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> Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselv

> Of course we do stand a good chance of destroying ourselves with nukes, but it's not entirely clear to me that we stand less of a chance of destroying ourselves without them. The problem with nukes is they're an absorbing state. Once the nuclear war happens there's no retries. Nukes present an x% chance of near-extinction over the next T years. That x% goes up as T goes up, asymptoting to 100% as T becomes sufficiently long, assuming no ground-breaking paradigm shift in global cooperation such as a single world government, which won't happen in our lifetime due to how hardwired nationalism and nativism is. Each generation, we're going to keep rolling the i.i.d. nuclear dice and x% will go from 2% to 10% to higher as T goes up, then eventually it'll happen. Recall that it almost happened in the Cold War, only one random person who stopped it is the reason you're alive. The main argument I'd accept for nukes is that we need to reduce hot war in the short-term to accelerate economic and scientific progress, which will then reduce other civilization-scale problems (like climate change, pandemics, cancer treatments, diversifying life to other plants) to a point where the perpetuation of the nuke existential risk becomes justified.

somenameforme 3y ago
FWIW I agree with you on literally every single point. Where we may differ is I also see far more viable threats. It's not just nukes but biological weapons (which could very easily prove a far greater threat than nukes) and then the countless number of ever-creative ways that the universe has to kill us: asteroids, super volcanoes, unfortunate gamma ray burst, etc. It seems fairly safe to say that all those living on any planet, anywhere, will inevitably face an extinction level event. The only way to beat the game is to expand. We've lost countless civilizations on Earth, but we thrive yet because we spread far and wide. The same will be true on a planetary scale. WW3 will not only likely set back humanity many decades, if not centuries, but it's not like that it will be the War to End All Wars. As we start to regrow, tensions and conflicts will once again emerge, and we'll be back to killing each other en masse soon enough, repeating the cycle all over again. The fact that our reaching the window in time to viably consider expanding to other planets corresponds basically perfectly to the window in time which we become capable of exterminating ourselves probably goes a long way towards explaining the Fermi Paradox. I doubt power seeking behavior is unique to our species. And war has the allure of power, control, wealth, and all that. And colonizing an inhospitable rock has, to most, all the allure of punching oneself in the face.

somenameforme 3y ago

FWIW I agree with you on literally every single point. Where we may differ is I also see far more viable threats. It's not just nukes but biological weapons (which could very easily prove a far greater threat than nukes) and then the countless number of ever-creative ways that the universe has to kill us: asteroids, super volcanoes, unfortunate gamma ray burst, etc. It seems fairly safe to say that all those living on any planet, anywhere, will inevitably face an extinction level event. The only way to beat the game is to expand. We've lost countless civilizations on Earth, but we thrive yet because we spread far and wide. The same will be true on a planetary scale. WW3 will not only likely set back humanity many decades, if not centuries, but it's not like that it will be the War to End All Wars. As we start to regrow, tensions and conflicts will once again emerge, and we'll be back to killing each other en masse soon enough, repeating the cycle all over again. The fact that our reaching the window in time to viably consider expanding to other planets corresponds basically perfectly to the window in time which we become capable of exterminating ourselves probably goes a long way towards explaining the Fermi Paradox. I doubt power seeking behavior is unique to our species. And war has the allure of power, control, wealth, and all that. And colonizing an inhospitable rock has, to most, all the allure of punching oneself in the face.