So we know a few things about nuclear war. First of all, not all nuclear wars are created equal. There’s a qualitative difference between a single weapon going off, and the superpowers unleashing their full arsenals. One of those is, as you said, a truly horrific humanitarian disaster, but it’s mostly local. And the other one is this unprecedented global cataclysm that might well threaten modern civilisation itself.
I think this overstates the case for focussing on large nuclear wars (relatedly), because these may be significantly less likely. To illustrate:
In the context of conventional wars, deaths follow a power law whose tail index is “1.35 to 1.74, with a mean of 1.60”. So the probability density function (PDF) of the deaths is proportional to “deaths”^-2.6 (= “deaths”^-(“tail index” + 1)).
As a result, the expected value density of deaths (“deaths”*”PDF of the deaths”) is proportional to “deaths”^-1.6 (= “deaths”*“deaths”^-2.6).
So I think spending should a priori be proportional to “deaths”^-1.6. As a consequence, if the goal is minimising war deaths, spending to save lives in wars 1 k times as deadly should be 0.00158 % (= (10^3)^(-1.6)) as large.
Nuclear wars arguably scale much faster than conventional ones, but it in not obvious to me whether large nuclear wars are being unfairly neglected given the consideration above.
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I think this overstates the case for focussing on large nuclear wars (relatedly), because these may be significantly less likely. To illustrate:
In the context of conventional wars, deaths follow a power law whose tail index is “1.35 to 1.74, with a mean of 1.60”. So the probability density function (PDF) of the deaths is proportional to “deaths”^-2.6 (= “deaths”^-(“tail index” + 1)).
As a result, the expected value density of deaths (“deaths”*”PDF of the deaths”) is proportional to “deaths”^-1.6 (= “deaths”*“deaths”^-2.6).
So I think spending should a priori be proportional to “deaths”^-1.6. As a consequence, if the goal is minimising war deaths, spending to save lives in wars 1 k times as deadly should be 0.00158 % (= (10^3)^(-1.6)) as large.
Nuclear wars arguably scale much faster than conventional ones, but it in not obvious to me whether large nuclear wars are being unfairly neglected given the consideration above.