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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

#71

Post by tehjoker »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #54
Animats wrote: post #31

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.

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.…

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.

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

#72

Post by bryanrasmussen »

geoka9 wrote: post #63
kitrose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#73

Post by cdelsolar »

VincentEvans wrote: post #69

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 i…

what is Talibistan?

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

#74

Post by WJW »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #45

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"...

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.

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

#75

Post by LeonB »

hashimotonomora wrote: post #53

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 dyi…

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.

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

#76

Post by nl »

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.

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...

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

#77

Post by post-it »

yabones wrote: post #68
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…

> 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.

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

#78

Post by galaxyLogic »

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.

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

#79

Post by asah »

LeonB wrote: post #58

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 workplac…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls

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

#80

Post by splitstud »

LeonB wrote: post #58

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 workplac…

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