Whether those catastrophes could destroy present humanity wasn’t the point, which was whether or not near misses in potential extinction events have ever occurred during our past.
Consider it that way : under your assumptions of our world being more robust nowadays, what would count as a near miss today, would certainly have wiped the frailer humanity out back then; conversely what counted as a near miss back then, would not be nearly that bad nowadays.
This basically means, by constraining the definition of a “near miss” in that way, that it is impossible to show any such near miss in our history. That is at best one step away from saying we’re actually safe and shouldn’t worry all that much about existential risks.
Speaking of which, when arguing the definition of an existential risk, and from that arguing that such catastrophes as a nuclear war, aren’t existential risks, blurs the point.
Let us rephrase the question : how much would you want to avoid a nuclear war, or a supereruption, or an asteroid strike ? How much effort, time, money should we put into the cause of avoiding such catastrophes ?
While it is true a catastrophe that doesn’t wipe out humanity forever, isn’t as bad as one that does, such an event can still be awfully bad, and deserving of our attention and efforts, so as to prevent it. We’re talking billions of human lives lost or spent in awful conditions for decades, centuries, millennia, etc. If that is no cause to serious worry, pray tell what is ?
Total extinction has expected value that’s pretty much indistinguishable from minus infinity.
Global thermonuclear war? Oh sure it would kill some people but expected number of deaths and amount of suffering from let’s say malaria or lack of access to fresh water in the next 100 years is far higher than expected death and suffering from a global thermonuclear war in the next 100 years.
Even our most recent total war, WW2, killed laughably small portion of the fighting population relative to historical norms. There’s no reason to suspect WW3 would be any different, so number of deaths would most likely be rather limited. And as countries with low birth rates (that is pretty much all countries today) have historical record of trying very hard not to get into any war that could endanger their population (as opposed to send bombs to other countries and such), chance of such a war is tiny.
So let’s say 1% chance of global thermonuclear war killing 100 million people in the next 100 years (expected 1 million deaths) versus 1 million deaths a year from malaria, and 2 from diarrhea. I think we have our priorities wrong if we care about global thermonuclear wars much.
(of course people might disagree with these estimates, in which case they would see a global thermonuclear war as more important issue than me)
Under those assumptions your estimates are sound, really. However, should we only count the direct deaths incurred as a consequence of a direct nuclear strike ? Or should we also take into account the nuclear fallout, radiations, nuclear winter, ecosystems crashing down, massive economy and infrastructure disruption, etc. ? How much more worse does it get if we take such considerations into account ?
Aside from those considerations, I really agree with your idea of getting our priorities right, based on numbers. That’s exactly the reason why I’d advocate antiagathic research above a lot of other things, which actually kill and make less people suffer than aging itself does, but not everyone seems to agree to that.
Right now 350–500 million people a year suffer from malaria, billions live in places of massive economy and infrastructure disruption, and with health prospects most likely worse than first world person would have in post-thermonuclear-war environment.
I doubt fallout would be that bad in the long term. Sure, there would be higher cancer rate, but people would abandon the most irradiated places, take some precautions, and the overall loss of healthy lifespan would most likely be of the same order of magnitude as a couple of decades of progress of medicine. For all I know people after a potential 2100 thermonuclear warfare might live longer and healthier than us.
Right now 350–500 million people a year suffer from malaria, billions live in places of massive economy and infrastructure disruption, and with health prospects most likely worse than first world person would have in post-thermonuclear-war environment.
And what do you think the effect of a full-scale global nuclear war on the poorest one fifth of the world would be?
Do you think that they would be unaffected or not affected much?
Swapping nuclear warfare for end of third world poverty would be a good exchange for most people. And nuclear warfare is a remote possibility, while third world poverty is real and here with us now.
Also notice how much better is life in Hiroshima compared to Congo.
What should be realized here, however, is that Hiroshima could become a relatively ok place because it could receive a huge amount of help for being part of the country with such a high GDP.
Hiroshima didn’t magically get better. A large scale nuclear war would destroy our economy, and thus our capability to respond and patch the damage that way. For that matter, I’m not even sure our undisturbed response systems could be able to deal with more than a few nuked cities.
Also please consider that Hiroshima was nuked by a 18 kt bomb, which is nothing like the average 400 − 500 kt nukes we have now.
How could it receive huge amounts of help if in 1949 where rebuilding started Japan did not have high GDP? Now we have a lot higher GDP, and if all our major cities are too expensive to rebuild, we can just move to other cities.
Based on similar situations (WW2, fall of Soviet Union), disruption of economy will most likely not last long, so people after global nuclear war will most likely have plenty of money to use.
Yes indeed. Do you expect that to remain true after a nuclear war too ? More basically, I suppose I could resume my idea as follows : you can poke a hole in a country’s infrastructure or economy, and the hole will heal with time because the rest is still healthy enough to help with that—just as a hole poked into a life form can heal, provided that the hole isn’t big enough to kill the thing, or send it into a downward spiral of degeneration.
But yes, society isn’t quite an organism in the same sense. There you probably could have full scale cataplasia, and see something survive someplace, and perhaps even from there, start again from scratch (or better, or worse, than scratch).
As I said, economy of countries destroyed after WW1 and WW2 picked up where it left extremely quickly, and definitely did not result in lasting return to stone age as some imagine. This makes me guess the economic disruption of a global thermonuclear war wouldn’t be that long either.
This is an outside view, and it’s pretty clear, but I understand some people would rather take an inside view, which would be much more pessimistic.
Whether those catastrophes could destroy present humanity wasn’t the point, which was whether or not near misses in potential extinction events have ever occurred during our past.
Consider it that way : under your assumptions of our world being more robust nowadays, what would count as a near miss today, would certainly have wiped the frailer humanity out back then; conversely what counted as a near miss back then, would not be nearly that bad nowadays. This basically means, by constraining the definition of a “near miss” in that way, that it is impossible to show any such near miss in our history. That is at best one step away from saying we’re actually safe and shouldn’t worry all that much about existential risks.
Speaking of which, when arguing the definition of an existential risk, and from that arguing that such catastrophes as a nuclear war, aren’t existential risks, blurs the point. Let us rephrase the question : how much would you want to avoid a nuclear war, or a supereruption, or an asteroid strike ? How much effort, time, money should we put into the cause of avoiding such catastrophes ?
While it is true a catastrophe that doesn’t wipe out humanity forever, isn’t as bad as one that does, such an event can still be awfully bad, and deserving of our attention and efforts, so as to prevent it. We’re talking billions of human lives lost or spent in awful conditions for decades, centuries, millennia, etc. If that is no cause to serious worry, pray tell what is ?
Total extinction has expected value that’s pretty much indistinguishable from minus infinity.
Global thermonuclear war? Oh sure it would kill some people but expected number of deaths and amount of suffering from let’s say malaria or lack of access to fresh water in the next 100 years is far higher than expected death and suffering from a global thermonuclear war in the next 100 years.
Even our most recent total war, WW2, killed laughably small portion of the fighting population relative to historical norms. There’s no reason to suspect WW3 would be any different, so number of deaths would most likely be rather limited. And as countries with low birth rates (that is pretty much all countries today) have historical record of trying very hard not to get into any war that could endanger their population (as opposed to send bombs to other countries and such), chance of such a war is tiny.
So let’s say 1% chance of global thermonuclear war killing 100 million people in the next 100 years (expected 1 million deaths) versus 1 million deaths a year from malaria, and 2 from diarrhea. I think we have our priorities wrong if we care about global thermonuclear wars much.
(of course people might disagree with these estimates, in which case they would see a global thermonuclear war as more important issue than me)
Under those assumptions your estimates are sound, really. However, should we only count the direct deaths incurred as a consequence of a direct nuclear strike ? Or should we also take into account the nuclear fallout, radiations, nuclear winter, ecosystems crashing down, massive economy and infrastructure disruption, etc. ? How much more worse does it get if we take such considerations into account ?
Aside from those considerations, I really agree with your idea of getting our priorities right, based on numbers. That’s exactly the reason why I’d advocate antiagathic research above a lot of other things, which actually kill and make less people suffer than aging itself does, but not everyone seems to agree to that.
Right now 350–500 million people a year suffer from malaria, billions live in places of massive economy and infrastructure disruption, and with health prospects most likely worse than first world person would have in post-thermonuclear-war environment.
I doubt fallout would be that bad in the long term. Sure, there would be higher cancer rate, but people would abandon the most irradiated places, take some precautions, and the overall loss of healthy lifespan would most likely be of the same order of magnitude as a couple of decades of progress of medicine. For all I know people after a potential 2100 thermonuclear warfare might live longer and healthier than us.
And what do you think the effect of a full-scale global nuclear war on the poorest one fifth of the world would be?
Do you think that they would be unaffected or not affected much?
By 2100 hopefully we won’t have the third world any more.
Swapping nuclear warfare for end of third world poverty would be a good exchange for most people. And nuclear warfare is a remote possibility, while third world poverty is real and here with us now.
Also notice how much better is life in Hiroshima compared to Congo.
What should be realized here, however, is that Hiroshima could become a relatively ok place because it could receive a huge amount of help for being part of the country with such a high GDP.
Hiroshima didn’t magically get better. A large scale nuclear war would destroy our economy, and thus our capability to respond and patch the damage that way. For that matter, I’m not even sure our undisturbed response systems could be able to deal with more than a few nuked cities. Also please consider that Hiroshima was nuked by a 18 kt bomb, which is nothing like the average 400 − 500 kt nukes we have now.
How could it receive huge amounts of help if in 1949 where rebuilding started Japan did not have high GDP? Now we have a lot higher GDP, and if all our major cities are too expensive to rebuild, we can just move to other cities.
Based on similar situations (WW2, fall of Soviet Union), disruption of economy will most likely not last long, so people after global nuclear war will most likely have plenty of money to use.
Yes indeed. Do you expect that to remain true after a nuclear war too ? More basically, I suppose I could resume my idea as follows : you can poke a hole in a country’s infrastructure or economy, and the hole will heal with time because the rest is still healthy enough to help with that—just as a hole poked into a life form can heal, provided that the hole isn’t big enough to kill the thing, or send it into a downward spiral of degeneration.
But yes, society isn’t quite an organism in the same sense. There you probably could have full scale cataplasia, and see something survive someplace, and perhaps even from there, start again from scratch (or better, or worse, than scratch).
As I said, economy of countries destroyed after WW1 and WW2 picked up where it left extremely quickly, and definitely did not result in lasting return to stone age as some imagine. This makes me guess the economic disruption of a global thermonuclear war wouldn’t be that long either.
This is an outside view, and it’s pretty clear, but I understand some people would rather take an inside view, which would be much more pessimistic.