Yeah, as Peter says, this is something I’ll start focusing on in a few months (there’s ~1 other nuclear risk research project I’ll work on first). So I hope to have at least one writeup on this for Rethink in 2021. And if people are knowledgeable about or interested in this treaty or related matters, feel free to reach out to me.
For now, I’d second Peter’s recommendation of that post by Luisa.
I’d be curious to hear if there’s a particular reason you (DonyChristie) and Matthew are interested in this question?
ETA: Also, thanks (to DonyChristie) for linking to those Metaculus questions—I hadn’t had a look for relevant questions on Metaculus yet, but now I think these might be fairly useful to a bunch of my upcoming work, and I’ll probably add some additional questions later.
When I originally got an email from Ploughshares Fund about it, the headline was suggestive of nukes everywhere being banned. This seemed like a probably-wrong impression to me. Nevertheless, I contended with a possible reality in which nuclear war suddenly was no longer a problem. I grappled with just how worthy of ecstatic celebration this would be; social norms do not suggest the correctly calibrated mood. I let myself feel some existential hope.
As I guessed, it turned out not every country signed it. That being what it is, I still felt it is the case this is a monumental achievement, something that leads to the elimination of global thermonuclear war as a matter of when, not if. That the timeline to that world, of Global Zero or Global Very Small Defensive Stockpile, is definite and finite. That this treaty will gather momentum, and not decrease in efficacy over time. That the Sword of Damocles was a little less wobbly over our heads; perhaps it was on the order of a 1% reduction in x-risk, given it was a major chunk of reduction in nuclear risk, and nuclear risk is a major chunk in x-risk. That maybe, just maybe, people collectively can in fact be saner than I thought, and not get narrowmindedly stuck in brittle finite game framings of coordination problems. I did not actually expect a treaty banning nukes to exist, and it was a welcome surprise. I think we should let ourselves recognize when a major, major existential achievement has been unlocked, and not get stuck in perpetual cynicism about the state of the world.
Luisa’s article suggests otherwise. Reading it, I agree that formal impact seems very low. It’s still another step in the right direction. I look forward to the article on informal means of impact.
You may be interested in “Will the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons affect nuclear deproliferation through legal channels?” by Luisa Rodriguez, then at Rethink Priorities.
Rethink Priorities recently hired a new researcher, Michael Aird, who will resume work on looking into this treaty.
Yeah, as Peter says, this is something I’ll start focusing on in a few months (there’s ~1 other nuclear risk research project I’ll work on first). So I hope to have at least one writeup on this for Rethink in 2021. And if people are knowledgeable about or interested in this treaty or related matters, feel free to reach out to me.
For now, I’d second Peter’s recommendation of that post by Luisa.
I’d be curious to hear if there’s a particular reason you (DonyChristie) and Matthew are interested in this question?
ETA: Also, thanks (to DonyChristie) for linking to those Metaculus questions—I hadn’t had a look for relevant questions on Metaculus yet, but now I think these might be fairly useful to a bunch of my upcoming work, and I’ll probably add some additional questions later.
When I originally got an email from Ploughshares Fund about it, the headline was suggestive of nukes everywhere being banned. This seemed like a probably-wrong impression to me. Nevertheless, I contended with a possible reality in which nuclear war suddenly was no longer a problem. I grappled with just how worthy of ecstatic celebration this would be; social norms do not suggest the correctly calibrated mood. I let myself feel some existential hope.
As I guessed, it turned out not every country signed it. That being what it is, I still felt it is the case this is a monumental achievement, something that leads to the elimination of global thermonuclear war as a matter of when, not if. That the timeline to that world, of Global Zero or Global Very Small Defensive Stockpile, is definite and finite. That this treaty will gather momentum, and not decrease in efficacy over time. That the Sword of Damocles was a little less wobbly over our heads; perhaps it was on the order of a 1% reduction in x-risk, given it was a major chunk of reduction in nuclear risk, and nuclear risk is a major chunk in x-risk. That maybe, just maybe, people collectively can in fact be saner than I thought, and not get narrowmindedly stuck in brittle finite game framings of coordination problems. I did not actually expect a treaty banning nukes to exist, and it was a welcome surprise. I think we should let ourselves recognize when a major, major existential achievement has been unlocked, and not get stuck in perpetual cynicism about the state of the world.
Luisa’s article suggests otherwise. Reading it, I agree that formal impact seems very low. It’s still another step in the right direction. I look forward to the article on informal means of impact.