In this squiggle you use “ableToEscapeBefore = 0.5”. Does that assume that you’re following the policy “escape if you see any tactical nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine”? (Which someone who’s currently on the fence about escaping London would presumably do.)
If yes, I would have expected it to be higher than 50%. Do you think very rapid escalation is likely, or am I missing something else?
In this squiggle you use “ableToEscapeBefore = 0.5”
I was just using 0.5 as a default value. In our March estimate, we were at 0.75, a critic was at 0.3; Zvi Moskovitz was at solomonic 0.5. This time this wasn’t really the focus of our estimate, because I was already giving forecasters many questions to estimate, and the situation for that sub-estimate doesn’t seem to have been changed as much.
Thanks for the links! (Fyi the first two points to the same page.)
The critic’s 0.3 assumes that you’ll stay until there’s nuclear exchanges between Russia and NATO. Zvi was at 75% if you leave as soon as a conventional war between NATO and Russia starts.
I’m not sure how to compare that situation with the current situation, where it seems more likely that the next escalatory step will be a nuke on a non-NATO target than conventional NATO-Russia warfare. But if you’re happy to leave as soon as either a nuke is dropped anywhere or conventional NATO/Russia warfare breaks out, I’m inclined to aggregate those numbers to something closer to 75% than 50%.
On the other hand, the critic updated me towards higher numbers on p(nuke london|any nuke). Though I assume Samotsvety have already read it, so not sure how to take that into account. But given that uncertainty, given that that number only comes into play in confusing worlds where everyone’s models are broken, and given Samotsvety’s 5x higher unconditional number, I will update at least a bit in that direction.
Thanks for doing this!
In this squiggle you use “ableToEscapeBefore = 0.5”. Does that assume that you’re following the policy “escape if you see any tactical nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine”? (Which someone who’s currently on the fence about escaping London would presumably do.)
If yes, I would have expected it to be higher than 50%. Do you think very rapid escalation is likely, or am I missing something else?
I was just using 0.5 as a default value. In our March estimate, we were at 0.75, a critic was at 0.3; Zvi Moskovitz was at solomonic 0.5. This time this wasn’t really the focus of our estimate, because I was already giving forecasters many questions to estimate, and the situation for that sub-estimate doesn’t seem to have been changed as much.
Thanks for the links! (Fyi the first two points to the same page.)
The critic’s 0.3 assumes that you’ll stay until there’s nuclear exchanges between Russia and NATO. Zvi was at 75% if you leave as soon as a conventional war between NATO and Russia starts.
I’m not sure how to compare that situation with the current situation, where it seems more likely that the next escalatory step will be a nuke on a non-NATO target than conventional NATO-Russia warfare. But if you’re happy to leave as soon as either a nuke is dropped anywhere or conventional NATO/Russia warfare breaks out, I’m inclined to aggregate those numbers to something closer to 75% than 50%.
On the other hand, the critic updated me towards higher numbers on p(nuke london|any nuke). Though I assume Samotsvety have already read it, so not sure how to take that into account. But given that uncertainty, given that that number only comes into play in confusing worlds where everyone’s models are broken, and given Samotsvety’s 5x higher unconditional number, I will update at least a bit in that direction.