Nice article, thanks for linking (and Will for writing).
Unfortunately some people I know thought this section was a little misleading, as they felt it was insinuating that Xrisk from nuclear was over 20% - a figure I think few EAs would endorse. Perhaps it was judged to be a low-cost concession to the prejudices of NYT readers?
We still live under the shadow of 9,000 nuclear warheads, each far more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some experts put the chances of a third world war by 2070 at over 20 percent. An all-out nuclear war could cause the collapse of civilization, and we might never recover.
Hmm, I don’t read it that way. My read of this passage is: the risk of WWIII by 2070 might be as high as somewhat over 20% (but that estimate is probably picked from the higher end of serious estimates), WWIII may or may not lead to all-out nuclear war, all-out nuclear war has some unknown chance of leading to the collapse of civilization, and if that happened then there would also be some further unknown chance of never recovering. So all-in-all, I’d read this as Will thinking that X-risk from nuclear war in the next 50 years was well below 20%.
I also don’t think NYT readers have particularly clear prejudices about nuclear war (they probably have larger prejudices about things like overpopulation), so this would be a weird place to make a concession, in my mind.
Nice article, thanks for linking (and Will for writing).
Unfortunately some people I know thought this section was a little misleading, as they felt it was insinuating that Xrisk from nuclear was over 20% - a figure I think few EAs would endorse. Perhaps it was judged to be a low-cost concession to the prejudices of NYT readers?
Hmm, I don’t read it that way. My read of this passage is: the risk of WWIII by 2070 might be as high as somewhat over 20% (but that estimate is probably picked from the higher end of serious estimates), WWIII may or may not lead to all-out nuclear war, all-out nuclear war has some unknown chance of leading to the collapse of civilization, and if that happened then there would also be some further unknown chance of never recovering. So all-in-all, I’d read this as Will thinking that X-risk from nuclear war in the next 50 years was well below 20%.
I also don’t think NYT readers have particularly clear prejudices about nuclear war (they probably have larger prejudices about things like overpopulation), so this would be a weird place to make a concession, in my mind.