I’d like to address your other points, but I think we have to talk about your last paragraph first.
You’re quite right; that the cold war did not end the world in our particular branch is not proof that the cold war was survivable in more than a tiny handful of possible worlds. But let me remind you in turn that “von Neumann’s plan would have been worse than the cold war” is not the same as “the cold war was safe”, “the cold war was good”, “the cold war doesn’t share any of the weaknesses of von Neumann’s plan”, or even “the cold war was terrible but still the best choice we had”. I’m arguing only that narrow thing: that our forefathers were right to reject von Neumann’s plan.
Fair enough, but a lot of the objections here seem to be based on the argument that ‘the Cold War was reasonably objectively safe (and we know so for [anthropicly biased reasons]), while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the better choice’, while I think the right version is ‘the Cold War was objectively extremely dangerous, while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are [merely] objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the worse choice’. I don’t think people are directly comparing the scenarios and merely making a relative judgment.
I’d like to address your other points, but I think we have to talk about your last paragraph first.
You’re quite right; that the cold war did not end the world in our particular branch is not proof that the cold war was survivable in more than a tiny handful of possible worlds. But let me remind you in turn that “von Neumann’s plan would have been worse than the cold war” is not the same as “the cold war was safe”, “the cold war was good”, “the cold war doesn’t share any of the weaknesses of von Neumann’s plan”, or even “the cold war was terrible but still the best choice we had”. I’m arguing only that narrow thing: that our forefathers were right to reject von Neumann’s plan.
Fair enough?
Fair enough, but a lot of the objections here seem to be based on the argument that ‘the Cold War was reasonably objectively safe (and we know so for [anthropicly biased reasons]), while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the better choice’, while I think the right version is ‘the Cold War was objectively extremely dangerous, while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are [merely] objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the worse choice’. I don’t think people are directly comparing the scenarios and merely making a relative judgment.