We should be looking at the cuban missile crisis, the fall of the soviet union, and maybe a half-dozen other examples, and using those as our reference class. Unless we think the current situation is milder than that.
Yeah, we do think the situation is much lower than that. Reference class points might be the invasion of Georgia, the invasion of Crimea, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Armenia and Azerbaijan war, the invasion of Finland, etc.
Seems less mild than the invasion of Georgia and the Armenia and Azerbaijan war. But more mild than the cuban missile crisis for sure. Anyhow, roughly how many examples do you think you’d want to pick for the reference class? If it’s a dozen or so, then I think you’d get a substantially higher base rate.
Agreed. Though that was a century ago & with different governments, as you pointed out elsewhere. Also no nukes; presumably nukes make escalation less likely than it was then (I didn’t realize this until now when I just read the wiki—apparently the Allies almost declared war on the soviet union due to the invasion of finland!).
To be clear I haven’t thought about this nearly as much as you. I just think that this is clearly an unusually risky month and so the number should be substantially higher than for an average month.
I agree the risk should be substantially higher than for an average month and I think most Samotsvety forecasters agree. I think a large part of the disagreement may be on how risky the average month is.
From the post:
(a) may be due to having a lower level of baseline risk before adjusting up based on the current situation. For example, while Luisa Rodríguez’s analysis puts the chance of a US/Russia nuclear exchange at .38%/year. We think this seems too high for the post-Cold War era after new de-escalation methods have been implemented and lessons have been learnt from close calls. Additionally, we trust the superforecaster aggregate the most out of the estimates aggregated in the post.
Speaking personally, I’d put the baseline risk per year at ~.1%/yr then have adjusted up by a factor of 10 to ~1%/yr given the current situation, which gives me ~.08%/month which is pretty close to the aggregate of ~.07%.
We also looked some from alternative perspectives e.g. decomposing Putin’s decision making process, which gave estimates in the same ballpark.
What is the appropriate reference class:
Yeah, we do think the situation is much lower than that. Reference class points might be the invasion of Georgia, the invasion of Crimea, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Armenia and Azerbaijan war, the invasion of Finland, etc.
Seems less mild than the invasion of Georgia and the Armenia and Azerbaijan war. But more mild than the cuban missile crisis for sure. Anyhow, roughly how many examples do you think you’d want to pick for the reference class? If it’s a dozen or so, then I think you’d get a substantially higher base rate.
(As an aside, I think that the invasion of Finland is actually a great reference point)
Agreed. Though that was a century ago & with different governments, as you pointed out elsewhere. Also no nukes; presumably nukes make escalation less likely than it was then (I didn’t realize this until now when I just read the wiki—apparently the Allies almost declared war on the soviet union due to the invasion of finland!).
To be clear I haven’t thought about this nearly as much as you. I just think that this is clearly an unusually risky month and so the number should be substantially higher than for an average month.
I agree the risk should be substantially higher than for an average month and I think most Samotsvety forecasters agree. I think a large part of the disagreement may be on how risky the average month is.
From the post:
Speaking personally, I’d put the baseline risk per year at ~.1%/yr then have adjusted up by a factor of 10 to ~1%/yr given the current situation, which gives me ~.08%/month which is pretty close to the aggregate of ~.07%.
We also looked some from alternative perspectives e.g. decomposing Putin’s decision making process, which gave estimates in the same ballpark.
OK, thanks!