I think your middle number is clearly too low. The risk scenario does not require that NATO trigger article 5 necessarily, but just that they carry out a strategically significant military response, like eliminating Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, nuking, or creating a no-fly zone. And Max’s 80% makes more sense than your 50% for he union of these possibilities, because it is hard to imagine that the US would stand down without penalising the use of nukes.
I would be at maybe .2*.8*.15=.024 for this particular chain of events leading to major US-Russia nuclear war.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine, I can imagine it quite easily. 80% just seems overconfident to me on this question. NATO has no actual obligation to respond to any nuclear use in Ukraine, and I don’t see why you’re so confident that NATO would respond to Russian use of e.g. tactical nukes in Ukraine by attacking Russia directly. It’s not that I think this is unlikely, but in my opinion 80% is just too high of a confidence in what NATO would do in such an unprecedented situation.
That said, this is the part of Tegmark’s forecast that I disagree with the least, because the difference between 50% and 80% is quite small for the purposes of this calculation. I think it’s much more important for him to justify his 30% and 70%, and I assume you would agree with me about that.
The reasoning is that retaliating is US doctrine—they generally respond to hostile actions in-kind, to deter them. If Ukraine got nuked, the level of outrage would place intense pressure on Biden to do something, and the hawks would become a lot louder than the doves, similar to after the 9/11 attacks. In the case of Russia, the US has exhausted most non-military avenues already. And US is a very militaristic country—they have many times bombed countries (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) for much less. So military action just seems very likely. (Involving all of NATO or not, as michel says.)
“A Russian nuclear strike would change the course of the conflict and almost certainly provoke a “physical response” from Ukraine’s allies and potentially from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a senior NATO official said on Wednesday.
Any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow would have “unprecedented consequences” for Russia, the official said on the eve of a closed-door meeting of NATO’s nuclear planning group on Thursday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said a nuclear strike by Moscow would “almost certainly be drawing a physical response from many allies, and potentially from NATO itself”.
“-Reuters
I have heard of talk that the US might instead arm Ukraine with tactical nukes of its own, although I think that would be at least comparably risky as military retaliation.
There is a non zero probability that even if NATO can’t come to a decision, the US would just respond unilaterally, so while it’s likely not 80% I would say the probability of significant retaliation is probably quite high?
My point is that a forecaster can have the level of precision where they say 50% is much too low and 80% is much too high. I agree that 50% vs 80% only makes a 1.6x difference in the final number, which is fairly small when you and Tegmark differ by 30x.
I think your middle number is clearly too low. The risk scenario does not require that NATO trigger article 5 necessarily, but just that they carry out a strategically significant military response, like eliminating Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, nuking, or creating a no-fly zone. And Max’s 80% makes more sense than your 50% for he union of these possibilities, because it is hard to imagine that the US would stand down without penalising the use of nukes.
I would be at maybe .2*.8*.15=.024 for this particular chain of events leading to major US-Russia nuclear war.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine, I can imagine it quite easily. 80% just seems overconfident to me on this question. NATO has no actual obligation to respond to any nuclear use in Ukraine, and I don’t see why you’re so confident that NATO would respond to Russian use of e.g. tactical nukes in Ukraine by attacking Russia directly. It’s not that I think this is unlikely, but in my opinion 80% is just too high of a confidence in what NATO would do in such an unprecedented situation.
That said, this is the part of Tegmark’s forecast that I disagree with the least, because the difference between 50% and 80% is quite small for the purposes of this calculation. I think it’s much more important for him to justify his 30% and 70%, and I assume you would agree with me about that.
The reasoning is that retaliating is US doctrine—they generally respond to hostile actions in-kind, to deter them. If Ukraine got nuked, the level of outrage would place intense pressure on Biden to do something, and the hawks would become a lot louder than the doves, similar to after the 9/11 attacks. In the case of Russia, the US has exhausted most non-military avenues already. And US is a very militaristic country—they have many times bombed countries (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) for much less. So military action just seems very likely. (Involving all of NATO or not, as michel says.)
“A Russian nuclear strike would change the course of the conflict and almost certainly provoke a “physical response” from Ukraine’s allies and potentially from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a senior NATO official said on Wednesday.
Any use of nuclear weapons by Moscow would have “unprecedented consequences” for Russia, the official said on the eve of a closed-door meeting of NATO’s nuclear planning group on Thursday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said a nuclear strike by Moscow would “almost certainly be drawing a physical response from many allies, and potentially from NATO itself”. “-Reuters
https://news.yahoo.com/russian-nuclear-strike-almost-certainly-144246235.html″
I have heard of talk that the US might instead arm Ukraine with tactical nukes of its own, although I think that would be at least comparably risky as military retaliation.
There is a non zero probability that even if NATO can’t come to a decision, the US would just respond unilaterally, so while it’s likely not 80% I would say the probability of significant retaliation is probably quite high?
If you think it’s higher than 50% but lower than 80%, it seems like there isn’t much room there to me?
50% vs 80% is a huge difference, 4x in odds terms.
Not for the purposes of Tegmark’s calculation. Did you check how he uses this number?
My point is that a forecaster can have the level of precision where they say 50% is much too low and 80% is much too high. I agree that 50% vs 80% only makes a 1.6x difference in the final number, which is fairly small when you and Tegmark differ by 30x.
I agree with this, but for the reason you specified I think that precision would be of greater utility elsewhere.