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.
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
#32A 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.
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.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#33So 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?
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#34A 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.
How? We had no nuclear war yet. How can you know that leader is willing to?
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
with the greatest respect, this is the greatest evidence of insanity I’ve seen in this thread…
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…
Also, the question is: if Putin orders it, would it happen?
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nukes are the only thing stopping the West from rolling into Moscow Yeah, tell Napoleon and Hitler how easy that is.
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.
The Soviets destroyed 3 times as many German divisions as the western front allies combined.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#37the 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
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#38A 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.
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).
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#39A 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.
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.
Re: Nuclear war probabilities are useless - counter to the nuclear gambler’s ruin
#40On 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.