Nuclear war could do us a lot of damage, but it’s pretty unlikely to drive us completely extinct. And I think nuclear war—especially the sort of really big nuclear war that has any chance of driving the human race near to extinction—is fairly unlikely because it’s so obviously not in anyone’s interest.
(Note that I didn’t claim that those predictions are certainly right.)
Tangentially, it occurs to me that large-scale nuclear annihilation might make for interesting bullet-biting test cases for exotic decision theories. Suppose, e.g., that you’re interacting with some other agent and you can see one another’s source code (or have other pretty reliable insight into one another’s behaviour). A situation might arise in which your best course of action is to make a credible threat that in such-and-such circumstances you will destroy the world (meaning, e.g., launch a large-scale nuclear attack that will almost certainly result in almost everyone on both sides dying, etc.). Of course those circumstances have to be very unlikely given your threat. Theories like TDT then say that in those circumstances you should in fact destroy the world, even though at that point there is no possible way for doing so to help you. So, do you do it?
(UDT, which I think is the generally preferred TDT-like theory these days, says more precisely that you should arrange to be governed by an algorithm that in those circumstances will destroy the world. What you do if those circumstances then arise isn’t a separate question. I think that takes some of the psychological sting out of it—though deliberately programming yourself so that in some foreseeable situations you will definitely destroy the world is still quite a bullet to be biting.)
I agree with you about the probability of extinction and of nuclear war.
Regarding the issue of threats to destroy the world, during the Cold War the US and Russia both implied or made threats of that sort. For example, during the Cuban Missile crisis Kennedy explicitly announced that an attack even by a single nuclear weapon (in or from Cuba) would mean full scale nuclear war with Russia.
Kennedy planned the invasion of Cuba, not being aware that Cuba was in possession of tactical nukes which they would have the physical power to use in response to an invasion.
My estimates are: more than 50% chance Cuba would have used at least one tactical nuke in the case of an invasion, and more than 50% chance Kennedy would have made good on his threat to destroy the world.
“As terrified as the world was in October 1962, not even the policy-makers had realized how close to disaster the situation really was. Kennedy thought that the likelihood of nuclear war was 1 in 3, but the administration did not know many things. For example, it believed that none of the missiles were in Cuba yet, and that 2-3,000 of Soviet service personnel was in place. Accordingly, they planned the air strike for the 30th, before any nuclear warheads could be installed. In 1991-92, Soviet officials revealed that 42 IRBMs were in place and fully operational. These could obliterate US cities up to the Canadian border. These sites were guarded by 47,000 Soviet combat troops. Further, 9 MRBMs were ready to be used against the Americans in case of an invasion. The Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons that the local commanders were authorized to use to repel an attack. After he learned of this in 1992, a shaken McNamara told reporters, “This is horrifying. It meant that had a US invasion been carried out. . . there was a 99 percent probability that nuclear war would have been initiated.”
That’s not the issue. The issue is control. I don’t think the Russian ceded the control of nuclear weapons to Cubans. Even if the Cubans overran the missile bases and got physical control over the missiles, they still wouldn’t have been able to launch them.
Kennedy planned the invasion of Cuba, not being aware that Cuba was in possession of tactical nukes
“The human race will still exist a century from now”—could easily be wrong thanks to nuclear weapons
Nuclear war could do us a lot of damage, but it’s pretty unlikely to drive us completely extinct. And I think nuclear war—especially the sort of really big nuclear war that has any chance of driving the human race near to extinction—is fairly unlikely because it’s so obviously not in anyone’s interest.
(Note that I didn’t claim that those predictions are certainly right.)
Tangentially, it occurs to me that large-scale nuclear annihilation might make for interesting bullet-biting test cases for exotic decision theories. Suppose, e.g., that you’re interacting with some other agent and you can see one another’s source code (or have other pretty reliable insight into one another’s behaviour). A situation might arise in which your best course of action is to make a credible threat that in such-and-such circumstances you will destroy the world (meaning, e.g., launch a large-scale nuclear attack that will almost certainly result in almost everyone on both sides dying, etc.). Of course those circumstances have to be very unlikely given your threat. Theories like TDT then say that in those circumstances you should in fact destroy the world, even though at that point there is no possible way for doing so to help you. So, do you do it?
(UDT, which I think is the generally preferred TDT-like theory these days, says more precisely that you should arrange to be governed by an algorithm that in those circumstances will destroy the world. What you do if those circumstances then arise isn’t a separate question. I think that takes some of the psychological sting out of it—though deliberately programming yourself so that in some foreseeable situations you will definitely destroy the world is still quite a bullet to be biting.)
Stanislav Petrov may be relevant here.
I agree with you about the probability of extinction and of nuclear war.
Regarding the issue of threats to destroy the world, during the Cold War the US and Russia both implied or made threats of that sort. For example, during the Cuban Missile crisis Kennedy explicitly announced that an attack even by a single nuclear weapon (in or from Cuba) would mean full scale nuclear war with Russia.
Kennedy planned the invasion of Cuba, not being aware that Cuba was in possession of tactical nukes which they would have the physical power to use in response to an invasion.
My estimates are: more than 50% chance Cuba would have used at least one tactical nuke in the case of an invasion, and more than 50% chance Kennedy would have made good on his threat to destroy the world.
Links? Did Russia actually release the control of their (local) nukes to Cubans? I didn’t hear about this before.
The paper here says:
“As terrified as the world was in October 1962, not even the policy-makers had realized how close to disaster the situation really was. Kennedy thought that the likelihood of nuclear war was 1 in 3, but the administration did not know many things. For example, it believed that none of the missiles were in Cuba yet, and that 2-3,000 of Soviet service personnel was in place. Accordingly, they planned the air strike for the 30th, before any nuclear warheads could be installed. In 1991-92, Soviet officials revealed that 42 IRBMs were in place and fully operational. These could obliterate US cities up to the Canadian border. These sites were guarded by 47,000 Soviet combat troops. Further, 9 MRBMs were ready to be used against the Americans in case of an invasion. The Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons that the local commanders were authorized to use to repel an attack. After he learned of this in 1992, a shaken McNamara told reporters, “This is horrifying. It meant that had a US invasion been carried out. . . there was a 99 percent probability that nuclear war would have been initiated.”
Of course there’s no guarantee that’s accurate.
That’s not the issue. The issue is control. I don’t think the Russian ceded the control of nuclear weapons to Cubans. Even if the Cubans overran the missile bases and got physical control over the missiles, they still wouldn’t have been able to launch them.
Going by WIkipedia, that’s false.
It’s pretty hard to eliminate all humans with our current nuclear weapons.
In particular, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today.