Claiming that literally no nuclear incident nor biological risk could “particularly reduced it’s population” seems like a very strong claim to make? Especially given that your argument only holds if you’re correct. (e.g., if one of these would have ended humanity, we wouldn’t be having this conversation)
I mean, I think it’s true. Nuclear winter was the only plausible story for even a full-out nuclear war causing something close to human extinction, and I think extreme nuclear winter is very unlikely.
Similarly, it is very hard to make a pathogen that could kill literally everyone. You just have too many isolated populations, and the human immune system is too good. It might become feasible soon, but it was not very feasible historically!
I feel my point still stands, but have been struggling to articulate why. I’ll make my case, please let me know if my logic is flawed. I’ll admit that the post was a little hot-headed. That’s my fault. But having thought for a few days, I still believe there’s something important here.
In the post I’m arguing that survivorship bias due to existential risks means that we have biased view about the risks of existential risk, and we should take this into account when thinking about existential risks.
Your position (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the examples I give are extremely unlikely to lead to human extinction, therefore these examples don’t support my argument.
To counter, I think that 1. given that it’s never happened, it’s difficult to say with confidence what the outcome of nuclear war/global pathogens would be, but 2. even if complete extinction is very unlikely, the argument I posed still applies to 90% extinction/50% extinction/10% extinction/etc. If there are X% fewer people in the world that undergoes a global catastrophe, that’s still X% fewer people who observe that world, which leads to a survivorship bias as argued in the post.
This is similar to the argument that we should not be surprised to be alive on a hospitable planet where we can breath the air and eat the things around us. There’s a survivorship bias that selects for worlds on which we can live, and we’re not around to observe the worlds on which we can’t survive.
My claim is no nuclear bomb incident would have killed more than 25% of the population, or 500 million people in 1950, one billion 1970.
Reasoning is trivial—a single nuclear bomb can only kill a maximum of a few hundred thousand people at a time. At the height of the cold war there were a few thousand bombs on each side, most of which weren’t aimed at people but second strike capabilities in rural areas. Knock on effects like famines could kill more, but I doubt they would be worse than WW2, since number of direct deaths would be smaller. It would likely lead to war, but again WW2 is your ballpark here for number of deaths from an all out global war.
Making an anthropic update from something that at worse would have reduced world population by 25 percent is basically identical to reading tealeaves, especially if you don’t update the other way from WW1s and WW2s and other assorted disasters which majorly reduced world population.
Maybe we are the luckiest timeline. But the evidence for that is not enough to update you enough to meaningfully change your plans.
I think your output number is correct, but all your inputs incorrect (in the same direction, not canceling!).
A few thousand nuclear weapons is too low even today. The peak number was about 60k. Maybe most of the bombs are aimed at rural areas, but how many are aimed at cities? 40%? First strike bombs should be aimed at military targets, but aren’t second strike missiles aimed at populations in revenge? Doesn’t RAND famously talk about cities as hostages? I believe Ellsberg’s book claims that an awful lot of first strike planning was aimed at cities, probably most.
But when Ellsberg asked the Pentagon in 1960 what would be the death toll, they estimated 600 million, evenly divided between the two sides, about 80% immediate and 20% from fallout.
Claiming that literally no nuclear incident nor biological risk could “particularly reduced it’s population” seems like a very strong claim to make? Especially given that your argument only holds if you’re correct. (e.g., if one of these would have ended humanity, we wouldn’t be having this conversation)
I mean, I think it’s true. Nuclear winter was the only plausible story for even a full-out nuclear war causing something close to human extinction, and I think extreme nuclear winter is very unlikely.
Similarly, it is very hard to make a pathogen that could kill literally everyone. You just have too many isolated populations, and the human immune system is too good. It might become feasible soon, but it was not very feasible historically!
I feel my point still stands, but have been struggling to articulate why. I’ll make my case, please let me know if my logic is flawed. I’ll admit that the post was a little hot-headed. That’s my fault. But having thought for a few days, I still believe there’s something important here.
In the post I’m arguing that survivorship bias due to existential risks means that we have biased view about the risks of existential risk, and we should take this into account when thinking about existential risks.
Your position (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the examples I give are extremely unlikely to lead to human extinction, therefore these examples don’t support my argument.
To counter, I think that 1. given that it’s never happened, it’s difficult to say with confidence what the outcome of nuclear war/global pathogens would be, but 2. even if complete extinction is very unlikely, the argument I posed still applies to 90% extinction/50% extinction/10% extinction/etc. If there are X% fewer people in the world that undergoes a global catastrophe, that’s still X% fewer people who observe that world, which leads to a survivorship bias as argued in the post.
This is similar to the argument that we should not be surprised to be alive on a hospitable planet where we can breath the air and eat the things around us. There’s a survivorship bias that selects for worlds on which we can live, and we’re not around to observe the worlds on which we can’t survive.
My claim is no nuclear bomb incident would have killed more than 25% of the population, or 500 million people in 1950, one billion 1970.
Reasoning is trivial—a single nuclear bomb can only kill a maximum of a few hundred thousand people at a time. At the height of the cold war there were a few thousand bombs on each side, most of which weren’t aimed at people but second strike capabilities in rural areas. Knock on effects like famines could kill more, but I doubt they would be worse than WW2, since number of direct deaths would be smaller. It would likely lead to war, but again WW2 is your ballpark here for number of deaths from an all out global war.
Making an anthropic update from something that at worse would have reduced world population by 25 percent is basically identical to reading tealeaves, especially if you don’t update the other way from WW1s and WW2s and other assorted disasters which majorly reduced world population.
Maybe we are the luckiest timeline. But the evidence for that is not enough to update you enough to meaningfully change your plans.
I think your output number is correct, but all your inputs incorrect (in the same direction, not canceling!).
A few thousand nuclear weapons is too low even today. The peak number was about 60k. Maybe most of the bombs are aimed at rural areas, but how many are aimed at cities? 40%? First strike bombs should be aimed at military targets, but aren’t second strike missiles aimed at populations in revenge? Doesn’t RAND famously talk about cities as hostages? I believe Ellsberg’s book claims that an awful lot of first strike planning was aimed at cities, probably most.
But when Ellsberg asked the Pentagon in 1960 what would be the death toll, they estimated 600 million, evenly divided between the two sides, about 80% immediate and 20% from fallout.