Nuclear weapons and MAD provide the best examples of double-think that I can appreciate, and that I even partially buy into. Reading articles like this, I want to jump to judgement and outrage over the physicists and engineers who, I imagine, spend many more hours considering incremental technical improvements than contemplating the reality of these devices. But if I could press a button to relinquish my country's entire nuclear arsenal, would I? Would I rather live in a more morally pure country in that respect, but one which no longer has the safety benefits of mutually assured destruction? If not, then am I just a hypocrite for criticising those with direct involvement?
The logic of nuclear deterrence depends on having an amoral chain of command. Nuclear retaliation against Russia, China, or the United States is suicide, and serves no beneficial purpose in the moment it is carried out. But there is no way to fool an adversary into believing that we are capable of total retaliation without actually putting the command structures and individuals in place which are somewhat likely to follow through. Every time I seriously ponder nuclear war, these questions enter my mind and I can't make headway. Much of it boils down to utilitarianism versus more idealistic thinking.
I’ve always been struck by the caliber of this broadcast and the audience engagement and questions. From a different time when public discourse on nuclear weapons was common.
Perhaps part of the rising anxiety in society over the past decades is the suppression of the knowledge that the we live with loaded guns pointed at our heads. Sounds like an almost unhinged thing to say — but then again,
the policy is called MAD after all.
One of my first jobs out of college was working on simulation code dealing with weapons effects, incl. nuclear weapons.
I know I personally struggled with the ethics of it, but not all colleagues did. To some it was patriotism, to others it was an interesting problem, to yet some others it was just a job.
I learned a lot listening to the effects guys that were around during the live testing. Makes the 2020's seem tame compared to what was going on during the Cold War.
The best case scenario would be if no nukes worked, but everyone believed they did. Unfortunately getting there is essentially impossible. At the moment the US is responsible for most "stockpile stewardship" research, the fruits of which are ultimately disseminated to other nuclear powers. If we were to stop spending billions forging ahead in that area of research, it might make the world's nukes less viable. Since the US has the most by number, our relative advantage would still remain.
The USA tried to give flawed nuclear bomb plans to Iran in a bid to slow down their nuclear weapons program, but it backfired and Iran was informed that the plan had purposeful flaws. It is debatable whether it wound up accelerating the Iranian nuclear program.
Also, the threat of the nuclear bomb is what finally led to the ceasefire in the Korean War. Both North Korea and the USA came in thinking they were the "victors" and that the other side needed to sue for peace. Truman didn't want to threaten the use of the nuclear bomb, having been the one to drop two on Japan. When Eisenhower assumed Presidency, he threatened the use of nuclear weapons, bullying North Korea in the process. Hence, the regime became obsessed with obtaining one so that it could never be bullied again. It viewed it as the prime ticket to true independence/security.
So the USA shot itself in the foot twice when it comes to "modern nations obsessed with nuclear weapons programs that are not friendly to the USA".
Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East novels proposed a super weapon ARDNEH which did just that, but being fantasy both sides unleashed their own versions and the effect became permanent.
It's kinda interesting (although probably more of a simple slippery slope) to consider the intersection of this and the classic Reflections On Trusting Trust[1].
> With explosions taking place virtually, how much harder will it be for weapons scientists to confront the destructive power of their work and its ethical implications?
What exactly is her hoped response, once a physicist realizes by watching a live atomic bomb explosion, that these things actually hurt? They'll quit working there? That didn't occur with the first few generations of bomb physicists. Enough stuck around to produce bomb after bomb, both here and abroad.
If anyone needs to learn this lesson, it's the proliferators -- except they'd just be overjoyed at the fearsome might, not terrified. Tehran and Pyongyang won't be deterred by feeling the dreadful rumble of a live test. (I'd pay to watch one, though.)
There may be dark side effects of virtualization, but this article's premise is weak.
I think it was Dan Carlin who suggested it might be a good idea to (every decade or so) conduct a live nuclear test above ground and publicize it widely. Not to make sure the bomb worked - but to remind everyone of the destructive power of these devices
It sounds like a good idea, but I think it'll backfire. You'd think that would make people want less nukes, but ultimately, it would make people want more nukes to protect themselves from others with nukes.
After hiroshima and nagasaki, the soviet union, britain, france, china, etc didn't say, "wow that's destructive, lets have less of that". They said, "wow that's destructive" and "we need some".
I think if we did that openly and showed the world the destructive power of nukes every decade, more and more nations would want to get it and we'd have more nuclear powers.
Normalising nuclear testing is a terrible idea! This is simply seen by unpacking the blandly neutral statement "nuclear testing" to the more accurate "practice mass murder by use of large explosion using a complicated device".
Big errors like this have all been tested and modeled away, but the problem is exceedingly complex, and I am just as certain enough uncertainty remains in the current models to be a genuine concern.
I mean, just as an example, literally the entire landing sequence for the Curiosity rover we sent to mars hasn't been tested in reality before the actual mission. NASA could prove that it "should" work but no actual proof could be produced(especially the sky crane part hasn't been tested), and it was a mission that has nearly deplated our entire stock of plutonium, so you'd think there would be some way to make sure this incredibly complex landing sequence will actually you know, work.
Nuclear weapons are deterrents.. The goal is for them never to be used. If they didnt actually work at all that would be great. That would just be a layer of safety in case in some catastrophic turn of events they accidentally got used.
I mean, we have a bunch of designs that were tested and then mass produced. Many thousands of them, altogether.
They do need regular maintenance, of course. Such as replacing stuff that decayed, and stuff that got damaged by the radiation, or just air oxidation and whatever.
So what's the "designing" for? I find it hard to imagine that they'd be making substantive changes without any actual testing. Because they'd have no way to really know.
And conversely, I find it hard to imagine why we need to improve them. They're already too powerful to actually use on the Earth.
So doesn't the increased uncertainty outweigh some marginal increase in efficiency or power or whatever?
You might want to improve the designs to lengthen the shelf-life, to enable the use of smaller amounts of nuclear and conventional explosives, to increase efficiency and reduce the fallout created and so on. There are many more attributes to nuclear weapons than just how big of a bang they make.
The point of article isn't so much about physical vs. virtual testing, but about blindly trusting inherited code.
Some people freak out when they are unable to examine and understand internal working of used libraries, while others don't get it at all and just trust them. For me it is a mystery.
I find the idea that today we still have to worry about an en masse invasion from a random blob of the same planet and specie population quite an aberration... And more disturbing it all starts usually from single individuals....you want to start a war? Good luck! Good for you! should be the answer of the rest of the population, why it doesn't happen? Lack of education, and the perception of unlawfulness? Armed enforcement? It's beyond me...
[+] [-] jakeinspace|6 years ago|reply
The logic of nuclear deterrence depends on having an amoral chain of command. Nuclear retaliation against Russia, China, or the United States is suicide, and serves no beneficial purpose in the moment it is carried out. But there is no way to fool an adversary into believing that we are capable of total retaliation without actually putting the command structures and individuals in place which are somewhat likely to follow through. Every time I seriously ponder nuclear war, these questions enter my mind and I can't make headway. Much of it boils down to utilitarianism versus more idealistic thinking.
[+] [-] gdubs|6 years ago|reply
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-day-after-35-years-later-carl...
I’ve always been struck by the caliber of this broadcast and the audience engagement and questions. From a different time when public discourse on nuclear weapons was common.
Perhaps part of the rising anxiety in society over the past decades is the suppression of the knowledge that the we live with loaded guns pointed at our heads. Sounds like an almost unhinged thing to say — but then again, the policy is called MAD after all.
[+] [-] cjslep|6 years ago|reply
I know I personally struggled with the ethics of it, but not all colleagues did. To some it was patriotism, to others it was an interesting problem, to yet some others it was just a job.
I learned a lot listening to the effects guys that were around during the live testing. Makes the 2020's seem tame compared to what was going on during the Cold War.
[+] [-] yummypaint|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjslep|6 years ago|reply
Also, the threat of the nuclear bomb is what finally led to the ceasefire in the Korean War. Both North Korea and the USA came in thinking they were the "victors" and that the other side needed to sue for peace. Truman didn't want to threaten the use of the nuclear bomb, having been the one to drop two on Japan. When Eisenhower assumed Presidency, he threatened the use of nuclear weapons, bullying North Korea in the process. Hence, the regime became obsessed with obtaining one so that it could never be bullied again. It viewed it as the prime ticket to true independence/security.
So the USA shot itself in the foot twice when it comes to "modern nations obsessed with nuclear weapons programs that are not friendly to the USA".
[+] [-] jmpman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c0nsumer|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
[+] [-] MockObject|6 years ago|reply
What exactly is her hoped response, once a physicist realizes by watching a live atomic bomb explosion, that these things actually hurt? They'll quit working there? That didn't occur with the first few generations of bomb physicists. Enough stuck around to produce bomb after bomb, both here and abroad.
If anyone needs to learn this lesson, it's the proliferators -- except they'd just be overjoyed at the fearsome might, not terrified. Tehran and Pyongyang won't be deterred by feeling the dreadful rumble of a live test. (I'd pay to watch one, though.)
There may be dark side effects of virtualization, but this article's premise is weak.
[+] [-] tribune|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dntbnmpls|6 years ago|reply
After hiroshima and nagasaki, the soviet union, britain, france, china, etc didn't say, "wow that's destructive, lets have less of that". They said, "wow that's destructive" and "we need some".
I think if we did that openly and showed the world the destructive power of nukes every decade, more and more nations would want to get it and we'd have more nuclear powers.
[+] [-] chasd00|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsiefken|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Baeocystin|6 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo
Big errors like this have all been tested and modeled away, but the problem is exceedingly complex, and I am just as certain enough uncertainty remains in the current models to be a genuine concern.
[+] [-] gambiting|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everyone|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|6 years ago|reply
I mean, we have a bunch of designs that were tested and then mass produced. Many thousands of them, altogether.
They do need regular maintenance, of course. Such as replacing stuff that decayed, and stuff that got damaged by the radiation, or just air oxidation and whatever.
So what's the "designing" for? I find it hard to imagine that they'd be making substantive changes without any actual testing. Because they'd have no way to really know.
And conversely, I find it hard to imagine why we need to improve them. They're already too powerful to actually use on the Earth.
So doesn't the increased uncertainty outweigh some marginal increase in efficiency or power or whatever?
[+] [-] iofiiiiiiiii|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rini17|6 years ago|reply
Some people freak out when they are unable to examine and understand internal working of used libraries, while others don't get it at all and just trust them. For me it is a mystery.
[+] [-] toss1|6 years ago|reply
In whatever field of work, THIS is most critical.
Grounding in the hard reality.
Without it, you literally don't know what you are missing
With it, you can easily see things that others miss, simply because you stand at a better point of view.
[+] [-] siliconunit|6 years ago|reply