I’m not claiming I have the best possible answer here, I’m claiming that what humans are current doing is some mix of absurdly stupid things
What are some examples of these?
I think it is essentially epsilon chance that Putin would choose nuclear firestorm over a world where Russia doesn’t recreate the USSR / Russian Empire (and even where he dies tomorrow as well) if those were 100% the choices (I do think he might well be willing to risk a non-trivial chance of nuclear war to get it, but that is different), but let’s say that it is 10% (and notice that in those 10%, if he knew for a fact we’d respond with our nukes, he’d just say ‘oh that’s too bad’ and destroy the world in a fit of pique, which very much doesn’t seem right).
Yeah, I should have said 10% chance of escalating all the way to destroying the world (if the West doesn’t let Putin have his way), through all causes, not just Putin having that kind of values.
If we lived by the rules you’re suggesting in the past, also, we wouldn’t have gotten this far—we would have folded to the USSR as nation after nation turned red, and at best we’d be in a much poorer, less free world (assuming it’s nuke-specific, and we still fight WW2).
But if the USSR became the world government, at least we wouldn’t be repeatedly facing 10% chance of destroying the world. Is that an obvious tradeoff to you?
I’m not sure why this got voted down, but I don’t disagree. In parts of my comments that you didn’t quote, I indicated my own uncertainty about the tradeoff.
If there were a bunch of Putin-style people in charge of the world that doesn’t seem like a ‘safe’ world either. It seems like a world where these states engage in continuous brinksmanship that, if this kind of mindset is common, leads to a 10% chance of Armageddon as often or more often than the current one.
We may have very different models of what happens if we let the USSR take over, but yeah I think that world has destroyed most of its value assuming it didn’t go negative. And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
If the model is ‘Putin escalates to nuclear war sometimes and maybe he miscalculates’ then ‘fold to him’ is letting him conquer the world, literally, because no he wouldn’t stop with Russia’s old borders if we let him get Warsaw and Helsinki. Why would he? Otherwise, folding more makes him escalate until the nukes fly.
And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
I’m assuming that the USSR would not have let other communist governments develop their own nuclear weapons.
It seems like the only world which doesn’t face repeated 10% chances of Armageddon is one in which some state has a nuclear monopoly and enforces it by threatening to attack any other state that tries to develop nuclear weapons (escalating to nuclear attack if necessary). Ideally, this would have been the US, but failing that, maybe the USSR having a nuclear monopoly would be preferable to the current situation.
Also, communist governments don’t always get worse over time, monotonically. Sometimes they get better instead. It’s pretty unclear to me what would have happened to the USSR in the long run, in this alternate world in which they achieved a nuclear monopoly.
What are some examples of these?
Yeah, I should have said 10% chance of escalating all the way to destroying the world (if the West doesn’t let Putin have his way), through all causes, not just Putin having that kind of values.
But if the USSR became the world government, at least we wouldn’t be repeatedly facing 10% chance of destroying the world. Is that an obvious tradeoff to you?
After reading Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, I am not really sure which outcome is worse.
I’m not sure why this got voted down, but I don’t disagree. In parts of my comments that you didn’t quote, I indicated my own uncertainty about the tradeoff.
If there were a bunch of Putin-style people in charge of the world that doesn’t seem like a ‘safe’ world either. It seems like a world where these states engage in continuous brinksmanship that, if this kind of mindset is common, leads to a 10% chance of Armageddon as often or more often than the current one.
We may have very different models of what happens if we let the USSR take over, but yeah I think that world has destroyed most of its value assuming it didn’t go negative. And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
If the model is ‘Putin escalates to nuclear war sometimes and maybe he miscalculates’ then ‘fold to him’ is letting him conquer the world, literally, because no he wouldn’t stop with Russia’s old borders if we let him get Warsaw and Helsinki. Why would he? Otherwise, folding more makes him escalate until the nukes fly.
I’m assuming that the USSR would not have let other communist governments develop their own nuclear weapons.
It seems like the only world which doesn’t face repeated 10% chances of Armageddon is one in which some state has a nuclear monopoly and enforces it by threatening to attack any other state that tries to develop nuclear weapons (escalating to nuclear attack if necessary). Ideally, this would have been the US, but failing that, maybe the USSR having a nuclear monopoly would be preferable to the current situation.
Also, communist governments don’t always get worse over time, monotonically. Sometimes they get better instead. It’s pretty unclear to me what would have happened to the USSR in the long run, in this alternate world in which they achieved a nuclear monopoly.