then if risks were likely we would have many near misses
THERE HAVE BEEN NEAR MISSES!
We nearly nuked ourselves on 4 occasions that are public knowledge in the cold war.
Nazi Germany only lost WWII because Hitler made very silly mistakes. [leading plausibly to a Eurasia wide totalitarian state, which may have been stable] - I would regard the survival of neo-enlightenment Europe from WWII to be a lucky event.
shows anything is how remarkably resistant civilization is, restoring itself so smoothly after Stalin in such a hostile environment.
Russia is still a big mess, but I must admit, however, that the collapse of the USSR is a very encouraging data point. It seems that there are certain stability providing mechanisms, thanks.
You see the same pattern in China and so many other totalitarian regimes worldwide—how they get softer and more civilized given time, peace, and economic prosperity
No, I disagree. Look at Africa, for example, which seems to get more screwed over time. Also, China seems to be on the knife-edge between actually evolving to a liberal democracy and evolving to a techno-enabled totalitarian dystopia. Look at the great firewall, Tinanamen square, organ harvesting from political dissidents, etc.
The genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was not as “near” as all that—in part since there were Neanderthals around at that time as an additional backup mechanism, complementing the surviving humans. Plus, of course, Homo floresiensis! ;-)
Figures from before the eruption appear to have not been dramatically higher:
Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000).
True. I had forgotten the genetic bottleneck. Also I think I conflated the risks that will increase with technology (Nukes, Bio, Totalitarian) with the risks that were the actual closest near misses—the anthropic principle doesn’t care.
The proposed genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was long ago—when the human population may have been very small anyway. Today, we have six billion humans. There are better defenses against such things—in terms of stocked underground bunkers. So: a modern volcanic eruption would have to be vastly more destructive to kill all humans. The probabilities involved are miniscule, and shrink with every passing day. It is only because of a “Pascal’s wager”-style argument that people can be made to consider such risks.
Nazi Germany only lost WWII because Hitler made very silly mistakes.
I can’t find it, but there’s an article explaining how the Axis was more or less doomed from the start. In short, United States had twice the production capacity than all other participants combined. I’m saying Hitler’s mistakes only hastened the inevitable.
I’m not sure we should argue politics but… American intervention was not inevitable. Even merely materiale supply wasn’t inevitable. There were a number of ways America could’ve been out of the picture or impotent; one of the cited turning points/mistakes was the failure of the Battle of Britain to bring England to terms, or the escape of their army at Dunkirk.
Letting America into the war was arguably one of Hitler’s greatest mistakes (either by commission or omission, and there was even a historical parallel warning against America that Hitler was intimately familiar with—WWI).
America may’ve been tops in industry, but it’s hard to see it launching a transoceanic invasion into Europe with no allied powers closer than… Africa? Asia?
United States had twice the production capacity than all other participants combined.
Seems implausible to me, and also it seems to me that this would not be sufficient evidence to claim that Axis was almost certainly doomed from the start, though it would push that way.
Also, consider this in relation to Carl’s point about long-tailed power-law risk distributions. The fact that WWII was only a quite near miss as opposed to a very very near miss then looks less reassuring.
I see that the US’s GDP (a good proxy, I think, for industrial production, was 800 at the start of the war, while total Axis GDP was 685. The rest of the Allies represented 829. So by itself, the US was 17% more than the entire Axis alliance, and just under half of the Allies (ie. the rest of the world). Pretty impressive.
The last column has the USA at 1474, or >3x total Axis output (466), and is at 64% of Allies. Incidentally, this means at the end of the war, the US was >2x what the Axis were at the beginning of the war. So the US did not have twice what the rest of the world had; but it did have twice the Axis by the end, and presumably this was foreseeable. So we can change Smith’s point from being that the USA could industrially epic pwn the Axis, to merely pwn them.
We /did/ nuke each other—in Japan. Some people even died. Civilisation however, did not end. It seems pretty speculative to classify 20th century history as some sort of “near miss”. 6 billion humans represents the enormous success of our species—each human is a backup copy of our DNA. To classify this as a “near disaster” seems strange.
Civilisation however, did not end. It seems pretty speculative to classify 20th century history as some sort of “near miss”.
The use of two kiloton yield weapons in a one-sided war in Japan is not exactly the same thing as the use of nearly 100,000 megaton yield weapons in the cold war. In terms of pure explosive yield, the situations differ by a factor of 100,000,000, so I call bullshit on your analogy.
That hypothetical explosion never happened. Estimates of its probability seem necessarily speculative to me. If you want to “establish that there are actually such things as serious existential risks and major civilization-level catastrophes” then invoking things that never happened seems like rather weak evidence.
I am invoking the near misses in the cold war. But now you have changed your tack from “Civilisation however, did not end” (i.e. the effect of a nuclear war is not an existential disaster) to “Estimates of its probability seem necessarily speculative to me”, which doesn’t really matter. What the probability is is what matters, which you didn’t comment about.
I did—I said your estimate of a “near miss” was “speculative”. In fact, the world didn’t end, and you haven’t presented evidence that that was actually a likely outcome. Calling the “cold war” a “near miss” doesn’t count for very much. We had zero use of nuclear weapons in anger during that era.
THERE HAVE BEEN NEAR MISSES!
We nearly nuked ourselves on 4 occasions that are public knowledge in the cold war.
Nazi Germany only lost WWII because Hitler made very silly mistakes. [leading plausibly to a Eurasia wide totalitarian state, which may have been stable] - I would regard the survival of neo-enlightenment Europe from WWII to be a lucky event.
Russia is still a big mess, but I must admit, however, that the collapse of the USSR is a very encouraging data point. It seems that there are certain stability providing mechanisms, thanks.
No, I disagree. Look at Africa, for example, which seems to get more screwed over time. Also, China seems to be on the knife-edge between actually evolving to a liberal democracy and evolving to a techno-enabled totalitarian dystopia. Look at the great firewall, Tinanamen square, organ harvesting from political dissidents, etc.
Toba supereruption and genetic bottleneck probably strongest example of near-miss.
The genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was not as “near” as all that—in part since there were Neanderthals around at that time as an additional backup mechanism, complementing the surviving humans. Plus, of course, Homo floresiensis! ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory estimates we got down to the last 5,000-10,000 backup copies of the human genome.
Figures from before the eruption appear to have not been dramatically higher:
http://www.physorg.com/news183278038.html
There just weren’t that many homos around at the time.
True. I had forgotten the genetic bottleneck. Also I think I conflated the risks that will increase with technology (Nukes, Bio, Totalitarian) with the risks that were the actual closest near misses—the anthropic principle doesn’t care.
The proposed genetic bottleneck around the time of the eruption was long ago—when the human population may have been very small anyway. Today, we have six billion humans. There are better defenses against such things—in terms of stocked underground bunkers. So: a modern volcanic eruption would have to be vastly more destructive to kill all humans. The probabilities involved are miniscule, and shrink with every passing day. It is only because of a “Pascal’s wager”-style argument that people can be made to consider such risks.
I can’t find it, but there’s an article explaining how the Axis was more or less doomed from the start. In short, United States had twice the production capacity than all other participants combined. I’m saying Hitler’s mistakes only hastened the inevitable.
I’m not sure we should argue politics but… American intervention was not inevitable. Even merely materiale supply wasn’t inevitable. There were a number of ways America could’ve been out of the picture or impotent; one of the cited turning points/mistakes was the failure of the Battle of Britain to bring England to terms, or the escape of their army at Dunkirk.
Letting America into the war was arguably one of Hitler’s greatest mistakes (either by commission or omission, and there was even a historical parallel warning against America that Hitler was intimately familiar with—WWI).
America may’ve been tops in industry, but it’s hard to see it launching a transoceanic invasion into Europe with no allied powers closer than… Africa? Asia?
Seems implausible to me, and also it seems to me that this would not be sufficient evidence to claim that Axis was almost certainly doomed from the start, though it would push that way.
Also, consider this in relation to Carl’s point about long-tailed power-law risk distributions. The fact that WWII was only a quite near miss as opposed to a very very near miss then looks less reassuring.
Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II
I see that the US’s GDP (a good proxy, I think, for industrial production, was 800 at the start of the war, while total Axis GDP was 685. The rest of the Allies represented 829. So by itself, the US was 17% more than the entire Axis alliance, and just under half of the Allies (ie. the rest of the world). Pretty impressive.
The last column has the USA at 1474, or >3x total Axis output (466), and is at 64% of Allies. Incidentally, this means at the end of the war, the US was >2x what the Axis were at the beginning of the war. So the US did not have twice what the rest of the world had; but it did have twice the Axis by the end, and presumably this was foreseeable. So we can change Smith’s point from being that the USA could industrially epic pwn the Axis, to merely pwn them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II
(fixed link)
Thanks; edited.
Thank you for providing Data.
We /did/ nuke each other—in Japan. Some people even died. Civilisation however, did not end. It seems pretty speculative to classify 20th century history as some sort of “near miss”. 6 billion humans represents the enormous success of our species—each human is a backup copy of our DNA. To classify this as a “near disaster” seems strange.
The use of two kiloton yield weapons in a one-sided war in Japan is not exactly the same thing as the use of nearly 100,000 megaton yield weapons in the cold war. In terms of pure explosive yield, the situations differ by a factor of 100,000,000, so I call bullshit on your analogy.
That hypothetical explosion never happened. Estimates of its probability seem necessarily speculative to me. If you want to “establish that there are actually such things as serious existential risks and major civilization-level catastrophes” then invoking things that never happened seems like rather weak evidence.
I am invoking the near misses in the cold war. But now you have changed your tack from “Civilisation however, did not end” (i.e. the effect of a nuclear war is not an existential disaster) to “Estimates of its probability seem necessarily speculative to me”, which doesn’t really matter. What the probability is is what matters, which you didn’t comment about.
I did—I said your estimate of a “near miss” was “speculative”. In fact, the world didn’t end, and you haven’t presented evidence that that was actually a likely outcome. Calling the “cold war” a “near miss” doesn’t count for very much. We had zero use of nuclear weapons in anger during that era.