Hmm interesting, I got 2000 by just setting rusiaUsesNuclearWeaponsInUkraine to 1 in the squiggle model. Looking at it further, the mean moves around between runs if I just use 1000 samples. Updating to 1000000, it seems to converge on 1700.
I agree that this is a place where forecast aggregation adds a lot of challenges.
This is also tricky because I don’t think it lets you compare to the option I’d actually advocate for, which is something like “flee at a slightly later point”—the US has good intel on Russia, and it seems likely that US officials will know if Russia appears to be headed towards nuclear war. If you have to compare “flee the instant a tactical nuke is used in Ukraine” or “stay no matter what”, “stay no matter what” doesn’t look good, but what you want to compare is “flee the instant a tactical nuke is used in Ukraine” to “flee at some subsequent sign of danger”—that is, the real question is how many life-hours you get by fleeing early that you don’t get by fleeing late (either because we don’t get any warning, or because by then many people are panicking and fleeing).
There are a bunch of preparations the US military would want to take in the face of elevated odds of nuclear war (bombers in the air, ships looking for submarines, changes of force concentration) and I don’t believe they will sacrifice making those preparations for crowd management reasons. I agree it’s possible they’ll say something noncommittal or false while visibly changing force deployments to DEFCON 2 or whatever, though this is not what they did during the Cold War and it would be pretty obvious.
My impression is that US intelligence has been very impressive with regard to Russia’s military plans to date. US officials confidently called the war in Ukraine by December and knew the details of the planned Russian offensive. They’re saying now that they think Putin is not imminently planning to use a tactical nuke. If they’re wrong and Putin uses a tactical nuke next week, that’d be a big update they also won’t predict further nuclear escalation correctly, but my model is that before the use of a tactical nuke, we’ll get US officials saying “we’re worried Russia plans to use a tactical nuke”. If I’m right about that, then I further predict they’ll be giving pretty accurate assessments of whether Russia is going to escalate from there.
That suggests a threshold to leave of [ tactical nuke use in Ukraine, if it surprises US officials] or [after tactical nuke use in Ukraine and a warning from US officials that Putin seems inclined to escalate further after tactical nuke use], which would be a 10x or more further update on risk in my view.
Though I should say that I think tac nuke use in Ukraine is also a reasonable trigger to leave, depending on your personal situation, productivity, ease of leaving, where you’re going, etc—I really just want people to be sure they are doing the EV calculations and not treating risk-minimization as the sudden controlling priority.
How far in advance would you expect US officials to warn the public of the possibility of nukes? (i.e. how much time would we have between such a warning and needing to have left already?)
I don’t know, but I think likely days not weeks. Tactical nuke use will be a good test ground for this—do we get advance warning from US officials about that? How much advance warning?
Hmm interesting, I got 2000 by just setting rusiaUsesNuclearWeaponsInUkraine to 1 in the squiggle model. Looking at it further, the mean moves around between runs if I just use 1000 samples. Updating to 1000000, it seems to converge on 1700.
I agree that this is a place where forecast aggregation adds a lot of challenges.
This is also tricky because I don’t think it lets you compare to the option I’d actually advocate for, which is something like “flee at a slightly later point”—the US has good intel on Russia, and it seems likely that US officials will know if Russia appears to be headed towards nuclear war. If you have to compare “flee the instant a tactical nuke is used in Ukraine” or “stay no matter what”, “stay no matter what” doesn’t look good, but what you want to compare is “flee the instant a tactical nuke is used in Ukraine” to “flee at some subsequent sign of danger”—that is, the real question is how many life-hours you get by fleeing early that you don’t get by fleeing late (either because we don’t get any warning, or because by then many people are panicking and fleeing).
Why would you think that they would transmit this information honestly, rather than managing the crowd and try to have people not panic?
There are a bunch of preparations the US military would want to take in the face of elevated odds of nuclear war (bombers in the air, ships looking for submarines, changes of force concentration) and I don’t believe they will sacrifice making those preparations for crowd management reasons. I agree it’s possible they’ll say something noncommittal or false while visibly changing force deployments to DEFCON 2 or whatever, though this is not what they did during the Cold War and it would be pretty obvious.
Cheers.
(not sure how to interpret this)
I’d expect it to be harder to tell that Russia is heading towards nuclear war than that they are planning an invasion.
That makes sense to me, I agree that’s a good relevant comparison.
Thanks for writing this! Do you have a particular sign of danger in mind? I don’t feel that I would know what else to look for as a leave trigger.
My impression is that US intelligence has been very impressive with regard to Russia’s military plans to date. US officials confidently called the war in Ukraine by December and knew the details of the planned Russian offensive. They’re saying now that they think Putin is not imminently planning to use a tactical nuke. If they’re wrong and Putin uses a tactical nuke next week, that’d be a big update they also won’t predict further nuclear escalation correctly, but my model is that before the use of a tactical nuke, we’ll get US officials saying “we’re worried Russia plans to use a tactical nuke”. If I’m right about that, then I further predict they’ll be giving pretty accurate assessments of whether Russia is going to escalate from there.
That suggests a threshold to leave of [ tactical nuke use in Ukraine, if it surprises US officials] or [after tactical nuke use in Ukraine and a warning from US officials that Putin seems inclined to escalate further after tactical nuke use], which would be a 10x or more further update on risk in my view.
Though I should say that I think tac nuke use in Ukraine is also a reasonable trigger to leave, depending on your personal situation, productivity, ease of leaving, where you’re going, etc—I really just want people to be sure they are doing the EV calculations and not treating risk-minimization as the sudden controlling priority.
How far in advance would you expect US officials to warn the public of the possibility of nukes? (i.e. how much time would we have between such a warning and needing to have left already?)
I don’t know, but I think likely days not weeks. Tactical nuke use will be a good test ground for this—do we get advance warning from US officials about that? How much advance warning?