The US took a long time to establish the air superiority necessary to execute those firebombings; and tactical nuclear weapons would have been available in very low numbers and difficult to deploy effectively [anything you nuke, your own forces can’t pass; not even because of radiation but because of infrastructure destruction] (and certainly the Soviets could have adapted; they outnumbered Allied forces substantially in Europe).
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened? Would it have reduced x-risk in the long term? I doubt that; how long could the US have monopolized nuclear weapons, especially if it immediately used them as threats that would terrify and antagonize every other nation in the world?
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened?
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Also, a world in which just the United States has atomic weapons would have many additional benefits such as probably higher world economic growth rates because of lower defense spending.
Once we get into talking about alternate histories, our ability to have an evidence-based discussion pretty much goes out the window.
I’ll say the following:
1) The cold war as we know it did come “close” in some sense to going hot; that’s bad, that’s x-risk in action
2) All things considered, the last 70 years as they actually happened went a hell of a lot better than the 70 years before, just on a political and military basis alone (so disregarding technology).
3) Ultimatums meant to monopolize the atomic bomb make sense if the goal is enacting a US-led One-World-Government, even if you believe WWIII would have broken out after ultimatums somehow fail to lead to peace
4) I DO believe WWIII would have broken out
5) I believe an attempted One-World-Government or other extreme attempt at global hegemony by the US would have been a disaster even without a USA-USSR WWIII.
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Given that a massive amount of quantum-scale randomness would have to go systematically in a different direction for it to have any noticeable macro-scale effect, and that even then most macro-scale effects would be barely even noticeable, isn’t the default answer to questions like this always “in the overwhelming majority of branches, history never noticeably diverged from ours”?
Wouldn’t quantum effects have some influence on who gets cancer from background radiation, and wouldn’t the impact of this ripple in a chaotic way throughout the world so that, say, Petrov isn’t the one on duty on 9/26/1983?
Human minds are a lot more stable than they feel—a decision that feels “close; 60/40” would still fall on the 60% side >>60% of the time—but chaos will quickly bubble up through other channels.
The US took a long time to establish the air superiority necessary to execute those firebombings; and tactical nuclear weapons would have been available in very low numbers and difficult to deploy effectively [anything you nuke, your own forces can’t pass; not even because of radiation but because of infrastructure destruction] (and certainly the Soviets could have adapted; they outnumbered Allied forces substantially in Europe).
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened? Would it have reduced x-risk in the long term? I doubt that; how long could the US have monopolized nuclear weapons, especially if it immediately used them as threats that would terrify and antagonize every other nation in the world?
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Also, a world in which just the United States has atomic weapons would have many additional benefits such as probably higher world economic growth rates because of lower defense spending.
Once we get into talking about alternate histories, our ability to have an evidence-based discussion pretty much goes out the window.
I’ll say the following: 1) The cold war as we know it did come “close” in some sense to going hot; that’s bad, that’s x-risk in action 2) All things considered, the last 70 years as they actually happened went a hell of a lot better than the 70 years before, just on a political and military basis alone (so disregarding technology). 3) Ultimatums meant to monopolize the atomic bomb make sense if the goal is enacting a US-led One-World-Government, even if you believe WWIII would have broken out after ultimatums somehow fail to lead to peace 4) I DO believe WWIII would have broken out 5) I believe an attempted One-World-Government or other extreme attempt at global hegemony by the US would have been a disaster even without a USA-USSR WWIII.
Given that a massive amount of quantum-scale randomness would have to go systematically in a different direction for it to have any noticeable macro-scale effect, and that even then most macro-scale effects would be barely even noticeable, isn’t the default answer to questions like this always “in the overwhelming majority of branches, history never noticeably diverged from ours”?
Wouldn’t quantum effects have some influence on who gets cancer from background radiation, and wouldn’t the impact of this ripple in a chaotic way throughout the world so that, say, Petrov isn’t the one on duty on 9/26/1983?
Absolutely.
Human minds are a lot more stable than they feel—a decision that feels “close; 60/40” would still fall on the 60% side >>60% of the time—but chaos will quickly bubble up through other channels.