21–30 of 147 posts
It's interesting that for once, the immediate rumor take within an hour of the event (e.g. in the HN thread about the video) was simply correct.
It was glaringly obvious from the first report considering the ongoing missile strike.
It's a safe bet.
So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. It's good to see both sides walking back from war. Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around t…
> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was shot down they walked back their story.
This is why my number 1 fear for the destruction of humanity is not climate change, plague, asteroids, or super volcanoes. It’s nuclear weapons. One wrong “Oops!” by the military and the entire world self-destructs in mutually assured annihilation. Absolutely depressing.
I looked up nuclear close calls because I thought false positive almost-launches only happened once or twice in the past. I had no idea the last one was in 1995 or that there were much more close calls than I expected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)
It goes through a number of accidents that I wasn't personally aware of, but also goes through a number of political items that make the whole situation very scary, Such as I think it was the US Air Forces massive push back to putting any codes on the weapon triggers, or setting every code to 0000 when finally forced to do so. Or how a technician was able to smuggle out a training nuclear bomb to show his girlfriend what he did at work, which was stored with the live nuclear bombs.
Anyways, super interesting book.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was shot down they walked back their story.
Denying it until they completed their investigation is just smart. The US has a history of blowing up planes and blaming Iran after all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Denying it until they completed their investigation is just smart. The US has a history of blowing up planes and blaming Iran after all.
Sorry, what history?
That seems very likely. They probably had anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile systems fully armed and something either automatically mis-categorized the aircraft as a bomber or missile and shot at it or someone got nervous and trigger happy.
So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. It's good to see both sides walking back from war. Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around t…
> I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. They denied it up until a few hours ago even after the video evidence first dropped. After a bunch of countries said they had intelligence that it was shot down they walked back their story.
That seems very likely. They probably had anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile systems fully armed and something either automatically mis-categorized the aircraft as a bomber or missile and shot at it or someone got nervous and trigger happy.
One likes to think that automatic missiles should be fairly accurate and confident in their assessments.
My question i've wondered : was the sensitivity deliberately set very high so as to provide counter-attacks no matter what? If that's the case, isn't it more than accidental?
This is why my number 1 fear for the destruction of humanity is not climate change, plague, asteroids, or super volcanoes. It’s nuclear weapons. One wrong “Oops!” by the military and the entire world self-destructs in mutually assured annihilation. Absolutely depressing.
One oops and maybe something gets nuked, but I don't think it makes any sense to worry about the whole world being destroyed. Why would they? I mean, if the US was hit, it would be like 9/11 only bigger, and I'm sure people would be talking about glass parking lots, but why would all the missiles be launched towards everywhere? Who wants to destroy the world and why wouldn't they have done it already? Same goes for a…
Because that's the way nuclear deterrent theory works.
If you collapse the game theory calculus down, it turns into "Any technology or action that makes it less likely an adversary will respond with an unacceptable counterstrike on me makes it more likely that I will consider a first strike a viable option."
Examples of technologies or activities with this result: missile defense, hypersonic reentry vehicles, hard target capable systems, smaller / tactical-sized warheads, launch site or attacker obfuscation.
Raising the likelihood that in the event anything happens to me I will ensure an unacceptable number of nukes are delivered to your country is one of the easier ways of ensuring deterrence and making the entire business unpalatable.
Nobody wants to destroy the world. But it's in everyone's interest to make everyone else think they're absolutely willing-to and capable-of, in the event they're strategically attacked.