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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

#81

Post by geoka9 »

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…

> If Latvia is attacked and the NATO doesn’t fight for them NATO stops being a thing immediately.

That's what he might be betting on. To be fair, a series of decisions[0] by the West over the last decades might have led him to believe the West may not have the stomach for war with Russia, especially when it comes to defending new NATO members.

[0]

- Invasion of Georgia in 2008: no meaningful response to Russia

- Obama's "red lines" in Syria

- Annexation of Crimea in 2014: no meaningful response to Russia

- Invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014: ditto

- Invasion of the rest of Ukraine (under way): response limited to sanctions for Russia and supplies for the Ukrainians

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

#82

Post by asah »

geoka9 wrote: post #57
virgilp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. How did Putin take that message? I think that's the only thing that matters at this point. > Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this. _If_ that mythos was blown to pieces, in the eyes of the Russia…

And _if_ the general public of Russia still matters...

...and _if_ a viable alternative leader exists...

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

#83

Post by panax »

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…

I think nuclear energy is mostly orthogonal to nuclear weapons. We should pursue more nuclear energy and seek to eliminate nuclear weapons.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by geoka9 »

nl wrote: post #76
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…

> I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that indicates that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.

For now, I can only find sources in Russian, e.g. this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv-WB8AXLKs

https://echo.msk.ru/blog/piontkovsky_a/2988037-echo/

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

#86

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot »

rootusrootus wrote: post #66
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, 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…

> I expect NATO would start matching it tank-for-tank

I think you're being very optimistic here. Before the invasion, there were so many people in saying Putin was just bluffing. Certain US media, US political party. Ukraine tried downplay the risk. Even Germany had to get their arm twisted to do sanctions after it happened.

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

#87

Post by moffkalast »

asah wrote: post #79
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

Ah so that Lemmino video is just a rundown of this wikipedia page hah.

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

#88

Post by moffkalast »

busyant wrote: post #59
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.

> The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to the point of madness. Haven't read the book, but I watched Dr. Strangelove when I was young(er). What made the movie great to me was that it made me realize that, although there is a nuclear "safety net", it was designed and controlled by humans — flawed humans who don't always behave rationally and who may not act in the best interests of humanity.

It is not only possible for humans not behaving rationally, it is essential!

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

#90

Post by baxtr »

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…

I am not sure if I understand what the point is you’re trying to make
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