You say that “there are good arguments for working on the threat of nuclear war”. As I understand your argument, you also say we cannot rationally distinguish between the claim “the chance of nuclear war in the next 100 years is 0.00000001%” and the claim “the chance of nuclear war in the next 100 years is 1%”. If you can’t rationally put probabilities on the risk of nuclear war, why would you work on it?
Why are probabilities prior to action—why are they so fundamental? Could Andrew Wiles “rationally put probabilities” on him solving Fermat’s Last Theorem? Does this mean he shouldn’t have worked on it? Arguments do not have to be in number form.
If you refuse to claim that the chance of nuclear war up to 2100 is greater than 0.000000000001%, then I don’t see how you could make a good case to work on it over some other possible intuitively trivial action, such as painting my wall blue. What would the argument be if you are completely agnostic as to whether it is a serious risk?
To me, the fundamental point isn’t probabilities, it’s that you need to make a choice about what you do. If I have the option to give a $1mn grant to preventing nuclear war or give the grant to something else, then no matter what I do, I have made a choice. And so, I need to have a decision theory for making a choice here.
And to me, subjective probabilities and Bayesian epistemology more generally, are by far the best decision theory I’ve come across for making choices under uncertainty. If there’s a 1% chance of nuclear war, the grant is worth making, if there’s a 10^-15 chance of nuclear war, the grant is not worth making. I need to make a decision, and so probabilities are fundamental, because they are my tool for making a decision.
And there are a bunch of important question where we don’t have data, and there’s no reasonable way to get data (eg, nuclear war!). And any approach which rejects the ability to reason under uncertainty in situations like this, is essentially the decision theory of “never make speculative grants like this”. And I think this is a clearly terrible decision theory (though I don’t think you’re actually arguing for this policy?)
You say that “there are good arguments for working on the threat of nuclear war”. As I understand your argument, you also say we cannot rationally distinguish between the claim “the chance of nuclear war in the next 100 years is 0.00000001%” and the claim “the chance of nuclear war in the next 100 years is 1%”. If you can’t rationally put probabilities on the risk of nuclear war, why would you work on it?
Why are probabilities prior to action—why are they so fundamental? Could Andrew Wiles “rationally put probabilities” on him solving Fermat’s Last Theorem? Does this mean he shouldn’t have worked on it? Arguments do not have to be in number form.
If you refuse to claim that the chance of nuclear war up to 2100 is greater than 0.000000000001%, then I don’t see how you could make a good case to work on it over some other possible intuitively trivial action, such as painting my wall blue. What would the argument be if you are completely agnostic as to whether it is a serious risk?
To me, the fundamental point isn’t probabilities, it’s that you need to make a choice about what you do. If I have the option to give a $1mn grant to preventing nuclear war or give the grant to something else, then no matter what I do, I have made a choice. And so, I need to have a decision theory for making a choice here.
And to me, subjective probabilities and Bayesian epistemology more generally, are by far the best decision theory I’ve come across for making choices under uncertainty. If there’s a 1% chance of nuclear war, the grant is worth making, if there’s a 10^-15 chance of nuclear war, the grant is not worth making. I need to make a decision, and so probabilities are fundamental, because they are my tool for making a decision.
And there are a bunch of important question where we don’t have data, and there’s no reasonable way to get data (eg, nuclear war!). And any approach which rejects the ability to reason under uncertainty in situations like this, is essentially the decision theory of “never make speculative grants like this”. And I think this is a clearly terrible decision theory (though I don’t think you’re actually arguing for this policy?)