I was trying to establish where we disagree and if the disagreement can be resolved by citing facts.
Could you help me by showing in quotes where you believe I “rambled”. I see each argument building on the next, can you show me how it rambles?
Here’s an outline:
Nuclear war is suicide
Suicide for national leaders hasn’t been practiced as a warfare strategy
Expected value of nuclear war is worse than dying to AI
Do you believe a nuclear war is suicide?
Are you thinking of S risks?
Update: I thought of a new one. Are you thinking government leaders will kill their nation and themselves altruistically? Since if they die, and the superpower building ai dies, other countries live and just have to deal with nuclear winter and fallout which is probably survivable. While the AI might kill everyone.
The game theoretic outcome, in the unlikely case where one nation is hellbent on achieving a breakout of a major arms treaty in modern conditions with thousands of WMDs stockpiled, is not something you even touched on in the parent.
I’m not sure how adding on to a historical parent example and extrapolating to the world of 2023 counts as ‘disagreement’.
If you disagree with the extrapolation in the child comment then you need to write down why before asking further questions.
Hence why asking dozens of questions right off the bat, when it’s unclear what you were disagreeing about, makes no sense.
So today we have Russia violating international law openly, China running concentration camps, and the US contributing to climate change without any serious intent to stop. Oh and the West seems to be in a proxy war with Russia and Iran with Israel.
This doesn’t look like a world of multiple parties afraid to offend the other, knowing it will be nuclear war if they don’t.
Can you point to examples that support your general idea that the world is closer to a world government and moving away from sovereign powers that compete and do what they want? I am not a geopolitical expert, I picked history because it seems to show a stable long term trend over decades. Or succinctly, “the outcome was X over N years, why would it change to Y?”
My disagreement is that I think history will repeat and nuclear threats will be dismissed. I think any AI treaties will be worked around like in the past and it will be a competition until the end.
I think the current events show that is what is happening today, with increasing competition that will lead to AI races.
This doesn’t look like a world of multiple parties afraid to offend the other, knowing it will be nuclear war if they don’t.
How does ‘look like’ relate to the actual views and decision making of the leadership of any country?
People can talk one way and walk the other way. And you don’t exactly seem like someone who has the inside scoop in major world capitals so even the talk you’ve heard is likely several steps removed.
So to summarize, you believe that the parties have or will reach secret international agreements with each other and will not compete over AI like in past international arms races? Has something changed in the world to make this happen now but not then? Like better communications tech?
Does any published evidence exist to support your belief or is it all secret?
So to summarize, you believe that the parties have or will reach secret international agreements with each other and will not compete over AI like in past international arms races?
What is being ‘summarized’?
I don’t think I’ve expressed such a belief in the previous comments?
This is the belief I gathered from your most recent reply, where you said:
How does ‘look like’ relate to the actual views and decision making of the leadership of any country?
People can talk one way and walk the other way. And you don’t exactly seem like someone who has the inside scoop in major world capitals so even the talk you’ve heard is likely several steps removed.
Ergo I believe you are saying I cannot use historical evidence, since it is 2023, and I can’t use “the superpowers are openly committing violations of international law and Russia and the USA are in a proxy war” as evidence since I don’t know what world leaders say to each other privately.
I’m not seeking out a further dialogue, just the actual arguments/reasoning/etc. behind your first reply, so that I can evaluate whether any of this has a logical basis.
Frankly, as of right now there’s almost nothing for me to base a decision upon since it’s been a pretty one-sided back and forth.
The “actual argument” is that MAD has existed since the 1960s, so about 65 years, and the United States/Soviet Union/China have done whatever they want except invade each other. Including many things another side hates. “Don’t do X or I will nuke” has not been an effective threat.
The most recent round of this was 2022, when Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons many times and it has not been an effective threat.
On 21 September, while announcing a partial mobilization of conscripts, Putin said that Russia “will use all the means at our disposal” – widely interpreted as a threat to use nuclear weapons – in order to defend the country’s territory.[10] He warned that his threat was “not a bluff”, baselessly accused NATO of “nuclear blackmail” and of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia, and said Russia’s nuclear weapons were more advanced than NATO’s.[11][12] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not rule out the use of nuclear weapons to defend annexed Ukrainian territories.[13] Several days later, former Russian president and Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev made a more explicit threat of a nuclear strike against Ukraine.[14]
I feel like we’re going in circles, so I will just lay it out step by step and you can determine where your getting stuck:
What leaders talk about in public is not identical to what they talk about in private
and even that is not identical to their actual views.
And even their actual views are not identical with their real world decisions. Because they are constrained by hundreds or thousands of actors in a complex system.
Unless you have some super special knowledge you can’t even complete link 1 of this chain.
Therefore this line of argumentation cannot be developed, limiting anyone to just guessing the inferential gaps.
We can of course make an unlimited number of guesses, but since we can’t outweigh each other, this line of discussion wouldn’t be able to lead anywhere.
I doubt that would still hold for the modern world.
The moment one great power detects another is violating such an important, binding, ratified, arms treaty in a way that can’t be explained away as happenstance, they would very quickly launch a hot nuclear war.
I don’t see where the private communications is relevant here to your claim. Your claim is brittle in that only one example is needed to falsify it, which the above example seems to do.
I realized it was pointless to argue if a public nuclear threat was ‘real’ or empty, since no one can know that until 20+ years from now, and then you would argue that it’s ancient history. So i went back to the root argument and falsified it. In some of my prior edits I have been trying to explain you’ve made a really fragile claim fundamentally. That the whole idea of needing “equal evidence” is only true if both claims are equally probable.
For example, “coin will come up A” and “coin will resolve B” have near equal probability. “UFOs are real” and “UFOs are not real” do not.
Given a prior of “no nuclear war for 65 years”, “a nuclear war will start on the first treaty violation” is similar to the UFO claim in that it is not probable.
So i went back to the root argument and falsified it, which ends the discussion.
What ‘root argument’? And to end the discussion, just leaving this deep comment chain suffices, no need for theatrics.
The first few times I could overlook some oddities, but now my patience is exhausted so I’m putting my foot down and insist you not jump around all over the place.
It at best appears like a bizarre thinking process and at worst as someone side-stepping whatever is inconvenient to them.
The past few especially seem to me like dodging the actual substance.
A suicidal nuclear war seems highly improbable.
I was trying to establish where we disagree and if the disagreement can be resolved by citing facts.
Could you help me by showing in quotes where you believe I “rambled”. I see each argument building on the next, can you show me how it rambles?
Here’s an outline:
Nuclear war is suicide
Suicide for national leaders hasn’t been practiced as a warfare strategy
Expected value of nuclear war is worse than dying to AI
Do you believe a nuclear war is suicide?
Are you thinking of S risks?
Update: I thought of a new one. Are you thinking government leaders will kill their nation and themselves altruistically? Since if they die, and the superpower building ai dies, other countries live and just have to deal with nuclear winter and fallout which is probably survivable. While the AI might kill everyone.
I don’t disagree?
The game theoretic outcome, in the unlikely case where one nation is hellbent on achieving a breakout of a major arms treaty in modern conditions with thousands of WMDs stockpiled, is not something you even touched on in the parent.
I’m not sure how adding on to a historical parent example and extrapolating to the world of 2023 counts as ‘disagreement’.
If you disagree with the extrapolation in the child comment then you need to write down why before asking further questions.
Hence why asking dozens of questions right off the bat, when it’s unclear what you were disagreeing about, makes no sense.
So today we have Russia violating international law openly, China running concentration camps, and the US contributing to climate change without any serious intent to stop. Oh and the West seems to be in a proxy war with Russia and Iran with Israel. This doesn’t look like a world of multiple parties afraid to offend the other, knowing it will be nuclear war if they don’t.
Can you point to examples that support your general idea that the world is closer to a world government and moving away from sovereign powers that compete and do what they want? I am not a geopolitical expert, I picked history because it seems to show a stable long term trend over decades. Or succinctly, “the outcome was X over N years, why would it change to Y?”
My disagreement is that I think history will repeat and nuclear threats will be dismissed. I think any AI treaties will be worked around like in the past and it will be a competition until the end.
I think the current events show that is what is happening today, with increasing competition that will lead to AI races.
How does ‘look like’ relate to the actual views and decision making of the leadership of any country?
People can talk one way and walk the other way. And you don’t exactly seem like someone who has the inside scoop in major world capitals so even the talk you’ve heard is likely several steps removed.
So to summarize, you believe that the parties have or will reach secret international agreements with each other and will not compete over AI like in past international arms races? Has something changed in the world to make this happen now but not then? Like better communications tech?
Does any published evidence exist to support your belief or is it all secret?
What is being ‘summarized’?
I don’t think I’ve expressed such a belief in the previous comments?
This is the belief I gathered from your most recent reply, where you said:
Ergo I believe you are saying I cannot use historical evidence, since it is 2023, and I can’t use “the superpowers are openly committing violations of international law and Russia and the USA are in a proxy war” as evidence since I don’t know what world leaders say to each other privately.
Ergo, based on what reasoning?
Can you actually lay out the argument, step by step, in writing?
I would be open to a dialogue if you want to discuss this further.
I’m not seeking out a further dialogue, just the actual arguments/reasoning/etc. behind your first reply, so that I can evaluate whether any of this has a logical basis.
Frankly, as of right now there’s almost nothing for me to base a decision upon since it’s been a pretty one-sided back and forth.
The “actual argument” is that MAD has existed since the 1960s, so about 65 years, and the United States/Soviet Union/China have done whatever they want except invade each other. Including many things another side hates. “Don’t do X or I will nuke” has not been an effective threat.
The most recent round of this was 2022, when Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons many times and it has not been an effective threat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_risk_during_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
A threat over AI is another empty threat for game theoretic reasons which you can read up thread.
How do you even know that has been threatened, by the actual leadership of any country, for whatever you believe ‘X’ to include?
To be entirely clear and direct, you are still not writing down actual arguments, just your opinions and guesses on world affairs.
From the linked article:
I feel like we’re going in circles, so I will just lay it out step by step and you can determine where your getting stuck:
What leaders talk about in public is not identical to what they talk about in private
and even that is not identical to their actual views.
And even their actual views are not identical with their real world decisions. Because they are constrained by hundreds or thousands of actors in a complex system.
Unless you have some super special knowledge you can’t even complete link 1 of this chain.
Therefore this line of argumentation cannot be developed, limiting anyone to just guessing the inferential gaps.
We can of course make an unlimited number of guesses, but since we can’t outweigh each other, this line of discussion wouldn’t be able to lead anywhere.
You said :
https://www.state.gov/u-s-countermeasures-in-response-to-russias-violations-of-the-new-start-treaty/
I don’t see where the private communications is relevant here to your claim. Your claim is brittle in that only one example is needed to falsify it, which the above example seems to do.
Huh?
This comment is showing, on my screen, as a reply to my comment here.
Which was a response to your comment here.
This is worded as if it was intended as a reply for something else. What relation does it have to the previous two comments?
I realized it was pointless to argue if a public nuclear threat was ‘real’ or empty, since no one can know that until 20+ years from now, and then you would argue that it’s ancient history. So i went back to the root argument and falsified it. In some of my prior edits I have been trying to explain you’ve made a really fragile claim fundamentally. That the whole idea of needing “equal evidence” is only true if both claims are equally probable.
For example, “coin will come up A” and “coin will resolve B” have near equal probability. “UFOs are real” and “UFOs are not real” do not.
Given a prior of “no nuclear war for 65 years”, “a nuclear war will start on the first treaty violation” is similar to the UFO claim in that it is not probable.
What ‘root argument’? And to end the discussion, just leaving this deep comment chain suffices, no need for theatrics.
The first few times I could overlook some oddities, but now my patience is exhausted so I’m putting my foot down and insist you not jump around all over the place.
It at best appears like a bizarre thinking process and at worst as someone side-stepping whatever is inconvenient to them.
The past few especially seem to me like dodging the actual substance.