7 ms·

The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every othe

The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster, so maybe we should stop that.

ams6110 8y ago
> 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  The world also became a lot more connected, so we're exposed a lot more to wars and such abroad, and we've matured morally speaking and can see that all wars are unnecessary.
  - erkkie 8y ago
    Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of.
    - ardent_uno 8y ago
      The western world has developed institutions that give it security. Once those parts of the world ravaged by war do the same, they too will enjoy peace and stability.
      - throwaway77384 8y ago
        Well, we're undoing these institutions with an ever-growing fervor, as we appease the insecurities of a few rich and powerful people by handing them yet another election and yet another few units of currency on top of their almost unimaginably huge mountain of existing wealth.
      - YaxelPerez 8y ago
        Right, but it's difficult to establish those institutions when your country is ravaged by war and corruption...
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      > Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of. That's actually a false hypothesis of people in the 'western bubble' who haven't experienced war. Research I've seen shows that people in places that have experienced it, such as in Syria, are much more opposed to it. And that bears out in Western experiences: Who created the UN, with the stated purpose to prevent another war? Who created (the ancestor institutions that became) the EU to prevent another European war? Who enforced the Geneva conventions and prosecuted war criminals after WWII? The answer is, the people who had lived WWI and WWII. They knew far more of war than anyone today in the West, and they thought it was the worst scourge of humanity which must be prevented from happening again at almost any cost. Who are we to disagree?
      - erkkie 8y ago
        Do note the same countries still wage war (and trade in realpolitik). What you're saying is not mutually exclusive with what I'm saying, it's on a continuum.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    I thought I read that people said nearly that identical thing shortly before the start of World War I. That world economies are so intertwined and peace was lasting.
- masswerk 8y ago
  You want to ask all those who lost their lives in any of the numerous conflicts. Only, because the big clash didn't happen (it nearly happened three times in 1983), this doesn't mean that there weren't any conflicts. E.g., the biggest air war in history, in Laos, even was conducted in secrecy, African politics is just a single mess, etc.
  - asah 8y ago
    Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times. Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars. WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people. For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...
    - masswerk 8y ago
      Hm – Consider this piece (you may or may not appreciate the political perspective): https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... In brief, it concludes that the US alone (there have been lots of conflicts without any manifest involvement of the US) has been involved since WWII in conflicts causing "the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people". [Edit] You may also consider the ongoing war in Syria, which is not only exceeding WII in duration already, but also overshadows the total death count of the US in the WWII Pacific "theatre" (161,000 dead, including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle) by 500,000+ dead (last consensual figure was 470,000, issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016).
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    we ought to ask people whose family members have died of cancer lately how they feel about our so-called advanced medical science as well
vertexFarm 8y ago
For all the evidence we have, MAD has worked. Still here. Still no WWIII. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. As best we can tell, nukes actually did end large-scale war. I would call that at least a partially mitigated disaster.
- projectileboy 8y ago
  You're not wrong, but there were multiple incidents during the cold war where the US and Soviet Union came very, very, very close to a nuclear exchange, and it was only dumb luck (and sometimes the heroic actions of individuals who were in the right place at the right time) that saved us. We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    The unwillingness of people to start a nuclear exchange is exactly the plan. In the examples you speak of, common soldiers and technicians refused to launch the missiles. It's noteworthy that the idea of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange is so horrifying that even soldiers who assume they are already dead and have orders to launch still refuse. I think that speaks a lot about the inherent goodness of humanity, but that's a different story. I know it came very close, but the assumption was that it would come to the brink yet nobody would want to go through with it and begin open aggression. Seems dubious and risky, but once again it worked. And let's not discount the negative risk--a conventional world war with the Soviet Union, China, the US and Britain would have been so terrible. With such a small data set we should still be dubious, but I don't know if we can consign it merely to luck. I think it was a good plan. Terrible publicity, though. Nightmarish. But so is war.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  While my humble opinion is that MAD was effective, let's be careful not to infer causation from a sequence of events (the rooster crows and then the sun rises). And the events of 'MAD' and 'peace' are not in sequence: WWII ended in 1945. MAD wasn't an idea until the 1960s and not implemented in a treaty until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, AFAICT.[0] It makes more sense if you remember that nuclear weapons and delivery technology didn't reach the 'assured destruction' stage for awhile. Remember that in the Korean War, in the 1950s, General MacArthur was pushing to use nuclear weapons (IIRC); it wasn't as taboo then. Finally, remember that MAD applied only to the Soviet Union and U.S. (or the Warsaw Pact and NATO), while major international wars ended worldwide, for the most part. Remember that WWI and WWII were fought between future NATO members; the later peace between them wasn't due to MAD. > At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. The victors of WWII were very concerned about that, and began planning to prevent it before the war ended. That resulted in the UN, the institutions that became the EU, a rejection of nationalism (as a significant cause of war), the spread of democracy and universal human rights as a peace-making policy (democracies generally don't start wars with each other), and U.S. leadership in the international order to maintain those things and to provide stability. My understanding is that those are the reasons for the relative but extraordinary peace. Here's a Churchill speech about it in Zurich in 1946 (the speech focuses on the future EU; remember he also was one of the architects of the United Nations): http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html (I'll also note that they seemed to have worked so well that now people take the peace for granted and are tossing aside the things that make it happen.) [0] The best credible source I can find quickly. If you hit a paywall, access it via a search engine: https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 EDIT: Added a detail

ams6110 8y ago

> 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
The world also became a lot more connected, so we're exposed a lot more to wars and such abroad, and we've matured morally speaking and can see that all wars are unnecessary.
- erkkie 8y ago
  Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of.
  - ardent_uno 8y ago
    The western world has developed institutions that give it security. Once those parts of the world ravaged by war do the same, they too will enjoy peace and stability.
    - throwaway77384 8y ago
      Well, we're undoing these institutions with an ever-growing fervor, as we appease the insecurities of a few rich and powerful people by handing them yet another election and yet another few units of currency on top of their almost unimaginably huge mountain of existing wealth.
    - YaxelPerez 8y ago
      Right, but it's difficult to establish those institutions when your country is ravaged by war and corruption...
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of. That's actually a false hypothesis of people in the 'western bubble' who haven't experienced war. Research I've seen shows that people in places that have experienced it, such as in Syria, are much more opposed to it. And that bears out in Western experiences: Who created the UN, with the stated purpose to prevent another war? Who created (the ancestor institutions that became) the EU to prevent another European war? Who enforced the Geneva conventions and prosecuted war criminals after WWII? The answer is, the people who had lived WWI and WWII. They knew far more of war than anyone today in the West, and they thought it was the worst scourge of humanity which must be prevented from happening again at almost any cost. Who are we to disagree?
    - erkkie 8y ago
      Do note the same countries still wage war (and trade in realpolitik). What you're saying is not mutually exclusive with what I'm saying, it's on a continuum.
- asveikau 8y ago
  I thought I read that people said nearly that identical thing shortly before the start of World War I. That world economies are so intertwined and peace was lasting.
masswerk 8y ago
You want to ask all those who lost their lives in any of the numerous conflicts. Only, because the big clash didn't happen (it nearly happened three times in 1983), this doesn't mean that there weren't any conflicts. E.g., the biggest air war in history, in Laos, even was conducted in secrecy, African politics is just a single mess, etc.
- asah 8y ago
  Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times. Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars. WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people. For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safety-facts/road-crash-statistics http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...
  - masswerk 8y ago
    Hm – Consider this piece (you may or may not appreciate the political perspective): https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... In brief, it concludes that the US alone (there have been lots of conflicts without any manifest involvement of the US) has been involved since WWII in conflicts causing "the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people". [Edit] You may also consider the ongoing war in Syria, which is not only exceeding WII in duration already, but also overshadows the total death count of the US in the WWII Pacific "theatre" (161,000 dead, including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle) by 500,000+ dead (last consensual figure was 470,000, issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016).
- nyolfen 8y ago
  we ought to ask people whose family members have died of cancer lately how they feel about our so-called advanced medical science as well

vertexFarm 8y ago

For all the evidence we have, MAD has worked. Still here. Still no WWIII. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. As best we can tell, nukes actually did end large-scale war. I would call that at least a partially mitigated disaster.

projectileboy 8y ago
You're not wrong, but there were multiple incidents during the cold war where the US and Soviet Union came very, very, very close to a nuclear exchange, and it was only dumb luck (and sometimes the heroic actions of individuals who were in the right place at the right time) that saved us. We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  The unwillingness of people to start a nuclear exchange is exactly the plan. In the examples you speak of, common soldiers and technicians refused to launch the missiles. It's noteworthy that the idea of a full-scale thermonuclear exchange is so horrifying that even soldiers who assume they are already dead and have orders to launch still refuse. I think that speaks a lot about the inherent goodness of humanity, but that's a different story. I know it came very close, but the assumption was that it would come to the brink yet nobody would want to go through with it and begin open aggression. Seems dubious and risky, but once again it worked. And let's not discount the negative risk--a conventional world war with the Soviet Union, China, the US and Britain would have been so terrible. With such a small data set we should still be dubious, but I don't know if we can consign it merely to luck. I think it was a good plan. Terrible publicity, though. Nightmarish. But so is war.
forapurpose 8y ago
While my humble opinion is that MAD was effective, let's be careful not to infer causation from a sequence of events (the rooster crows and then the sun rises). And the events of 'MAD' and 'peace' are not in sequence: WWII ended in 1945. MAD wasn't an idea until the 1960s and not implemented in a treaty until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, AFAICT.[0] It makes more sense if you remember that nuclear weapons and delivery technology didn't reach the 'assured destruction' stage for awhile. Remember that in the Korean War, in the 1950s, General MacArthur was pushing to use nuclear weapons (IIRC); it wasn't as taboo then. Finally, remember that MAD applied only to the Soviet Union and U.S. (or the Warsaw Pact and NATO), while major international wars ended worldwide, for the most part. Remember that WWI and WWII were fought between future NATO members; the later peace between them wasn't due to MAD. > At the beginning of the twentieth century it was looking like we'd have another world war every twenty years or so for the rest of time. The victors of WWII were very concerned about that, and began planning to prevent it before the war ended. That resulted in the UN, the institutions that became the EU, a rejection of nationalism (as a significant cause of war), the spread of democracy and universal human rights as a peace-making policy (democracies generally don't start wars with each other), and U.S. leadership in the international order to maintain those things and to provide stability. My understanding is that those are the reasons for the relative but extraordinary peace. Here's a Churchill speech about it in Zurich in 1946 (the speech focuses on the future EU; remember he also was one of the architects of the United Nations): http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html (I'll also note that they seemed to have worked so well that now people take the peace for granted and are tossing aside the things that make it happen.) [0] The best credible source I can find quickly. If you hit a paywall, access it via a search engine: https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 https://www.britannica.com/topic/nuclear-strategy#ref1224926 EDIT: Added a detail