Unless I am much mistaken, the reason that no one has yet used Nuclear Weapons is Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that there can be no victor in a nuclear war. MAD holds so long as the people in control of nuclear weapons have something to lose if everything gets destroyed, and Trump has grandchildren.
Grandchildren who would burn in nuclear fire if he ever started a nuclear war.
So I am in no way sympathetic to any argument that he’s stupid enough to start one. He has far too much to lose.
2)
I believe that the sets of skills necessary to be a good president, and to be elected president, are two entirely separate things. They may be correlated, but I doubt they’re correlated that highly; a popularity contest selects for popularity, after all.
So far, we have information on Trump’s skill set as a businessman: immoral and unethical perhaps, but ultimately very successful.
And we have information on Trump’s skill set as a Presidential Candidate: bombastic, brash, witty, politically incorrect and able to motivate large numbers of people to vote for him.
We have no information on what Trump will be like as President; that’s the gamble. We can guess, but trends don’t always continue, and I suspect, based on more recent data, that Trump has an inkling that now is not the time to do anything drastic.
3)
Aside from the usual LW topics concerning existential risk (i.e. AI, Climate Change, etc.), my biggest concern is Islam. Mutually Assured Destruction only works when those with the Nuclear Weapons have nothing to lose, and if someone with such weapons genuinely believes that they and their family will go to heaven for using them, then MAD no longer applies.
From what meager evidence I can gather, I believe that Trump lowers the chance of such a war breaking out compared to Clinton. We’ve had a chance to see what Clinton’s foreign policy looks like, and so far as I can tell, it isn’t lowering the risk of nuclear war. It’s heightening it.
Assuming other existential risks would be equal under either administration (which is a very questionable assumption, granted, and I would be happy to discuss it), that makes Trump look at the very least no worse than Clinton when it comes to existential risk.
I’d also like to note that I’ve been told plenty of people thought that Ronald Reagan would start a nuclear war with Russia, and he did nothing of the sort. Granted, I wasn’t around then, so it’s second person information, but there you go.
4)
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sick of having to expend copious amount of mental energy trying to remain as rational as I can throughout this election cycle. I’ve been glad to see in this thread that we LW’s do, in fact, put our money where our mouths are when it comes to trying to navigate, circumvent, or otherwise evade the Mindkiller.
If you disagree with anything I have to say, please respond - if my thinking is wrong, I want your help to make it better, to make it closer to correct.
On 1, whilst that should reduce your belief that Trump himself will fire nuclear weapons, it is a fairly weak argument for several reasons: first, many many people have had something to protect yet engaged in reckless behaviour anyway with no regard for others. It’s on a much smaller scale than starting a nuclear apocalypse but we should still consider that family members are only a weak protection, especially if, as others have argued, Trump is highly impulsive. Further, it only holds if Trump really does value his family highly, higher than his own self image, and given that he is a massive narcissist I’d say that’s not guaranteed by any means.
The second issue is that there are more ways for MAD to occur than simply Trump ordering an attack. A nuclear war could be started by other nations, and there is reason to believe that Trump leads to a higher probability of this. First of all, he has encouraged nuclear proliferation, which will simply increase the number of actors capable of an attack and thus inevitably increasing the probability. Secondly, many non-nuclear nations may be tempted to acquire some if they believe they are undefended, which again is something that Trump has stated. Perhaps Japan feels endangered by North Korea and starts their own weapons program as the US pulls out troops or some such. I believe Scott Alexander made a similar argument over at SSC, probably better worded than mine.
I have no disagreements on point 2, and no comment on 4.
Regarding 3, I think this is a false argument. The issue I have is that ‘Islam’ is not a nation state or even a physical construct
, you cannot start a nuclear war with ‘Islam’. Presumably when you refer to Islam you are talking of the danger of a terrorist group or possibly ISIS. However, its difficult to see any MAD situation with such groups—for one, it is extremely unlikely that they are ever able to acquire more than one weapon and thus they can’t ‘retaliate’ further. In addition, if they were able to succeed with a nuclear attack, there would also be nothing for the US or others to retaliate against. You cannot launch a nuclear strike against Al-Qaeda, and though ISIS do have land to attack they are now so spread out that it simply wouldn’t make sense to go with a nuclear option over conventional warfare (albeit this can change over time).
Question. I admit I have a low EQ here, but I”m not sure if 4) is sarcasm or not. It would certainly make a lot of sense if “I’ve been glad to see in this thread that we LW’s do, in fact, put our money where our mouths are when it comes to trying to navigate, circumvent, or otherwise evade the Mindkiller.” were sarcasm.
I would have said we had information on 2), but I’ve made so many wrong predictions about Donald Trump privately that I think my private opinion has lost all credibility there. 1) makes sense.
I can see why you might be afraid of war breaking out with Russia, but why do you consider Islam a major threat? Maybe you don’t and I’m misinterpreting you, but given how little damage terrorist attacks actually do isn’t Islam a regional problem to which the West has a major overreaction problem?
I was trying to be sincere with 4), although I admit that without tone of voice and body language, that’s hard to communicate sometimes. And even if LW hasn’t done as good a job as we could have with this topic, from what I’ve seen we’ve done far better than just about anyone not in the rationalist community at trying to remain rational.
Glad you agree with 1); when I first heard that argument (I didn’t come up with it), I had a massive moment of “that seems realy obvious, now that someone said it.”
With regards to 2), you’re right that we do have information on Trump; I spoke without precision. What I mean is this: beliefs are informed by evidence, and we have little evidence, given the nature of the American election, of what a candidate will behave like when they aren’t campaigning. I believe there’s a history of president-elects moderating their stances once they take office, although I have no direct evidence to support myself there.
When it comes to Islam, I should begin by saying that I’m sure the vast majority of Muslims simply want to live a decent life, just like the rest of us. However, theirs is the only religion active today that currently endorses holy war.
Then observe that MAD only applies to people unwilling to sacrifice their children for their cause, and further observe that Islam, as an idea, a meme, a religion, has successfully been able to make people do exactly that.
An American wouldn’t launch a nuke if it would kill their children, and Russian wouldn’t either. But a jihadist? From what I understand (which is admittedly not much on this topic), a jihadist just might. At least, the jihadist has a much higher probability of choosing a nuclear war over a nationalist.
I agree that the West overreacts in terms of Terrorism, in the sense that any given person is more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist, but I was referring to existential threats, a common topic on LW and one that Yudkowsky himself seems concerned with regarding this election. Car crashes don’t threaten the existence of humanity; nuclear war does.
And because I can’t see how either candidate would effect the likelihood of unfriendly AI, a meteor, a plague, or any of the other existential risks, nuclear war becomes the deciding vote in the “who’s less likely to get us all killed” competition.
Admittedly, the risk of catastrophic climate change might be higher under Trump, but I’ve no evidence for that save the very standard left vs. right paradigm, which doesn’t seem to apply all that well to Trump anyway.
1)
Unless I am much mistaken, the reason that no one has yet used Nuclear Weapons is Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that there can be no victor in a nuclear war. MAD holds so long as the people in control of nuclear weapons have something to lose if everything gets destroyed, and Trump has grandchildren.
Grandchildren who would burn in nuclear fire if he ever started a nuclear war.
So I am in no way sympathetic to any argument that he’s stupid enough to start one. He has far too much to lose.
2)
I believe that the sets of skills necessary to be a good president, and to be elected president, are two entirely separate things. They may be correlated, but I doubt they’re correlated that highly; a popularity contest selects for popularity, after all.
So far, we have information on Trump’s skill set as a businessman: immoral and unethical perhaps, but ultimately very successful.
And we have information on Trump’s skill set as a Presidential Candidate: bombastic, brash, witty, politically incorrect and able to motivate large numbers of people to vote for him.
We have no information on what Trump will be like as President; that’s the gamble. We can guess, but trends don’t always continue, and I suspect, based on more recent data, that Trump has an inkling that now is not the time to do anything drastic.
3)
Aside from the usual LW topics concerning existential risk (i.e. AI, Climate Change, etc.), my biggest concern is Islam. Mutually Assured Destruction only works when those with the Nuclear Weapons have nothing to lose, and if someone with such weapons genuinely believes that they and their family will go to heaven for using them, then MAD no longer applies.
From what meager evidence I can gather, I believe that Trump lowers the chance of such a war breaking out compared to Clinton. We’ve had a chance to see what Clinton’s foreign policy looks like, and so far as I can tell, it isn’t lowering the risk of nuclear war. It’s heightening it.
Assuming other existential risks would be equal under either administration (which is a very questionable assumption, granted, and I would be happy to discuss it), that makes Trump look at the very least no worse than Clinton when it comes to existential risk.
I’d also like to note that I’ve been told plenty of people thought that Ronald Reagan would start a nuclear war with Russia, and he did nothing of the sort. Granted, I wasn’t around then, so it’s second person information, but there you go.
4)
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sick of having to expend copious amount of mental energy trying to remain as rational as I can throughout this election cycle. I’ve been glad to see in this thread that we LW’s do, in fact, put our money where our mouths are when it comes to trying to navigate, circumvent, or otherwise evade the Mindkiller.
If you disagree with anything I have to say, please respond - if my thinking is wrong, I want your help to make it better, to make it closer to correct.
On 1, whilst that should reduce your belief that Trump himself will fire nuclear weapons, it is a fairly weak argument for several reasons: first, many many people have had something to protect yet engaged in reckless behaviour anyway with no regard for others. It’s on a much smaller scale than starting a nuclear apocalypse but we should still consider that family members are only a weak protection, especially if, as others have argued, Trump is highly impulsive. Further, it only holds if Trump really does value his family highly, higher than his own self image, and given that he is a massive narcissist I’d say that’s not guaranteed by any means.
The second issue is that there are more ways for MAD to occur than simply Trump ordering an attack. A nuclear war could be started by other nations, and there is reason to believe that Trump leads to a higher probability of this. First of all, he has encouraged nuclear proliferation, which will simply increase the number of actors capable of an attack and thus inevitably increasing the probability. Secondly, many non-nuclear nations may be tempted to acquire some if they believe they are undefended, which again is something that Trump has stated. Perhaps Japan feels endangered by North Korea and starts their own weapons program as the US pulls out troops or some such. I believe Scott Alexander made a similar argument over at SSC, probably better worded than mine.
I have no disagreements on point 2, and no comment on 4.
Regarding 3, I think this is a false argument. The issue I have is that ‘Islam’ is not a nation state or even a physical construct , you cannot start a nuclear war with ‘Islam’. Presumably when you refer to Islam you are talking of the danger of a terrorist group or possibly ISIS. However, its difficult to see any MAD situation with such groups—for one, it is extremely unlikely that they are ever able to acquire more than one weapon and thus they can’t ‘retaliate’ further. In addition, if they were able to succeed with a nuclear attack, there would also be nothing for the US or others to retaliate against. You cannot launch a nuclear strike against Al-Qaeda, and though ISIS do have land to attack they are now so spread out that it simply wouldn’t make sense to go with a nuclear option over conventional warfare (albeit this can change over time).
He’s gone bankrupt six times.
Question. I admit I have a low EQ here, but I”m not sure if 4) is sarcasm or not. It would certainly make a lot of sense if “I’ve been glad to see in this thread that we LW’s do, in fact, put our money where our mouths are when it comes to trying to navigate, circumvent, or otherwise evade the Mindkiller.” were sarcasm.
I would have said we had information on 2), but I’ve made so many wrong predictions about Donald Trump privately that I think my private opinion has lost all credibility there. 1) makes sense.
I can see why you might be afraid of war breaking out with Russia, but why do you consider Islam a major threat? Maybe you don’t and I’m misinterpreting you, but given how little damage terrorist attacks actually do isn’t Islam a regional problem to which the West has a major overreaction problem?
I was trying to be sincere with 4), although I admit that without tone of voice and body language, that’s hard to communicate sometimes. And even if LW hasn’t done as good a job as we could have with this topic, from what I’ve seen we’ve done far better than just about anyone not in the rationalist community at trying to remain rational.
Glad you agree with 1); when I first heard that argument (I didn’t come up with it), I had a massive moment of “that seems realy obvious, now that someone said it.”
With regards to 2), you’re right that we do have information on Trump; I spoke without precision. What I mean is this: beliefs are informed by evidence, and we have little evidence, given the nature of the American election, of what a candidate will behave like when they aren’t campaigning. I believe there’s a history of president-elects moderating their stances once they take office, although I have no direct evidence to support myself there.
When it comes to Islam, I should begin by saying that I’m sure the vast majority of Muslims simply want to live a decent life, just like the rest of us. However, theirs is the only religion active today that currently endorses holy war.
Then observe that MAD only applies to people unwilling to sacrifice their children for their cause, and further observe that Islam, as an idea, a meme, a religion, has successfully been able to make people do exactly that.
An American wouldn’t launch a nuke if it would kill their children, and Russian wouldn’t either. But a jihadist? From what I understand (which is admittedly not much on this topic), a jihadist just might. At least, the jihadist has a much higher probability of choosing a nuclear war over a nationalist.
I agree that the West overreacts in terms of Terrorism, in the sense that any given person is more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist, but I was referring to existential threats, a common topic on LW and one that Yudkowsky himself seems concerned with regarding this election. Car crashes don’t threaten the existence of humanity; nuclear war does.
And because I can’t see how either candidate would effect the likelihood of unfriendly AI, a meteor, a plague, or any of the other existential risks, nuclear war becomes the deciding vote in the “who’s less likely to get us all killed” competition.
Admittedly, the risk of catastrophic climate change might be higher under Trump, but I’ve no evidence for that save the very standard left vs. right paradigm, which doesn’t seem to apply all that well to Trump anyway.
Thank you for your response.