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That isn't an argument against my statement. MAD is the very wishful thinking that you indicate does not work. Your initial scenario here of a berserk national

That isn't an argument against my statement. MAD is the very wishful thinking that you indicate does not work. Your initial scenario here of a berserk national leader is plenty applicable to MAD. Why do you assume MAD will work on a long timescale? There are too many variables with different nations and leaders.

CamperBob2 5y ago
The way I see it, when it comes to preventing war, we have an approach that, while both literally and figuratively MAD, has worked OK so far, and an approach that we know doesn't work. It would be great if we had more options, no argument there.
- runarberg 5y ago
  There is a flaw in your logic. In a game of Russian roulette you might have a 100% success rate after 5 shots. But that doesn’t mean the 6th shot won’t be fatal.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    How does that apply here, though? We know your suggested approach doesn't work. We know that there are definitely live rounds in the gun, because they've killed millions already. The UN's best intentions didn't deter the conflicts in Korea, or Viet Nam, or Iraq, or Rwanda, or whatever shenanigans Putin is about to pull in Ukraine, just to name a few. In the MAD game, both the goal and the incentives are rationally aligned to avoid pulling the trigger at all. If MAD fails, it will happen because a mistake occurred. If the "Just let the UN take care of it" approach fails, it will fail for the same reason it has failed so many times before: because someone rationally calculated that the consequences were worth it. These scenarios don't really compare to a simple game of Russian roulette. Logically speaking, it seems best to keep doing what we've been doing, but work as hard as we can to reduce the odds of a mistake.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      It is relevant because if we are dealing with a poisson-like distribution the chances of the event happening is greater over a longer time-span. We don’t know what distribution nuclear strikes and accidents occur with. It may very well be a distribution similar to Russian roulette. If it is, we really really shouldn’t risk it any further. That is the flaw in your logic. It is assuming a favorable distribution when the distribution is unknown.

CamperBob2 5y ago

The way I see it, when it comes to preventing war, we have an approach that, while both literally and figuratively MAD, has worked OK so far, and an approach that we know doesn't work. It would be great if we had more options, no argument there.

runarberg 5y ago
There is a flaw in your logic. In a game of Russian roulette you might have a 100% success rate after 5 shots. But that doesn’t mean the 6th shot won’t be fatal.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  How does that apply here, though? We know your suggested approach doesn't work. We know that there are definitely live rounds in the gun, because they've killed millions already. The UN's best intentions didn't deter the conflicts in Korea, or Viet Nam, or Iraq, or Rwanda, or whatever shenanigans Putin is about to pull in Ukraine, just to name a few. In the MAD game, both the goal and the incentives are rationally aligned to avoid pulling the trigger at all. If MAD fails, it will happen because a mistake occurred. If the "Just let the UN take care of it" approach fails, it will fail for the same reason it has failed so many times before: because someone rationally calculated that the consequences were worth it. These scenarios don't really compare to a simple game of Russian roulette. Logically speaking, it seems best to keep doing what we've been doing, but work as hard as we can to reduce the odds of a mistake.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    It is relevant because if we are dealing with a poisson-like distribution the chances of the event happening is greater over a longer time-span. We don’t know what distribution nuclear strikes and accidents occur with. It may very well be a distribution similar to Russian roulette. If it is, we really really shouldn’t risk it any further. That is the flaw in your logic. It is assuming a favorable distribution when the distribution is unknown.