I don’t know what probability we should translate to his statement that “unless something quite unforeseen occurs”. 90% maybe
I assume you mean 10% on “something unforeseen”? Opus 5estimates “5% and possibly less”, for what it’s worth.
I think he would be surprised that in 2000 hydrogen bombs were still the most powerful weapons
To be fair, nuclear bombs in 2000 were a thousand times more powerful than in 1951.
I think you’re underselling how much of Russell’s concern was the apparent instability of the equilibrium at the time, even without further technological progress:
“If things are allowed to drift, it is obvious that the bickering between Russia and the Western democracies will continue until Russia has a considerable store of atomic bombs, and that when that time comes there will be an atomic war.”
It doesn’t seem like this is conditional on further technological progress. The passage you’re quoting is specifically about human extinction, not about world war.
Yeah, I agree he was pretty wrong. But I think that a big part of the story is that he saw at the time politicians on both sides talking about nuclear war as a winnable fight (he quotes politicians on this extensively in his 1958 speech on the topic), and this made him think that one side would eventually pull the trigger. In reality, the concept of mutually assured destruction and nuclear wars being unwinnable eventually became common wisdom among politicians, and then nuclear sabre-rattling went down. And I think that’s downstream of the fact that military tech in fact didn’t improve that much, and no one yet managed to build a reliable response to nukes + ICBMs.
So you think the Great Stagnation manifested that quickly (it’s generally taken to start in the 70s), and in military tech to boot? (to develop better ICBM interception). That feels a bit implausible to me since nuclear bombs became so much more powerful. It feels more like an offense-defense balance intrinsic to the technology + coordination of exactly the type that he didn’t expect (the ABM treaty capping defense systems). But I feel a bit out of my depth here.
I assume you mean 10% on “something unforeseen”? Opus 5 estimates “5% and possibly less”, for what it’s worth.
To be fair, nuclear bombs in 2000 were a thousand times more powerful than in 1951.
I think you’re underselling how much of Russell’s concern was the apparent instability of the equilibrium at the time, even without further technological progress:
“If things are allowed to drift, it is obvious that the bickering between Russia and the Western democracies will continue until Russia has a considerable store of atomic bombs, and that when that time comes there will be an atomic war.”
It doesn’t seem like this is conditional on further technological progress. The passage you’re quoting is specifically about human extinction, not about world war.
Yeah, I agree he was pretty wrong. But I think that a big part of the story is that he saw at the time politicians on both sides talking about nuclear war as a winnable fight (he quotes politicians on this extensively in his 1958 speech on the topic), and this made him think that one side would eventually pull the trigger. In reality, the concept of mutually assured destruction and nuclear wars being unwinnable eventually became common wisdom among politicians, and then nuclear sabre-rattling went down. And I think that’s downstream of the fact that military tech in fact didn’t improve that much, and no one yet managed to build a reliable response to nukes + ICBMs.
So you think the Great Stagnation manifested that quickly (it’s generally taken to start in the 70s), and in military tech to boot? (to develop better ICBM interception). That feels a bit implausible to me since nuclear bombs became so much more powerful. It feels more like an offense-defense balance intrinsic to the technology + coordination of exactly the type that he didn’t expect (the ABM treaty capping defense systems). But I feel a bit out of my depth here.