If technological progress is halted completely this won’t be a problem.
No, if technological progress is halted completely then we’ll never be able to become transhumans. From a certain perspective this is almost as bad as going extinct.
The question as phrased also emphasizes climate change rather than other issues. In the case of such a nuclear war, there would be many other negative results. India is a major economy at this point and such a war would result in largescale economic problems throughout.
The Robock and Toon article estimates 20 million immediate deaths from an India-Pakistan war, less than 5% of the relevant population (although presumably among the most productive such people). This number is roughly consistent with extrapolating from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In light of this, would you guess that the India-Pakistan specific economic disruption would be greater than the economic disruption caused by a billion deaths due to starvation?
One serious problem with coming back from societal collapse that is often neglected is the problem of resource management. Nick Bostrom has pointed out that. to get to our current tech level we had to bootstrap up using non-renewable fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources.
Do you know if anyone’s attempted an analysis of the issues relevant here? On the most crude level we can look at the amount of oil that’s been used so far.
Overall, nuclear war is an example of many sorts of situations that would increase existential risk across the board. In that regard it isn’t that different from a smallish asteroid impact (say 2-3 km) in a major country, or Yellowstone popping, or a massive disease outbreak or a lot of other situations.
No, if technological progress is halted completely then we’ll never be able to become transhumans. From a certain perspective this is almost as bad as going extinct.
A halt to technological progress would be temporary. Would you rather have a twenty year halt on new technologies or a massive rush of new technologies that end up destroying everyone?
The Robock and Toon article estimates 20 million immediate deaths from an India-Pakistan war, less than 5% of the relevant population (although presumably among the most productive such people). This number is roughly consistent with extrapolating from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In light of this, would you guess that the India-Pakistan specific economic disruption would be greater than the economic disruption caused by a billion deaths due to starvation?
There are a variety of different factors going on here. The immediate deaths are one problem. Subsequent further deaths will also occur among the refugee populations and will spread disease and the like. The resulting panic will also create economic damage. Most of the people who would starve due directly to the climate change are people in areas like sub-Saharan Africa who don’t have that major a role in the world economy. Their deaths would have a comparatively small impact on the world-wide economy.
Do you know if anyone’s attempted an analysis of the issues relevant here? On the most crude level we can look at the amount of oil that’s been used so far.
Bostrom has mentioned doing this sort of thing in detail before I think, but if he has done it I haven’t seen the result. There are a variety of different factors that would go in. One obvious thing is that even as we have a fair bit of oil and other fossil fuels left, they are in much harder to reach locations. They are generally deeper in the ground, or farther out to sea, or simply harder to extract. So looking at the total reserves will underestimate the total problem. One related issue that would really need to be examined in detail would be the issue of metals. We’ve mined a large part of the world’s metal reserves. But for some of those, this is actually a good thing if a collapse occurs. Aluminum for example is very hard to extract from ores (it was at one point in the 19th century more expensive than gold). But although the technology to extract aluminum from ores is difficult, the technology to process pre-existing aluminum is much easier and we’ve helpfully left large quantities of it just lying around.
Agree, but I think that the probability of nuclear war is higher than the probability of the other possibilities that you mention
I agree that nuclear war is one of the more likely scenarios. The asteroid possibility is also much less of a worry now than it was a few years ago since WISE is now tracking most large near Earth asteroids and it looks likely that none are in really bad orbits for a few years. I don’t think that I have enough data to evaluate whether nuclear war is by itself more likely, but the chance of such a war specifically between Pakistan and India is the more relevant issue here than nuclear war in general. For example, if Iran and Israel get into a nuclear war, at most probably 10 or 15 bombs will be dropped, so the climate result will be unlikely to be that large, and for similar reasons most of the other problems will be on a smaller scale. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Israel has explicitly but non-publicly precommitted to Syria and Iran that if any city in Israel is nuked they’ll nuke both Damascus and Tehran without waiting to find out who was responsible. If so, that would potentially increase the total problem but still not by that much.
There are more nightmarish scenarios, like a China-Russian war, or worse a US-Russian war. But it seems at this point that the US has first strike capability on China and has close to first first on Russia, and Russia has close to first strike on China (although obviously, nuking such a near neighbor could be a bad idea). I’d also estimate a not at all small chance (say 5-10%) that not all of the former Soviet countries have actually returned all of their nukes or nuclear material (Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Ukraine are the most obvious possible examples), but those situations are unlikely to lead to more than a single detonation.
The upshot seems to be that although I’m not sure of the numbers, I suspect that the a Pakistan-India nuclear war is more likely than many other large-scale disaster scenarios but probably not larger than the totality of other large-scale catastrophes.
Agree with most of what you say here.
No, if technological progress is halted completely then we’ll never be able to become transhumans. From a certain perspective this is almost as bad as going extinct.
The Robock and Toon article estimates 20 million immediate deaths from an India-Pakistan war, less than 5% of the relevant population (although presumably among the most productive such people). This number is roughly consistent with extrapolating from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In light of this, would you guess that the India-Pakistan specific economic disruption would be greater than the economic disruption caused by a billion deaths due to starvation?
Do you know if anyone’s attempted an analysis of the issues relevant here? On the most crude level we can look at the amount of oil that’s been used so far.
Agree, but I think that the probability of nuclear war is higher than the probability of the other possibilities that you mention. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/75b/link_brief_discussion_of_asteroid_nuclear_risk/ if you haven’t already done so.
A halt to technological progress would be temporary. Would you rather have a twenty year halt on new technologies or a massive rush of new technologies that end up destroying everyone?
There are a variety of different factors going on here. The immediate deaths are one problem. Subsequent further deaths will also occur among the refugee populations and will spread disease and the like. The resulting panic will also create economic damage. Most of the people who would starve due directly to the climate change are people in areas like sub-Saharan Africa who don’t have that major a role in the world economy. Their deaths would have a comparatively small impact on the world-wide economy.
Bostrom has mentioned doing this sort of thing in detail before I think, but if he has done it I haven’t seen the result. There are a variety of different factors that would go in. One obvious thing is that even as we have a fair bit of oil and other fossil fuels left, they are in much harder to reach locations. They are generally deeper in the ground, or farther out to sea, or simply harder to extract. So looking at the total reserves will underestimate the total problem. One related issue that would really need to be examined in detail would be the issue of metals. We’ve mined a large part of the world’s metal reserves. But for some of those, this is actually a good thing if a collapse occurs. Aluminum for example is very hard to extract from ores (it was at one point in the 19th century more expensive than gold). But although the technology to extract aluminum from ores is difficult, the technology to process pre-existing aluminum is much easier and we’ve helpfully left large quantities of it just lying around.
I agree that nuclear war is one of the more likely scenarios. The asteroid possibility is also much less of a worry now than it was a few years ago since WISE is now tracking most large near Earth asteroids and it looks likely that none are in really bad orbits for a few years. I don’t think that I have enough data to evaluate whether nuclear war is by itself more likely, but the chance of such a war specifically between Pakistan and India is the more relevant issue here than nuclear war in general. For example, if Iran and Israel get into a nuclear war, at most probably 10 or 15 bombs will be dropped, so the climate result will be unlikely to be that large, and for similar reasons most of the other problems will be on a smaller scale. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Israel has explicitly but non-publicly precommitted to Syria and Iran that if any city in Israel is nuked they’ll nuke both Damascus and Tehran without waiting to find out who was responsible. If so, that would potentially increase the total problem but still not by that much.
There are more nightmarish scenarios, like a China-Russian war, or worse a US-Russian war. But it seems at this point that the US has first strike capability on China and has close to first first on Russia, and Russia has close to first strike on China (although obviously, nuking such a near neighbor could be a bad idea). I’d also estimate a not at all small chance (say 5-10%) that not all of the former Soviet countries have actually returned all of their nukes or nuclear material (Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Ukraine are the most obvious possible examples), but those situations are unlikely to lead to more than a single detonation.
The upshot seems to be that although I’m not sure of the numbers, I suspect that the a Pakistan-India nuclear war is more likely than many other large-scale disaster scenarios but probably not larger than the totality of other large-scale catastrophes.
Thanks for the excellent response. I’m familiar with much of the content but you’ve phrased it especially eloquently.