I would give it a 97% chance you feel we are not nearly there, yet.
So in your analogy, it would be reasonable given the evidence to wonder:
How long before this exotic form of explosive works at all. Imagine how ridiculous it sounds to someone in 1943 that special rocks will blow up like nothing else
How much yield are we talking? Boosted bombs over what can already fit in a b-29? (Say 10 times yield). Kilotons? Megatons? Continent destroying devices? Technically if you assume total conversion the bigger yields are readily available.
Should I believe the worst case, that you can destroy the planet, when you haven’t started a chain reaction yet at all. And then shut down everything. Oh by the way the axis powers are working on it....
So yeah I think my view is more evidence based than those who declare that doom is certain. A “nuke doomer” in 1943 would be saying they KNOW a teraton or greater size device is imminent, with a median timeline of 1949...
As it turned out, no, the bomb needed would be the size of an oil tanker, use expensive materials, and the main “doomsday” element wouldn’t be the crater it leaves but the radioactive cobalt-60 transmuted as a side effect. And nobody can afford to build a doomsday nuke, or least hasn’t felt the need to build one yet.
Scaling and better bomb designs eventually saturated at only about 3 orders of magnitude improvement.
All that would have to be true for “my” view to be correct is that compute vs intelligence curves saturate, especially on old hardware. And that no amount of compute at any level of superintelligence level can actually allow reliable social engineering or hacking of well designed computer systems.
That stops ASIs from escaping and doom can’t happen.
Conversely well maybe nukes can set off the atmosphere. Then doom is certain, there is nothing you can do, you can only delay the experiment.
So in your analogy, it would be reasonable given the evidence to wonder:
How long before this exotic form of explosive works at all. Imagine how ridiculous it sounds to someone in 1943 that special rocks will blow up like nothing else
How much yield are we talking? Boosted bombs over what can already fit in a b-29? (Say 10 times yield). Kilotons? Megatons? Continent destroying devices? Technically if you assume total conversion the bigger yields are readily available.
Should I believe the worst case, that you can destroy the planet, when you haven’t started a chain reaction yet at all. And then shut down everything. Oh by the way the axis powers are working on it....
So yeah I think my view is more evidence based than those who declare that doom is certain. A “nuke doomer” in 1943 would be saying they KNOW a teraton or greater size device is imminent, with a median timeline of 1949...
As it turned out, no, the bomb needed would be the size of an oil tanker, use expensive materials, and the main “doomsday” element wouldn’t be the crater it leaves but the radioactive cobalt-60 transmuted as a side effect. And nobody can afford to build a doomsday nuke, or least hasn’t felt the need to build one yet.
Scaling and better bomb designs eventually saturated at only about 3 orders of magnitude improvement.
All that would have to be true for “my” view to be correct is that compute vs intelligence curves saturate, especially on old hardware. And that no amount of compute at any level of superintelligence level can actually allow reliable social engineering or hacking of well designed computer systems.
That stops ASIs from escaping and doom can’t happen.
Conversely well maybe nukes can set off the atmosphere. Then doom is certain, there is nothing you can do, you can only delay the experiment.
Thank you. You are helping my thinking.