The point about chaff is that a regular size sniper rifle bullet can’t contain it in any significant quantity. Smalest existing chaff shells are for 23mm cannons, and a drone carrying ~20mm cannon has to be rather large.
Lalartu
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In general, lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war are not very relevant for a “state of the art” conflict, because both sides have weak air forces. It is like watching two armies fighting with bayonets because they are out of ammo and concluding that you should arm your soldiers with swords and shields.
Also, this makes many assumptions which are dubious (like, sniper drones aren’t anywhere close to practical use, and it is not clear if they are viable), but also some which are strictly false:
Bullets can’t carry enough chaff to “surround” a tank
Lasers can destroy artillery shells (which are made of steel) in flight, there is no practical way to harden a light drone against them.
A lot of people just don’t believe it is possible, and for good reasons. Life extension as a scientific field was around for about a century, with exactly zero results so far. And these “ASI can grant immortality” stories usually assume nanotechnology, which is most likely fundamentally impossible.
If life extension was actually available, I think attitude would be different.
I disagree that “forever is really long time” in this context. To delay AI forever requires delaying it until industrial civilization collapse (from resource depletion or whatever other reason). That means 200-300 years, more likely that 50000.
I think this is not true at all. Modern video games, films or cookies aren’t any more addictive compared to those 20 years ago. As for reasons of fertility drop—remember that this is not the first time! USA fertility was barely above replacement in 1930s, and some European countries were below at that time.
Again, that some estimates are given in papers doesn’t mean they are even roughly correct. But if they are—then no, that scenario is not suicide. There are some nations now which have lower GDP per capita than USA had two centuries ago.
As for defense—well, that definitely wouldn’t be a problem. Who and why will be willing to invade a big and very poor country, leaders of which claim they still have some nukes in reserve?
The first claim is true—but ruling a third world nation is still better than being dead and ruling nothing. If the leadership has Eliezer-level conviction that AI would kill everybody, then the choice is clear. The second isn’t—destroying the ability to build AI is much easier, so the reason for abiding the treaty is not “we all die” but rather “we become much poorer and don’t get the AI anyway”.
I think all these claims are incorrect. First, estimates of damage from nukes are very likely to be hugely (and intentionally) overblown, the same way as pre-WWII estimates for strategic bombing were off by an order of magnitude. Second, even ignoring that, current arsenals (only warheads deployed on ICBMs, other are irrelevant in this scenario) are not sufficient for counter-population strike. Destroying large cities does not destroy the nation. Third and most importantly, leadership ordering the first strike will surely survive! They just move to some remote location before, and then claim that the other side attacked first.
The biggest problem with proposing tanks is convincing military leadership that they need them. They didn’t expect trench warfare at all (and yes, some writers predicted it, and nobody believed them).
The winning strategy exists: don’t build a large fleet and don’t invade Belgium. The problem is, there is basically no way to convince German leadership to follow the first part, and the second part alone doesn’t reliably keep Britain neutral.
Telling the leaders anything like “war will be long and bloody” will not work. They will not believe you, and you have no proof.
The only way I see is to let either side to win without world war, by breaking either Entente or Triple Alliance. Like, if British king or Russan tsar is killed by some French radicals.
This is based on assumption that defense is much easier than offense. This is not true, in fact in WWI attacker’s and defender’s losses were usually close (for example, ~140k vs ~160k KIA at Verdun).
These things are either unlikely to succeed or just not that important.
Including dath ilan is especially strange. It is a work of fiction, it is not really appealing, and it is not realistic (that is, not internally consistent) either.
That story of Mongol conquests is simply not true. Horse archer steppe nomads existed for many centuries before Mongols, and often tried to conquer their neighbors, with mixed success. What happened in the 1200s is that Mongols had a few exceptionally good leaders. After they died, Mongols lost their advantage.
Calling states like Khwarazmian or Jin Empire “small duchies” is especially funny.
As I understand, topicstarters claim is that civilization is not a chaotic system, and any temporary disturbances don’t affect long-term trajectory. Weather is a chaotic system.
It is always possible to say in retrospect that whatever happened was inevitable. The problem is, a world where individual actions don’t matter that much should be a predictable world. And ours very much isn’t.
Defaults only matter due to reputation. But stopping a weird practice which no one else does doesn’t really damage reputation.
So what happens when in 50 years the government just stops paying, without passing the law? Buyers of these instruments don’t care about that law, so they will not object much, and there will be no reputation loss.
80% for AGI solving aging is very optimistic. Even just one single possibility, that people who decide what values should AGI have happen to be anti-immortalist is imo >20%.
That is not true at all, anti-tank fpv cost is about 1⁄100 of a Javelin missile. It is not obvious how much autonomous guidance would add to a drone cost, but probably less than 10000%.