Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

lesswrong.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 273 posts

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#21

Post by newfeatureok »

ghostcluster wrote: post #5

Between the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first gulf war, and many more country-sized forest fire events, we've learned that Nuclear Winter is not a likely scenario. In fact, the very scientists who coined the term in the 1980s have backed away from it. Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not to mention the human toll. But extinction…

are you really comparing COVID to a hypothetical nuclear war?

COVID barely disrupted the supply chain because people who actually work those mission critical jobs had to continue working on site. This wouldn’t be the case if nukes were dropping

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#22

Post by notahacker »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

I guess its the same point that drove Xeno to demonstrate that he was so much much more rational than the average Greek his contribution to the history of thought was a set of arguments that motion was impossible.

Possibly with added profit motive. Say what you like about nuclear bombs actually being real, they won't torture infinite numbers of clones of you if you don't donate to Yudowsky's AI research institute.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#23

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #14
codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

Humanity will survive. You, dear reader, will not.

In the long term, all dear readers will not survive. So why worry?

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#24

Post by lainga »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

Do you think your reaction would have been as strong if the post was written by someone else?

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#25

Post by ghostcluster »

newfeatureok wrote: post #21
ghostcluster wrote: post #5

Between the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first gulf war, and many more country-sized forest fire events, we've learned that Nuclear Winter is not a likely scenario. In fact, the very scientists who coined the term in the 1980s have backed away from it. Nuclear war would be awful, and certainly the radioactive fallout would be bad, and the damage to thriving historical cities, not to mention the human toll. But extinction…

are you really comparing COVID to a hypothetical nuclear war? COVID barely disrupted the supply chain because people who actually work those mission critical jobs had to continue working on site. This wouldn’t be the case if nukes were dropping

In my mind, the most likely candidate for a nuclear war right now comes in a chaotic escalation of the conflict between Pakistan and India. I think this scenario would be horrible, but its damage to the rest of the world's supply chains? Probably less than COVID?

The other conflict that worries me is a major provocation by China towards Taiwan. This is the foreign policy scenario that frightens me most, and feels like the most likely potential 'Franz Ferdinand execution'-type event that could lead to a global world war. But in such a war, would we be likely to see a total nuclear back-and-forth between factions? I think this is less likely than in current day India v. Pakistan. But I could be totally wrong. As Francis Fukuyama illustrates, it's hard to predict future foreign policy scenarios with any accuracy.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#26

Post by elil17 »

Who are the people that actually claimed "that a full-scale nuclear war is likely to cause human extinction?" I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. It would cause societal collapse, perhaps even an extinction of civilization, but not a literal extinction of our species.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#28

Post by landfish »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

I wrote this post, and the point is to improve discussion of societal risks. As others have pointed out, nuclear war doesn't have to kill everyone to be extremely bad and worth avoiding. I spend a lot of my time thinking about risks from nuclear and biological weapons, and downplaying these risks is not my purpose.

One problem with assuming nuclear war kills everyone is that this discourages anyone from preparing for potential nuclear wars. While of course we should try to prevent it, we should also try to mitigate the consequences in the even a war does occur!

I've written more about risks from nuclear war here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rn2duwRP2pqvLqGCE/does-the-u... and here: https://jeffreyladish.com/one-hundred-opinions-on-nuclear-wa...

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#29

Post by codekilla »

austhrow743 wrote: post #15
codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

Civilisation can be rebuilt. Focus on existential threats over far more likely civilisation collapse threats is done by those who view unrealised potential as loss. So it’s 7 billion humans vs the trillions that could exist if we keep spreading and growing and start colonising other planets. Here’s a good review/summary by a rationalist of a book on the topic by someone who if not a rationalist (I don’t actually know…

> In my view, the greatest risk to humanity’s potential in the next hundred years comes from unaligned artificial intelligence, which I put at 1 in 10. One might be surprised to see such a high number for such a speculative risk, so it warrants some explanation.

The above is from the article you link. Where.....oh where....are you getting the 1 in 10 number? This is pure, and I mean pure...uncut conjecture. This is why these types of 'intellectual' offerings are so irritating to me. There is absolutely no sound, or 'rational', way to back that number up.

Re: Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?

#30

Post by JumpCrisscross »

codekilla wrote: post #11

What is the point of writing a post like this? I feel like there is an impetus in the 'rational' tech press to want to downplay threats like nuclear war, and emphasize dubious threats like AGI. I really don't care if nuclear war doesn't kill every single human instantly . So what? Full scale nuclear war means instant civilization collapse.... full stop . Should we forget about disarmament?....guess not every single p…

> What is the point of writing a post like this?

Counter hyperbole.

Climate change has also been billed by some as a near-term extinction event. That isn’t true. When the public catches on they throw out the baby with the bathwater.

To get the risk back in perspective, it’s necessary to first disabuse ourselves of the hyperbolic harm.

Post reply on HN