So, let’s think about this. Say we’re talking about the Xrisk of nuclear war. Which of these would count as “near misses” in your mind?
Cuban missile crisis (probably the clearest case)
End of the Korean war when General Douglas MacArthur was pushing for nuclear weapons to be used against China
Berlin Airlift (IMHO this came very close to a WWIII scenario between Russia and the US, but the USSR didn’t test their first nuclear weapon until 1949, so while a WWIII that started in 1948 could have gone nuclear, it probably wouldn’t have been enough nuclear weapons to be a true x-risk?)
The incident in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov got the false report of a US launch and decided to not pass it on to his superiors
It seems like it might be hard to define exactally what a “close call” is or what counts as a close call, but out of those, which ones would you count?
Edit: And nuclear war is probably the easiest one to measure. If there was a near miss that almost resulted in, say, a genetically engineered bioweapon being released, odds are we never would have heard about it. And I doubt anyone would even recognize something that was a near miss in terms of UFAI or similar technologies.
The definition of the near-misses used in other fields is something like: a situation, where urgent measures were needed to prevent an accident, like the use of the emergency braking.
However, some near-misses may be not recognised as such. But they can’t be used in statistic or prediction market.
Interesting idea.
So, let’s think about this. Say we’re talking about the Xrisk of nuclear war. Which of these would count as “near misses” in your mind?
Cuban missile crisis (probably the clearest case)
End of the Korean war when General Douglas MacArthur was pushing for nuclear weapons to be used against China
Berlin Airlift (IMHO this came very close to a WWIII scenario between Russia and the US, but the USSR didn’t test their first nuclear weapon until 1949, so while a WWIII that started in 1948 could have gone nuclear, it probably wouldn’t have been enough nuclear weapons to be a true x-risk?)
The incident in 1983 when Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov got the false report of a US launch and decided to not pass it on to his superiors
A bomber carrying 2 nuclear weapons crashed in California, and apparnelty one of the bombs came very close to detonating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
And wikipedia lists another 8 nuclear close calls I hadn’t even heard about before searching for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
It seems like it might be hard to define exactally what a “close call” is or what counts as a close call, but out of those, which ones would you count?
Edit: And nuclear war is probably the easiest one to measure. If there was a near miss that almost resulted in, say, a genetically engineered bioweapon being released, odds are we never would have heard about it. And I doubt anyone would even recognize something that was a near miss in terms of UFAI or similar technologies.
Accidental releases of diseases from labs (which happen depressingly often) or other containment failures could be used.
UFAI is, I agree, very hard to find near misses for.
The definition of the near-misses used in other fields is something like: a situation, where urgent measures were needed to prevent an accident, like the use of the emergency braking.
However, some near-misses may be not recognised as such. But they can’t be used in statistic or prediction market.