In safety we try to prevent rare events (such as death) and these are rare enough that “past deaths” are not a useful way to predict the likelihood of a death.
A crucial metric that occurs more more often and does help predict deaths is “HPI” - high potential incident. A worker eight metres in the air dropped a spanner. It thudded on the ground, harmlessly. No one was hurt. No problem, right? That’s a HPI. A workplace that has a death will have had many HPIs. The dice-roll is not “it’s a new day, we roll the dice”. When a HPI occurs, that’s when we roll the dice.
Or in nuclear war estimates: a HPNWI occurs (high potential nuclear war incident). The Cuban missile crisis springs to mind as a particularly big example. But many many smaller HPNWI’s have occurred. Border skirmishes between nuclear powers. Sabre rattling by nuclear powers. Elect a president who uses threats and brinkmanship. Do this year in, year out. The dice is rolled not because time passes but because risky decisions are made and risky actions are taken, over and over and over and over and over and over, year in, year out.
This runs counter to the black swan concept popularized by Taleb. In that they are by nature unpredictable, what one can predict is that there will be a next one.
I like this framework but I'd appreciate hearing more about it.
Another issue with this logic is that the probabilities are not independent.
Saying that you have probability x of nuclear war every year and so probability (1-x)^n of no nuclear war in n years assumes independence. In fact, if you don't have nuclear war on year 1, I would assume that the reasons for that lead to inferences and correlations that would affect the probability of nuclear war on year 2, possibly making it lower.
No, that’s not quite right. Measuring “did we have a nuclear war?” is not the input you’d ever want to use there, it’s only one binary digit of information.
Instead take info like “did we have events/incidents with a high potential of nuclear war?”
If three “Cuban missile crisis” level events happened in year X, then the probability of nuclear war in year x+1 is higher than it was in other years — even though nuclear war didn’t occur in either year. If national leaders make no statements threatening war in year A, then it’s probably safer than year B where there were 100 such threats.
While it is difficult/impossible to accurately quantify the probability of war, and that the ground truth is far more complex than these simple models, there still has been a long list of historical incidents in which the outcome was decided by sometimes random and even independent factors outside of anyone's control and makes the gambler's ruin argument compelling:
There's two particular incidents that are great examples of this. The '83 false alarm [1], and the 1980 missile silo explosion [2].
In both cases, they were razor-thin near misses. If either accident happened even once more, we absolutely would have either a radiological disaster or accidental nuclear war.
It's this sort of thing that makes me think maybe we shouldn't have any nuclear technology at all, the risks are just too high. Climate change is bad, but not as bad as burning our entire planet to the ground in under an hour, then poisoning it forever.
> The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to the point of madness.
Haven't read the book, but I watched Dr. Strangelove when I was young(er).
What made the movie great to me was that it made me realize that, although there is a nuclear "safety net", it was designed and controlled by humans — flawed humans who don't always behave rationally and who may not act in the best interests of humanity.
Every day since WW2, things could have gone wrong.
Every day, for 76.56 years. 918.79 months. 27965 days.
I think we'll be fine. And if I'm wrong, you probably won't be able to tell me! :)
Edit: not sure (and don't really care) why this got downvoted, but I meant it as a morale boosting thing, not as a probability calculation. Things could have gone horribly wrong so many times, but they haven't so far. That personally gives me hope for the future.
I would say that probability is 100%, having a corrupted system, with corrupted people and madmen, on all sides, it is not question of "will" but rather "when"...
The system being corrupted makes it less likely to have nuclear wars, not more? Idealists are willing to blow up everything for their ideals, people who are only in it for themselves have nothing to gain by destroying the world.
John Kay wrote a good book about this called Radical Uncertainty. It's annoying that there is an increasing tendency to frame what is a purely narrative statement in quantitative terms.
As the author points out war is not historically predetermined, at least in any way we could convincingly figure out, and pulling numbers out of thin air only serves the purpose of trying to talk about the future with less uncertainty than is appropriate.
Talking about events in terms of probabilities should be reserved for events that are not dominated by 'unknown unknowns'. You can attach a probability to a volcano outbreak, a transaction in an ordinary functioning market, a game of blackjack. That is to say 'small worlds' where outcomes are known, rules well defined and inputs quantified. You can't predict the overthrow a government in 5 years in numerical terms. That doesn't mean you can't talk about it. It's okay to say something is unlikely or very likely, but it makes more sense to explicitly talk about these things in qualitative terms rather than trying to be 'mathy' to make a prediction appear more objective than it is.
A useful metric - how often does a national leader willing to start a nuclear war come to power in a state with nuclear weapons? That's measureable from historical data.
You're missing half the equation. 'Every'[0] national leader is willing to start a nuclear war given some particular set of circumstances. There's always some line that they will not allow their enemies to cross.
The difference between leaders is what those circumstances are. It's in where that line is. [1]
Public communications on this subject have to be taken with a pound of salt. It's in every nuclear nation's interests to claim that line is further out than it really is... As long as they believe that broadcasting the claim itself won't start nuclear war.
It's also in every nuclear nation's interests to be very mindful about where their adversary's line is.
[0] Okay, there might be a closet pacifist somewhere that won't use them in any situation, but if there is, they certainly aren't broadcasting that.
[1] So far, we're batting a thousand for 'No national leader whose last name was not Truman started a nuclear war in a situation where his state was not fighting an existential war'.
This statistic, unfortunately, is not particularly helpful.
It's not measureable. First of you need to account for many having the same weapons (MAD) and you also need to account for the knowledge of the impact of these weapons. The knowledge does change the probability for someone willing and able to use these weapons to come into power (as well as the whole structure around the usage).
Only one national leader -- Harry Truman -- has ever allowed nuclear weapons to be used in combat, in 1945, the same year the weapon became available. This was 77 years ago. He was the 33rd president, and we are on the 46th. By this measure, based only on the US, we get such a leader once every 77 years or once every 13 leaders. These numbers will only get lower once you start to add in other nuclear weapons states.
That said, I don't think any of this math is pointing us toward any kind of answer about how likely any person alive right now is to experience nuclear war, which is really what we're after. At the very most, every day that nobody uses one extends the lower bound of how often they are likely to be used (77 years and counting), but this is almost tautological. Also, maybe it follows some kind of power law and the farther away from their invention, the less likely we are to use them? Or maybe the opposite? Or maybe we oscillate between the two in some sinusoidal pattern? In any case, we can't know. History is not an experimental science.
> Put differently, Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up. Even he himself cannot meaningfully answer the question “What’s the probability that Russia will launch nuclear missiles 6 months from now” unless his answer is 100%. It depends on many factors, like how NATO reacts and how strong the Ukraine military is, none of which can be captured by probabilities.
There's a guy[0] who spent a career analyzing and writing about these things.
His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either. According to Piontkovsky, (to Putin,) there's no essential difference, and the (lack of) NATO membership reason provided by NATO is a lame excuse indicative of a lack of resolve to commit, NATO member or not. So Putin is willing to keep upping the ante until NATO folds and becomes irrelevant.
> His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either.
That’s a weird take. Ukraine is not a NATO member, NATO can choose to fight for them or can choose to not fight for them. Latvia is a NATO member. If Latvia is attacked and the NATO doesn’t fight for them NATO stops being a thing immediately. The 5th article is a cornerstone of the whole aliance. It is not an optional “and one more thing” but the reason to join the aliance at all, if it becomes shaky that undermines the whole thing.
I wouldn’t dare to guess what goes on in Putin’s mind, but I also don’t see any reason why he would think that.
I don't buy this. The NATO message was clear & consistent that they will intervene in case of an attack on a member - there's 0 reason to believe otherwise. In fact, I'd say that current response in Ukraine enforces this (though it's not a NATO member it got plenty of offensive equipment, intelligence, money, support, etc. - basically everything possible short of direct declaration of war / direct military involvement from all NATO members).
Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this. And he probably knows it. This is the weakest position he can be in - if the west attacked him, he could at least mobilize the Russians to "defend against western aggression" and could even justify the nuclear bombs to his generals; As things stand, his rhetoric and position are very shaky (he's not being defeated by mighty USA, but by the "weak" Ukrainians who "aren't even a nation")
> His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either.
The link posted was from 2015.
I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that indicates that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.
Instead, on Twitter he shared this Feb 27 story (not by him) that indicated Putin has a great fear of NATO forces:
But this underestimates Russian respect for NATO’s conventional military power, which is far greater than its own. The only language Putin understands is force, and Moscow did not retaliate after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane in 2015 or when the United States struck and killed Russian mercenaries in 2018
This makes very little sense to me. Nuclear war is not a random event that might happen at any given point with some probability P. It is a decision that is made based on an evolving situation, there are not independent random event you can apply high school math to.
Also an event being rare does not mean that it is unlikely. For example a 29th of February is a rare event, if you were to think about it in terms of probabilities, there is about 0.07% of chance for it to occur on any given day. So you would conclude that there is about 1-(1-.0007)^(2*365)=40% chance to occur within 2 years. But it is obviously absurd to think this way, since the next 29th of February will happen in 2024, in less than 2 years, the probability is 100%.
The whole article is basically about different interpretations of probabilities -- probabilities as reflecting the degree of belief, vs pure frequentist ones. Both make sense, they just need to be used in different situations and need to be interpreted differently.
May be missing some subtlety, but at a quick read I would respond to this as:
- The author has not deeply understood the subjective interpretation of probability, as widely used by bayesians, and applicable to this sort of reasoning
- the author, and the sources the author quotes based on a quick read, seem unfamiliar with quanifying uncertainties not just as point estimates, but instead by using a probability distribution, which you can use to easily tell the difference between a mean probability of .5 based on say 5 heads and 5 tails, vs one based on 500 heads and 500 tails.
The point that it's often difficult to tell whether a particular probability should be 0.0001 or 0.00001 is a fair one.
But overall I don't take much reassurance from this article.
the gambler's ruin fallacy is a typical example of cumulative probability. cumulative probability measures the odds of two, three, or more events happening. there's just one catch involved: each event needs to be independent of the others. you can't have the outcome of a first event influence the probability of the next. which we know for nuclear war it be dependent upon the probability of previous events. ie. if a nuclear war starts, either everyone gets annihilated, which in turn influences the probability of the next nuclear war to be zero, or one or both of nuclear powers get severely damaged with catastrophic consequences, therefore influencing probability of future similar events
In a sense the dice are rolled constantly. Every time someone monitors a nuclear power’s early warning system there is a risk that system will return a false positive. There is a chance the operator won’t recognize it. There is a chance the geopolitical situation will cause leadership to believe it is a true positive. There is a chance they will choose to launch on warning rather than risk loosing the opportunity at a meaningful counter attack. I agree that it’s probably impossible to estimate the probability, but it is definitely greater than 0. Eventually the dice will come up snake eyes. Hopefully not before we figure out how to stop rolling them.
The original article does this straw man trick of pretending that the models act like every day is independent. That’s not how it works at all. They’re not modelling the chance of a spontaneous war erupting without cause on day X. Motivated authors just pretend that’s what the models mean because it makes it easy to ridicule.
Regarding this — “it’s probably impossible to estimate the probability” - ok - well. I think we have to unpack that a lot!
I would say: “we can model the event.” That’s an absolute. (Anyone who disagrees with that statement just does not understand the statement)
It does not mean the models are accurate. The model will provide probabilities. How much confidence can we have in the probabilities? Now this is where the difficulty lies. The probability itself will be a low number. And our confidence won’t be very high. That’s automatically creates an opening for any bad faith commentator to say launch an attack. And yet… what’s the alternative? Pretend it cannot be modelled as various commentators in this page (but not you) have done? Pretend that a model with low probabilities or low confidence can be dismissed? The best response (if we agree that nuclear war is a Bad Thing and worth avoiding) is to improve the models, not ignore them - and of course in so doing —- to try and avoid nuclear war.
> Putin does not roll a dice every morning and launches a nuclear missile if a six shows up
Very true. Using, essentially, the infinite typing monkeys idea to say that a nuclear war is bound to happen eventually is just a pseudo-scientific rationalization of war. Put this way, almost anything becomes certain if you completely ignore the fact that you don’t know P(nukes|war) since we have no further data to base this on. Even a coin flipped once or twice might not be heads and tails. The idea of P(heads) = 0.5 is that eventually, as the flips extend to infinity, it equals 0.5.
This would be similar to someone living in the Black Plague saying “since 10% of Europe is dying per year, in 10 years we will most certainly be extinct.” I don’t know the technical or formal name for this fallacy or line of thinking, so I’ll just call this gross oversimplification.
What about asking what's the probability that nuclear-powered nation gets an autocratic leader who can decide on his own whether to launch the first strike?
I think the current situation most strikingly points to the dangers autocratic governments pose to the whole planet. If people of a nation could vote on whether to start nuclear war I think they would vote no. But a crazy dictator? Not so sure. It should be the law everywhere: No nuclear first strikes. But that can only work if rule of law is the rule.
The other great concern is misinformation and ability to keep most of the nation misguided enough to support a war. There should be international law to prevent spread of misinformation that can cause or lengthen wars.
So this is basically saying that it's extremely hard to estimate these tail-event probabilities reliably, and therefore conclusions should not be taken as gospel. But we mostly knew that already?
On the other hand we have a lot of data points of humans and nations using every available edge to expand their power throughout history. Also we have made social systems where narcissistic greed and lust for power seems to get pretty much rewarded with more money and power, and misinformation runs rampant. More powerful weapons systems will get developed until MAD might not be certainty for the aggressor, if bombs can be delivered stealthily in minutes. Or at least MAD might get tested with one warning shot, delivering a message of "what is your actual defense going to be, I don't really care about the world anyways"
I don't really see it as much as daily roll of a dice but more of a system that might guarantee to force us down that road some day within a few generations.
People think MAD is 'we launch everything at our enemy if we see one missile' -- this hasn't been the case for decades, since all sides can see launches almost as soon as they happen. So yes, 'warning shots' are now effectively the start of such a conflict. Where MAD comes in is it's generally accepted that if you do that your opponent is likely to lob one back. An eye for an eye. I suspect capitals of nuclear powers are special cases though, and would generally be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
I don't think Putin needs to actually start nuking European countries to get his way though. He knows the Americans simply do not have the resolve to escalate a nuclear confrontation unless its own domestic security is threatened. I don't think the UK or France would either. NATO is kind of a sham.
But Putin isn't worried about nukes in Ukraine as much as ground troops. The fact that he is suggests he's not worried about getting nuked himself, which is actually a positive sign, for everyone except Ukraine.
ETA: I just realized in Biden's SOTU he said the US would defend every inch of NATO territory and make the Russians pay, which was clever, since neither of those statements suggests either an invasion of Russia nor a nuclear response, only that Russia wouldn't be able to hold the territory and that there would be repercussions of some kind. Not a dumb guy.
Every day I wonder if what is happening in Ukraine right now - will turn out to be another invasion of Czechoslovakia 2022 edition written in history books as a missed opportunity to turn the tide as the world watched paralyzed by Putin’s nuclear rattle.
Legitimate concern, yes, but here’s the food for thought and mark my words - it is inevitable that very soon Russia’s rhetoric will turn to “economic sanctions are intended to destroy Russia and are an act of war”, along with “supplying Ukrainian resistance is an act of war”, while the nuclear rattle comes out once again in one form or another, like “Russia is forced to respond by arming with nuclear weapons all allied states, such as Iran, Talibistan, North Korea, Venezuela” etc…
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. The issue is not that you're wrong about you-know-who, the issue is that it has seriously degrading effects on internet threads, and we're trying to avoid that here. To the extent possible.
If an article is substantive, it deserves better than this—much better, actually. And if it isn't substantive, it shouldn't be on HN's front page.
This makes me chuckle. The Bad Orange Man played the "insane king" role really, really well. Everyone was on their best behaviour until he left office. Peace talks in the Middle East progressed. Russia stayed in their borders. North Korea huffed and puffed and ultimately did nothing. Trade with China became more favorable to the US. It's almost like his foreign policy was effective.
To your point: Putin isn't nuts. He's just a really good politician. He's pragmatic and knows the value of being seen as "crazy" and "he might actually launch a nuke".
People look like they make irrational decisions when viewed from the outside with little inside knowledge, there is definitely more to this than we are aware of.
What is an ensemble probability of something that has never occurred and is essentially impossible to model? Have you seen all infinite alternate universes? Probability does not make sense.
Compare the following:
What is the probability that you will die today?
What is the probability that you will die today given that you belong to the category of people with A_i characteristics and whose ensemble probability of dying on a given day has been measured?
The insurance industry does a pretty good job of “what is the probability that you will die in the next billable period” - but they would never reduce the bet to “what is the probability that you will die today?”
You say it’s “essentially impossible to model” something that hasn’t occurred before.
Nations have engaged in a lot of wars.
Nations have engaged in a lot of wars they could not possibly win.
People have committed suicide to harm other people. Many many times.
Nations have developed weapons and then used those weapons on other people.
Countries that have engaged in arms races and stock piled weapons have then gone to war. Many times.
In some decades we do more of these things and in others we do less.
To say it’s hard to model, or the models are imperfect (as all models are) - fine. To say it is impossible to model - that’s very naive.
LeonB|4 years ago
A crucial metric that occurs more more often and does help predict deaths is “HPI” - high potential incident. A worker eight metres in the air dropped a spanner. It thudded on the ground, harmlessly. No one was hurt. No problem, right? That’s a HPI. A workplace that has a death will have had many HPIs. The dice-roll is not “it’s a new day, we roll the dice”. When a HPI occurs, that’s when we roll the dice.
Or in nuclear war estimates: a HPNWI occurs (high potential nuclear war incident). The Cuban missile crisis springs to mind as a particularly big example. But many many smaller HPNWI’s have occurred. Border skirmishes between nuclear powers. Sabre rattling by nuclear powers. Elect a president who uses threats and brinkmanship. Do this year in, year out. The dice is rolled not because time passes but because risky decisions are made and risky actions are taken, over and over and over and over and over and over, year in, year out.
asah|4 years ago
jmatthews|4 years ago
I like this framework but I'd appreciate hearing more about it.
randomjoe2|4 years ago
baxtr|4 years ago
baxtr|4 years ago
splitstud|4 years ago
[deleted]
dontbeevil1992|4 years ago
Saying that you have probability x of nuclear war every year and so probability (1-x)^n of no nuclear war in n years assumes independence. In fact, if you don't have nuclear war on year 1, I would assume that the reasons for that lead to inferences and correlations that would affect the probability of nuclear war on year 2, possibly making it lower.
LeonB|4 years ago
Instead take info like “did we have events/incidents with a high potential of nuclear war?”
If three “Cuban missile crisis” level events happened in year X, then the probability of nuclear war in year x+1 is higher than it was in other years — even though nuclear war didn’t occur in either year. If national leaders make no statements threatening war in year A, then it’s probably safer than year B where there were 100 such threats.
panax|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...
yabones|4 years ago
In both cases, they were razor-thin near misses. If either accident happened even once more, we absolutely would have either a radiological disaster or accidental nuclear war.
It's this sort of thing that makes me think maybe we shouldn't have any nuclear technology at all, the risks are just too high. Climate change is bad, but not as bad as burning our entire planet to the ground in under an hour, then poisoning it forever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...
killjoywashere|4 years ago
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...
The ways we could end up in a nuclear war are frightening to the point of madness.
busyant|4 years ago
Haven't read the book, but I watched Dr. Strangelove when I was young(er).
What made the movie great to me was that it made me realize that, although there is a nuclear "safety net", it was designed and controlled by humans — flawed humans who don't always behave rationally and who may not act in the best interests of humanity.
harryvederci|4 years ago
Every day since WW2, things could have gone wrong.
Every day, for 76.56 years. 918.79 months. 27965 days.
I think we'll be fine. And if I'm wrong, you probably won't be able to tell me! :)
Edit: not sure (and don't really care) why this got downvoted, but I meant it as a morale boosting thing, not as a probability calculation. Things could have gone horribly wrong so many times, but they haven't so far. That personally gives me hope for the future.
NiceWayToDoIT|4 years ago
WJW|4 years ago
Barrin92|4 years ago
As the author points out war is not historically predetermined, at least in any way we could convincingly figure out, and pulling numbers out of thin air only serves the purpose of trying to talk about the future with less uncertainty than is appropriate.
Talking about events in terms of probabilities should be reserved for events that are not dominated by 'unknown unknowns'. You can attach a probability to a volcano outbreak, a transaction in an ordinary functioning market, a game of blackjack. That is to say 'small worlds' where outcomes are known, rules well defined and inputs quantified. You can't predict the overthrow a government in 5 years in numerical terms. That doesn't mean you can't talk about it. It's okay to say something is unlikely or very likely, but it makes more sense to explicitly talk about these things in qualitative terms rather than trying to be 'mathy' to make a prediction appear more objective than it is.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
Animats|4 years ago
vkou|4 years ago
The difference between leaders is what those circumstances are. It's in where that line is. [1]
Public communications on this subject have to be taken with a pound of salt. It's in every nuclear nation's interests to claim that line is further out than it really is... As long as they believe that broadcasting the claim itself won't start nuclear war.
It's also in every nuclear nation's interests to be very mindful about where their adversary's line is.
[0] Okay, there might be a closet pacifist somewhere that won't use them in any situation, but if there is, they certainly aren't broadcasting that.
[1] So far, we're batting a thousand for 'No national leader whose last name was not Truman started a nuclear war in a situation where his state was not fighting an existential war'.
This statistic, unfortunately, is not particularly helpful.
AnonCoward4|4 years ago
ElevenLathe|4 years ago
That said, I don't think any of this math is pointing us toward any kind of answer about how likely any person alive right now is to experience nuclear war, which is really what we're after. At the very most, every day that nobody uses one extends the lower bound of how often they are likely to be used (77 years and counting), but this is almost tautological. Also, maybe it follows some kind of power law and the farther away from their invention, the less likely we are to use them? Or maybe the opposite? Or maybe we oscillate between the two in some sinusoidal pattern? In any case, we can't know. History is not an experimental science.
jeremyjh|4 years ago
daliusd|4 years ago
zardo|4 years ago
geoka9|4 years ago
There's a guy[0] who spent a career analyzing and writing about these things.
His most recent take is that by refusing to get directly involved in Ukraine, NATO creates an understanding in Putin's mind that it wouldn't get involved in, say, Latvia either. According to Piontkovsky, (to Putin,) there's no essential difference, and the (lack of) NATO membership reason provided by NATO is a lame excuse indicative of a lack of resolve to commit, NATO member or not. So Putin is willing to keep upping the ante until NATO folds and becomes irrelevant.
[0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313258664_Putin's_R...
krisoft|4 years ago
That’s a weird take. Ukraine is not a NATO member, NATO can choose to fight for them or can choose to not fight for them. Latvia is a NATO member. If Latvia is attacked and the NATO doesn’t fight for them NATO stops being a thing immediately. The 5th article is a cornerstone of the whole aliance. It is not an optional “and one more thing” but the reason to join the aliance at all, if it becomes shaky that undermines the whole thing.
I wouldn’t dare to guess what goes on in Putin’s mind, but I also don’t see any reason why he would think that.
virgilp|4 years ago
Keep in mind that Putin's mythos was blown to pieces, there's no way he can (politically, if not physically) survive this. And he probably knows it. This is the weakest position he can be in - if the west attacked him, he could at least mobilize the Russians to "defend against western aggression" and could even justify the nuclear bombs to his generals; As things stand, his rhetoric and position are very shaky (he's not being defeated by mighty USA, but by the "weak" Ukrainians who "aren't even a nation")
nl|4 years ago
The link posted was from 2015.
I'm unable to find any recent writing in English that indicates that he thinks that is a belief in Moscow.
Instead, on Twitter he shared this Feb 27 story (not by him) that indicated Putin has a great fear of NATO forces:
But this underestimates Russian respect for NATO’s conventional military power, which is far greater than its own. The only language Putin understands is force, and Moscow did not retaliate after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane in 2015 or when the United States struck and killed Russian mercenaries in 2018
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-26/m...
kitrose|4 years ago
If Putin tries to invade Latvia, the default assumption in this analysis is that NATO will just crumble rather than respond?
sschueller|4 years ago
ajnin|4 years ago
Also an event being rare does not mean that it is unlikely. For example a 29th of February is a rare event, if you were to think about it in terms of probabilities, there is about 0.07% of chance for it to occur on any given day. So you would conclude that there is about 1-(1-.0007)^(2*365)=40% chance to occur within 2 years. But it is obviously absurd to think this way, since the next 29th of February will happen in 2024, in less than 2 years, the probability is 100%.
sega_sai|4 years ago
feral|4 years ago
- The author has not deeply understood the subjective interpretation of probability, as widely used by bayesians, and applicable to this sort of reasoning
- the author, and the sources the author quotes based on a quick read, seem unfamiliar with quanifying uncertainties not just as point estimates, but instead by using a probability distribution, which you can use to easily tell the difference between a mean probability of .5 based on say 5 heads and 5 tails, vs one based on 500 heads and 500 tails.
The point that it's often difficult to tell whether a particular probability should be 0.0001 or 0.00001 is a fair one.
But overall I don't take much reassurance from this article.
hankchinaski|4 years ago
time0ut|4 years ago
LeonB|4 years ago
Regarding this — “it’s probably impossible to estimate the probability” - ok - well. I think we have to unpack that a lot!
I would say: “we can model the event.” That’s an absolute. (Anyone who disagrees with that statement just does not understand the statement)
It does not mean the models are accurate. The model will provide probabilities. How much confidence can we have in the probabilities? Now this is where the difficulty lies. The probability itself will be a low number. And our confidence won’t be very high. That’s automatically creates an opening for any bad faith commentator to say launch an attack. And yet… what’s the alternative? Pretend it cannot be modelled as various commentators in this page (but not you) have done? Pretend that a model with low probabilities or low confidence can be dismissed? The best response (if we agree that nuclear war is a Bad Thing and worth avoiding) is to improve the models, not ignore them - and of course in so doing —- to try and avoid nuclear war.
uncomputation|4 years ago
Very true. Using, essentially, the infinite typing monkeys idea to say that a nuclear war is bound to happen eventually is just a pseudo-scientific rationalization of war. Put this way, almost anything becomes certain if you completely ignore the fact that you don’t know P(nukes|war) since we have no further data to base this on. Even a coin flipped once or twice might not be heads and tails. The idea of P(heads) = 0.5 is that eventually, as the flips extend to infinity, it equals 0.5.
This would be similar to someone living in the Black Plague saying “since 10% of Europe is dying per year, in 10 years we will most certainly be extinct.” I don’t know the technical or formal name for this fallacy or line of thinking, so I’ll just call this gross oversimplification.
LeonB|4 years ago
galaxyLogic|4 years ago
I think the current situation most strikingly points to the dangers autocratic governments pose to the whole planet. If people of a nation could vote on whether to start nuclear war I think they would vote no. But a crazy dictator? Not so sure. It should be the law everywhere: No nuclear first strikes. But that can only work if rule of law is the rule.
The other great concern is misinformation and ability to keep most of the nation misguided enough to support a war. There should be international law to prevent spread of misinformation that can cause or lengthen wars.
csee|4 years ago
noduerme|4 years ago
bayesianbot|4 years ago
I don't really see it as much as daily roll of a dice but more of a system that might guarantee to force us down that road some day within a few generations.
empressplay|4 years ago
I don't think Putin needs to actually start nuking European countries to get his way though. He knows the Americans simply do not have the resolve to escalate a nuclear confrontation unless its own domestic security is threatened. I don't think the UK or France would either. NATO is kind of a sham.
But Putin isn't worried about nukes in Ukraine as much as ground troops. The fact that he is suggests he's not worried about getting nuked himself, which is actually a positive sign, for everyone except Ukraine.
ETA: I just realized in Biden's SOTU he said the US would defend every inch of NATO territory and make the Russians pay, which was clever, since neither of those statements suggests either an invasion of Russia nor a nuclear response, only that Russia wouldn't be able to hold the territory and that there would be repercussions of some kind. Not a dumb guy.
VincentEvans|4 years ago
Legitimate concern, yes, but here’s the food for thought and mark my words - it is inevitable that very soon Russia’s rhetoric will turn to “economic sanctions are intended to destroy Russia and are an act of war”, along with “supplying Ukrainian resistance is an act of war”, while the nuclear rattle comes out once again in one form or another, like “Russia is forced to respond by arming with nuclear weapons all allied states, such as Iran, Talibistan, North Korea, Venezuela” etc…
cdelsolar|4 years ago
zabzonk|4 years ago
You wish! The problem here is that Putin is not rational.
dang|4 years ago
If an article is substantive, it deserves better than this—much better, actually. And if it isn't substantive, it shouldn't be on HN's front page.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
all2|4 years ago
To your point: Putin isn't nuts. He's just a really good politician. He's pragmatic and knows the value of being seen as "crazy" and "he might actually launch a nuke".
animal_spirits|4 years ago
SvenSchnieders|4 years ago
raducu|4 years ago
Whoever is insaner wins?
Nah, remind Putin that we all saw how much the russian army sucks and in case of nuclear war the US still wins after they get out of their bunkers.
drusepth|4 years ago
"There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent." - Lao Tzu
hashimotonomora|4 years ago
Compare the following: What is the probability that you will die today?
What is the probability that you will die today given that you belong to the category of people with A_i characteristics and whose ensemble probability of dying on a given day has been measured?
LeonB|4 years ago
You say it’s “essentially impossible to model” something that hasn’t occurred before.
Nations have engaged in a lot of wars.
Nations have engaged in a lot of wars they could not possibly win.
People have committed suicide to harm other people. Many many times.
Nations have developed weapons and then used those weapons on other people.
Countries that have engaged in arms races and stock piled weapons have then gone to war. Many times.
In some decades we do more of these things and in others we do less.
To say it’s hard to model, or the models are imperfect (as all models are) - fine. To say it is impossible to model - that’s very naive.