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Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

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Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#61

Post by [deleted] »

virgilp wrote: post #50
geoka9 wrote: post #43

> 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'…

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 involvemen…

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#62

Post by harryvederci »

killjoywashere wrote: post #41

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.

... 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.

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#63

Post by geoka9 »

kitrose wrote: post #52
geoka9 wrote: post #43

> 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'…

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?

> 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

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#64

Post by LeonB »

dontbeevil1992 wrote: post #22

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 i…

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.

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#65

Post by lordnacho »

krisoft wrote: post #55
geoka9 wrote: post #43

> 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'…

> 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 immediatel…

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.

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#66

Post by rootusrootus »

krisoft wrote: post #55
geoka9 wrote: post #43

> 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'…

> 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 immediatel…

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.

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#67

Post by rootusrootus »

lordnacho wrote: post #65
krisoft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 immediatel…

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 c…

> 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.

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#68

Post by yabones »

panax wrote: post #60

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…

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...

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#69

Post by VincentEvans »

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…

Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin

#70

Post by abvdasker »

harryvederci wrote: post #62
killjoywashere wrote: post #41

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.

... 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…

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.
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