5 ms·

I'm glad the author says "one starts to wonder if it really is plain dumb luck". Another way to answer the question: > Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a

by oskarth 11y ago

I'm glad the author says "one starts to wonder if it really is plain dumb luck". Another way to answer the question: > Why Hasn’t the World Been Destroyed in a Nuclear War Yet? Because in an alternative universe where there was a nuclear war, this has already happened, and there was no one left to ask the question. Or if there was, they certainly had better things to do. See also: most questions and statements about real estate in 2007, or on Long Term Capital Management and their scientifically proven methods before their demise. Survivorship bias is a PITA. EDIT: Someone doesn't understand probability. Possible worlds is the only rigorous way of reasoning about counterfactuals.

onion2k 11y ago
It could be that, for some as yet unknown reason, nuclear war is impossible so in all the countless other worlds nuclear war has never happened.
- oskarth 11y ago
  Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case? I agree that self-preservation has probably been a factor in the more than dozen close-calls the world has seen, but I would hardly call it impossible. There are many instances of humans failing to self-preserve.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case? Yes, but only within the limited circumstances of the cold war. I strongly believe that nuclear war between two equal and opposing parties is effectively impossible. The game theorist Thomas Schelling wrote about it - each party can only 'win' by demonstrating they're more willing to risk all out destruction but, importantly, never actually go through with it otherwise they lose. With nuclear war both sides lose completely if they go through with it, but they can lose less by giving up. Consequently one side will always, eventually, capitulate before a nuclear war happens because that's actually better for them.
    - oskarth 11y ago
      Schelling has been on my to read list for a while - it's definitely an interesting subject (his model on segregation is really cool too). My problem with this reasoning is that it seems to assume perfectly rational actors. For most problems you can do that in the long run, and it's generally a sane thing to assume, but in this case it's a ruin problem - one irrational person with imperfect/delayed information in a power position is enough.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        It also ignores the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Once ICBMs became common and warning times dropped to minutes, so much of the machinery of war had to be automatic (whether with actual machines, or with people given pre-baked orders and procedures) that setting it all off by accident was a serious possibility. Actually, is a serious possibility. That stuff is all still there.
    - riemannzeta 11y ago
      Glad you brought up Schelling. He gave a fairly compelling answer to the question posed in this article in his Nobel acceptance speech 10 years ago. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2005/schelling-lecture.pdf http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/lau...
dghf 11y ago
The Anthropic Principle as applied to nuclear Armageddon (or lack thereof).
- drostie 11y ago
  The problem is that we don't truly believe in the strongest notions of the Anthropic principle. You can relativize it to yourself and then apply it to future events: "I will sit locked in this room where this bomb will detonate unless these numbers on my lottery ticket are the winning numbers tomorrow" does not sound wise but insane.
speakeron 11y ago
The trouble with the alternate worlds (and the very similar quantum suicide) idea, is that there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population). Why haven't we seen any of those paths?
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population) Not with modern thermonuclear weapons, there isn't. There's no hole you can dig deep enough to save you from one of those going off right next to you.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Most people wouldn't be right next to one going off, though. Even at the peak of the cold war, pushing The Button wouldn't have killed everybody. Probably not even a majority of humanity. It would have been righteously apocalyptic, and wrecked a good chunk of civilization, and made all other wars before it look puny and laughable, but there would be plenty of survivors, especially outside the countries involved in the war.
    - smacktoward 11y ago
      The bombs wouldn't have killed everybody, sure. But the fallout, and the famines due to agricultural productivity collapse, and the reduced disease resistance due to malnutrition, and...
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Certainly many more would die. But many more would live. There are lots of low-tech, poor farmers out there who wouldn't be too affected.
        smacktoward 11y ago
        As is probably obvious by now, I don't share your optimism on that score. Even peasants using Stone Age farming techniques would be affected if a radioactive dust cloud blows over their fields, or if soot thrown into the atmosphere causes a nuclear winter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) that prevents their crops from getting the sunlight they need to grow. Livestock can unknowingly eat contaminated feed or water and produce contaminated meat and milk. Diseases that run rampant through the weakened immune systems of populations closer to the blasts can mutate more quickly into strains that threaten anyone. Etc. So even if you're on the other side of the world when the bombs fall, peacefully farming with a stone plow, there's lots of ways those bombs can ruin your day too. There's a great novel from the '80s called Warday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday) that explores these themes in more detail. It's set in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war -- limited meaning, in the case of the US, that the only targets struck by Russian missiles are New York City, San Antonio, and the Midwestern missile fields. (Some of the missiles aimed at New York even miss, exploding out at sea.) Most Americans never see a mushroom cloud and come through the one-day war without a scratch. But the nuclear exchange, "limited" as it is, sets off a chain of ecological and technological consequences that after five years have killed many more people than the bombs did.

by oskarth 11y ago

onion2k 11y ago

It could be that, for some as yet unknown reason, nuclear war is impossible so in all the countless other worlds nuclear war has never happened.

oskarth 11y ago
Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case? I agree that self-preservation has probably been a factor in the more than dozen close-calls the world has seen, but I would hardly call it impossible. There are many instances of humans failing to self-preserve.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Do you have any reason to believe that to be the case? Yes, but only within the limited circumstances of the cold war. I strongly believe that nuclear war between two equal and opposing parties is effectively impossible. The game theorist Thomas Schelling wrote about it - each party can only 'win' by demonstrating they're more willing to risk all out destruction but, importantly, never actually go through with it otherwise they lose. With nuclear war both sides lose completely if they go through with it, but they can lose less by giving up. Consequently one side will always, eventually, capitulate before a nuclear war happens because that's actually better for them.
  - oskarth 11y ago
    Schelling has been on my to read list for a while - it's definitely an interesting subject (his model on segregation is really cool too). My problem with this reasoning is that it seems to assume perfectly rational actors. For most problems you can do that in the long run, and it's generally a sane thing to assume, but in this case it's a ruin problem - one irrational person with imperfect/delayed information in a power position is enough.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      It also ignores the possibility of accidental nuclear war. Once ICBMs became common and warning times dropped to minutes, so much of the machinery of war had to be automatic (whether with actual machines, or with people given pre-baked orders and procedures) that setting it all off by accident was a serious possibility. Actually, is a serious possibility. That stuff is all still there.
  - riemannzeta 11y ago
    Glad you brought up Schelling. He gave a fairly compelling answer to the question posed in this article in his Nobel acceptance speech 10 years ago. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2005/schelling-lecture.pdf http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/lau...

dghf 11y ago

The Anthropic Principle as applied to nuclear Armageddon (or lack thereof).

drostie 11y ago
The problem is that we don't truly believe in the strongest notions of the Anthropic principle. You can relativize it to yourself and then apply it to future events: "I will sit locked in this room where this bomb will detonate unless these numbers on my lottery ticket are the winning numbers tomorrow" does not sound wise but insane.

speakeron 11y ago

The trouble with the alternate worlds (and the very similar quantum suicide) idea, is that there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population). Why haven't we seen any of those paths?

smacktoward 11y ago
> there are lots of ways not to be killed by a nuclear war (even for the majority of the population) Not with modern thermonuclear weapons, there isn't. There's no hole you can dig deep enough to save you from one of those going off right next to you.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Most people wouldn't be right next to one going off, though. Even at the peak of the cold war, pushing The Button wouldn't have killed everybody. Probably not even a majority of humanity. It would have been righteously apocalyptic, and wrecked a good chunk of civilization, and made all other wars before it look puny and laughable, but there would be plenty of survivors, especially outside the countries involved in the war.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    The bombs wouldn't have killed everybody, sure. But the fallout, and the famines due to agricultural productivity collapse, and the reduced disease resistance due to malnutrition, and...
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Certainly many more would die. But many more would live. There are lots of low-tech, poor farmers out there who wouldn't be too affected.
      - smacktoward 11y ago
        As is probably obvious by now, I don't share your optimism on that score. Even peasants using Stone Age farming techniques would be affected if a radioactive dust cloud blows over their fields, or if soot thrown into the atmosphere causes a nuclear winter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) that prevents their crops from getting the sunlight they need to grow. Livestock can unknowingly eat contaminated feed or water and produce contaminated meat and milk. Diseases that run rampant through the weakened immune systems of populations closer to the blasts can mutate more quickly into strains that threaten anyone. Etc. So even if you're on the other side of the world when the bombs fall, peacefully farming with a stone plow, there's lots of ways those bombs can ruin your day too. There's a great novel from the '80s called Warday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday) that explores these themes in more detail. It's set in the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear war -- limited meaning, in the case of the US, that the only targets struck by Russian missiles are New York City, San Antonio, and the Midwestern missile fields. (Some of the missiles aimed at New York even miss, exploding out at sea.) Most Americans never see a mushroom cloud and come through the one-day war without a scratch. But the nuclear exchange, "limited" as it is, sets off a chain of ecological and technological consequences that after five years have killed many more people than the bombs did.