It might be worth getting more explicit about vN’s exact argumentative steps and see if it’s really as ironclad as you think.
Humans have a finite amount of time to occupy the universe. In principle, control systems for nuclear weapons can be engineered to be arbitrarily reliable. The logic of MAD says that nuclear powers will not conduct a nuclear exchange. This line of argument suggests there is no deductive logical reason why nuclear war is inevitable between two nuclear powers. If we have such a war, it may be due to theoretically preventable failures, such as flawed systems. The existence of a possible reason a nuclear exchange might occur without a first strike is far from compelling justification to do one.
In retrospect, sure, MAD worked out for us. But in 1899, Ivan Bloch asserted
… if any attempt were made to demonstrate the inaccuracy of my assertions by putting the matter to a test on a great scale, we should find the inevitable result in a catastrophe which would destroy all existing political organization. Thus, the great war cannot be made, and any attempt to make it would result in suicide.
This was before both world wars. After the first world war but before the second, others made similar arguments. In von Neumann’s time, that argument did not have a good empirical track record, and his work on game theory gave him theoretical reasons not to expect the prediction of peace through MAD to hold. If there was something he was missing in 1948, it is not obvious what.
I notice that I am confused. What did Bloch exactly claim? That the next World War would result in destruction of the entire civilisation? Or a sufficiently capable civilisation would come up with a way to wipe out humanity? If the former, then it is disproven, and if the latter, then mankind didn’t have any doomsday machines before the 1940s. Of course, I do beloeve that Bloch’s words do describe the modern world since an unknown moment after WWII.
It might be worth getting more explicit about vN’s exact argumentative steps and see if it’s really as ironclad as you think.
Humans have a finite amount of time to occupy the universe. In principle, control systems for nuclear weapons can be engineered to be arbitrarily reliable. The logic of MAD says that nuclear powers will not conduct a nuclear exchange. This line of argument suggests there is no deductive logical reason why nuclear war is inevitable between two nuclear powers. If we have such a war, it may be due to theoretically preventable failures, such as flawed systems. The existence of a possible reason a nuclear exchange might occur without a first strike is far from compelling justification to do one.
In retrospect, sure, MAD worked out for us. But in 1899, Ivan Bloch asserted
This was before both world wars. After the first world war but before the second, others made similar arguments. In von Neumann’s time, that argument did not have a good empirical track record, and his work on game theory gave him theoretical reasons not to expect the prediction of peace through MAD to hold. If there was something he was missing in 1948, it is not obvious what.
I notice that I am confused. What did Bloch exactly claim? That the next World War would result in destruction of the entire civilisation? Or a sufficiently capable civilisation would come up with a way to wipe out humanity? If the former, then it is disproven, and if the latter, then mankind didn’t have any doomsday machines before the 1940s. Of course, I do beloeve that Bloch’s words do describe the modern world since an unknown moment after WWII.