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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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The naive estimate is that nuclear weapons have been used in only 1 year out of the 80 they have existed. So the odds they are used in the next 12 months is on the order of 1/80, and the mean next use would occur in 2204.

I think you mean 2104, and I'm not sure it's fair to ignore the fact that two bombs were dropped in 1945 -- 2/80 = 1/40, which... doesn't seem crazy? The attitude towards possible nuclear great-power conflict seems to be markedly more casual than it was in the 80s, at least in some circles -- if this trend continues things get a bit scary.

I think you mean 2104, and I'm not sure it's fair to ignore the fact that two bombs were dropped in 1945 -- 2/80 = 1/40, which... doesn't seem crazy?

I think it's a lot more useful to estimate the risk of a nuclear exchange, regardless of size.

Then the sample set is too small and unrepresentative -- for how many years of those 80 has there been a direct hot-war between two (or more) nuclear capable countries?

The attitude towards possible nuclear great-power conflict seems to be markedly more casual than it was in the 80s,

As a rationalist, I always like to annoy people by pointing out that a full nuclear exchange won't cause human extinction. Nuclear winter is a flawed concept. And some of the weapons will fail. And others will miss. And commanders will defy orders. And radiation isn't that bad. So, like, maybe only tens of millions people die in the first few weeks.

Then I heard people who have actual power talking in a cavalier way about nuclear weapons and I stopped being so smug. It might not be an X-Risk, but it's bad.

Yeah, exactly -- this 'well ackshually we were wrong about how exactly how bad a nuclear exchange would have been in the 60s' almost feels like a coordinated effort to put 'limited use' and various forms of brinksmanship on the table. Which think is mostly still... really quite bad!

The main risk is food supply chain collapse leading to starvation and more instability, but if you live near farmland it's probably not going to be that much of a risk for you.

Nuclear winter is a flawed concept.

Yes. A few years ago I read about the origins of nuclear winter and determined it was entirely fictional. And every time I try to explain that to someone they act like I'm a loon.

Would you be interested in doing a little write up of it here? I’d love to see more information about this.

The Wikipedia article actually does a pretty decent job of summarizing it.

To me, it seems obvious that nuclear winter hypothesizers are fabulists. Predictions of a 20 degree fall in global temperatures are Prima facie ridiculous, being 3 times greater than the fall in temperatures following the Yucatan impact 66 million years ago.

(The Yucatan impact released energy equivalent to about 10,000 times the entire world's nuclear arsenal).

The one time that a nuclear winter prediction was tested was in 1991 during the Kuwait oil fires. This did not, in fact, cause a small scale nuclear winter as predicted.

And of course there is the bias angle. Can you imagine a university researcher publishing a paper "acxtually, nuclear winter won't happen"?

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