this week that it
| will do exactly what Trump said it should: massively
| increase military spending [2] and decrease its
| dependence on Russia for energy [3].
|
| Who is more useful to Putin? Trump, who told Europe to
| get its ass in gear and treat Russia as a threat, or the
| stooges you support, whose selfishness and complacency
| emboldened Russia to carry out this invasion?
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M5MJEMHZZsI
|
| [2]
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/budgetary-
| about...
|
| [3] https://dw.com/en/ukraine-crisis-forces-germany-to-
| change-co...
| xwdv wrote:
| You will get a lot farther if you are an insane man with a
| gun, than if you're just a regular man with a gun.
| sega_sai wrote:
| The whole article is basically about different interpretations of
| probabilities -- probabilities as reflecting the degree of
| belief, vs pure frequentist ones. Both make sense, they just need
| to be used in different situations and need to be interpreted
| differently.
| sschueller wrote:
| I would prefer being wiped out of a giant meteorite than all
| nukes going off because at least I know it wasn't humanity that
| did us in.
| uncomputation wrote:
| > Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear
| missile if a six shows up
|
| Very true. Using, essentially, the infinite typing monkeys idea
| to say that a nuclear war is bound to happen eventually is just a
| pseudo-scientific rationalization of war. Put this way, almost
| anything becomes certain if you completely ignore the fact that
| you don't know P(nukes|war) since we have no further data to base
| this on. Even a coin flipped once or twice might not be heads and
| tails. The idea of P(heads) = 0.5 is that _eventually_ , as the
| flips extend to infinity, it equals 0.5.
|
| This would be similar to someone living in the Black Plague
| saying "since 10% of Europe is dying per year, in 10 years we
| will most certainly be extinct." I don't know the technical or
| formal name for this fallacy or line of thinking, so I'll just
| call this gross oversimplification.
| LeonB wrote:
| That's not how the modelling works. That's a
| mischaracterisation, a straw man argument.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| the gambler's ruin fallacy is a typical example of cumulative
| probability. cumulative probability measures the odds of two,
| three, or more events happening. there's just one catch involved:
| each event needs to be independent of the others. you can't have
| the outcome of a first event influence the probability of the
| next. which we know for nuclear war it be dependent upon the
| probability of previous events. ie. if a nuclear war starts,
| either everyone gets annihilated, which in turn influences the
| probability of the next nuclear war to be zero, or one or both of
| nuclear powers get severely damaged with catastrophic
| consequences, therefore influencing probability of future similar
| events
| bayesianbot wrote:
| On the other hand we have a lot of data points of humans and
| nations using every available edge to expand their power
| throughout history. Also we have made social systems where
| narcissistic greed and lust for power seems to get pretty much
| rewarded with more money and power, and misinformation runs
| rampant. More powerful weapons systems will get developed until
| MAD might not be certainty for the aggressor, if bombs can be
| delivered stealthily in minutes. Or at least MAD might get tested
| with one warning shot, delivering a message of "what is your
| actual defense going to be, I don't really care about the world
| anyways"
|
| I don't really see it as much as daily roll of a dice but more of
| a system that might guarantee to force us down that road some day
| within a few generations.
| empressplay wrote:
| People think MAD is 'we launch everything at our enemy if we
| see one missile' -- this hasn't been the case for decades,
| since all sides can see launches almost as soon as they happen.
| So yes, 'warning shots' are now effectively the start of such a
| conflict. Where MAD comes in is it's generally accepted that if
| you do that your opponent is likely to lob one back. An eye for
| an eye. I suspect capitals of nuclear powers are special cases
| though, and would generally be avoided unless absolutely
| necessary.
|
| I don't think Putin needs to actually start nuking European
| countries to get his way though. He knows the Americans simply
| do not have the resolve to escalate a nuclear confrontation
| unless its own domestic security is threatened. I don't think
| the UK or France would either. NATO is kind of a sham.
|
| But Putin isn't worried about nukes in Ukraine as much as
| ground troops. The fact that he is suggests he's not worried
| about getting nuked himself, which is actually a positive sign,
| for everyone except Ukraine.
|
| ETA: I just realized in Biden's SOTU he said the US would
| defend every inch of NATO territory and make the Russians pay,
| which was clever, since neither of those statements suggests
| either an invasion of Russia nor a nuclear response, only that
| Russia wouldn't be able to hold the territory and that there
| would be repercussions of some kind. Not a dumb guy.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Have a read of Eric Schlosser's book, Command and Control
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...
|
| The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to the
| point of madness.
| busyant wrote:
| > The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to
| the point of madness.
|
| Haven't read the book, but I watched Dr. Strangelove when I was
| young(er).
|
| What made the movie great to me was that it made me realize
| that, although there is a nuclear "safety net", it was designed
| and controlled by _humans_ -- flawed humans who don 't always
| behave rationally and who may not act in the best interests of
| humanity.
| moffkalast wrote:
| It is not only possible for humans not behaving rationally,
| it is essential!
| harryvederci wrote:
| ... and yet we haven't.
|
| Every day since WW2, things could have gone wrong.
|
| Every day, for 76.56 years. 918.79 months. 27965 days.
|
| I think we'll be fine. And if I'm wrong, you probably won't be
| able to tell me! :)
|
| Edit: not sure (and don't really care) why this got downvoted,
| but I meant it as a morale boosting thing, not as a probability
| calculation. Things could have gone horribly wrong so many
| times, but they haven't so far. That personally gives me hope
| for the future.
| [deleted]
| abvdasker wrote:
| I hope you're right, but this feels like an instance of the
| hot hand fallacy. In a historical sense, nuclear weapons
| haven't existed for very long. 76.56 years without a nuclear
| attack is less than the life expectancy of one US adult. It's
| too soon to tell.
| Animats wrote:
| A useful metric - how often does a national leader willing to
| start a nuclear war come to power in a state with nuclear
| weapons? That's measureable from historical data.
| zardo wrote:
| If they're not disarming they're either willing to use them or
| bluffing.
| rokobobo wrote:
| Being willing to use them is not the same as being willing to
| use them first.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Which data would that be? We don't know if anyone is willing to
| use nuclear weapons against a nuclear power because no one has
| ever done it.
| daliusd wrote:
| How? We had no nuclear war yet. How can you know that leader is
| willing to?
| AnonCoward4 wrote:
| It's not measureable. First of you need to account for many
| having the same weapons (MAD) and you also need to account for
| the knowledge of the impact of these weapons. The knowledge
| does change the probability for someone willing and able to use
| these weapons to come into power (as well as the whole
| structure around the usage).
| vkou wrote:
| You're missing half the equation. 'Every'[0] national leader is
| willing to start a nuclear war _given some particular set of
| circumstances_. There 's always some line that they will not
| allow their enemies to cross.
|
| The difference between leaders is what those circumstances are.
| It's in where that line is. [1]
|
| Public communications on this subject have to be taken with a
| pound of salt. It's in every nuclear nation's interests to
| claim that line is further out than it really is... As long as
| they believe that broadcasting the claim _itself_ won 't start
| nuclear war.
|
| It's also in every nuclear nation's interests to be very
| mindful about where their adversary's line is.
|
| [0] Okay, there might be a closet pacifist somewhere that won't
| use them in _any_ situation, but if there is, they certainly
| aren 't broadcasting that.
|
| [1] So far, we're batting a thousand for 'No national leader
| whose last name was not Truman started a nuclear war in a
| situation where his state was not fighting an existential war'.
|
| This statistic, unfortunately, is not particularly helpful.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Only one national leader -- Harry Truman -- has ever allowed
| nuclear weapons to be used in combat, in 1945, the same year
| the weapon became available. This was 77 years ago. He was the
| 33rd president, and we are on the 46th. By this measure, based
| only on the US, we get such a leader once every 77 years or
| once every 13 leaders. These numbers will only get lower once
| you start to add in other nuclear weapons states.
|
| That said, I don't think any of this math is pointing us toward
| any kind of answer about how likely any person alive right now
| is to experience nuclear war, which is really what we're after.
| At the very most, every day that nobody uses one extends the
| lower bound of how often they are likely to be used (77 years
| and counting), but this is almost tautological. Also, maybe it
| follows some kind of power law and the farther away from their
| invention, the less likely we are to use them? Or maybe the
| opposite? Or maybe we oscillate between the two in some
| sinusoidal pattern? In any case, we can't know. History is not
| an experimental science.
| Qem wrote:
| If we have N nuclear states, the possibilities of conflicts
| between them must scale at least as N^2/2, counting the
| hypothesis of a country using nukes against itself (civil
| war/secession).
| tehjoker wrote:
| This is true, but it also ignores that nuclear weapons are
| used every day in diplomacy. The best use of a gun is to
| point it at someone, get them to do what you want, and not
| ever fire it. Sometimes the nukes are just background
| information, sometimes it is a more direct threat.
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| What is an ensemble probability of something that has never
| occurred and is essentially impossible to model? Have you seen
| all infinite alternate universes? Probability does not make
| sense.
|
| Compare the following: What is the probability that you will die
| today?
|
| What is the probability that you will die today given that you
| belong to the category of people with A_i characteristics and
| whose ensemble probability of dying on a given day has been
| measured?
| LeonB wrote:
| The insurance industry does a pretty good job of "what is the
| probability that you will die in the next billable period" -
| but they would never reduce the bet to "what is the probability
| that _you_ will die _today_?"
|
| You say it's "essentially impossible to model" something that
| hasn't occurred before.
|
| Nations have engaged in a lot of wars.
|
| Nations have engaged in a lot of wars they could not possibly
| win.
|
| People have committed suicide to harm other people. Many many
| times.
|
| Nations have developed weapons and then used those weapons on
| other people.
|
| Countries that have engaged in arms races and stock piled
| weapons have then gone to war. Many times.
|
| In some decades we do more of these things and in others we do
| less.
|
| To say it's hard to model, or the models are imperfect (as all
| models are) - fine. To say it is impossible to model - that's
| very naive.
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| If you are lost in a city would you rather have the wrong map
| or no map at all?
|
| The person that has the wrong map and thinks that it's the
| right map is the one that's naive.
|
| Regarding insurance companies, you are conflating ensemble
| probabilities with time probabilities. Insurance companies
| can estimate the ensemble probability of an event in a group
| of agents which belong to a certain category and not the time
| probability of said event on a single agent.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Every day I wonder if what is happening in Ukraine right now -
| will turn out to be another invasion of Czechoslovakia 2022
| edition written in history books as a missed opportunity to turn
| the tide as the world watched paralyzed by Putin's nuclear
| rattle.
|
| Legitimate concern, yes, but here's the food for thought and mark
| my words - it is inevitable that very soon Russia's rhetoric will
| turn to "economic sanctions are intended to destroy Russia and
| are an act of war", along with "supplying Ukrainian resistance is
| an act of war", while the nuclear rattle comes out once again in
| one form or another, like "Russia is forced to respond by arming
| with nuclear weapons all allied states, such as Iran, Talibistan,
| North Korea, Venezuela" etc...
| cdelsolar wrote:
| what is Talibistan?
| klausjensen wrote:
| I believe the author refers to Afghanistan under the rule of
| Taliban...
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Yeah, I started typing it out, but then took the shortcut
| figuring people will get that from the context.
| dontbeevil1992 wrote:
| Another issue with this logic is that the probabilities are not
| independent.
|
| Saying that you have probability x of nuclear war every year and
| so probability (1-x)^n of no nuclear war in n years assumes
| independence. In fact, if you don't have nuclear war on year 1, I
| would assume that the reasons for that lead to inferences and
| correlations that would affect the probability of nuclear war on
| year 2, possibly making it lower.
| LeonB wrote:
| No, that's not quite right. Measuring "did we have a nuclear
| war?" is not the input you'd ever want to use there, it's only
| one binary digit of information.
|
| Instead take info like "did we have events/incidents with a
| high potential of nuclear war?"
|
| If three "Cuban missile crisis" level events happened in year
| X, then the probability of nuclear war in year x+1 is higher
| than it was in other years -- even though nuclear war didn't
| occur in either year. If national leaders make no statements
| threatening war in year A, then it's probably safer than year B
| where there were 100 such threats.
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