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.
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.