This series (#2, #3) has begun as the most interesting-to-me on the Forum in a long time. Thanks very much. If you have written or do write about how future changes in arsenals may change your conclusions about what scenarios to pay the most attention to, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
In case relevant to others, I found your spreadsheet with raw figures more insightful than the discrete system in the post. To what extent do you think the survey you use for the probabilities of particular nuclear scenarios is a reliable source? (I previously distrusted it for heuristic reasons like the authors seeming to hype some results that didn’t seem that meaningful.) I’m interested because, as well as the numbers you use it for, the survey implies ~15% chance of use of nuclear weapons conditional on a conventional conflict occurring between nuclear-armed states, which seemed surprisingly low to me and would change my thinking about conflicts between great powers in general if I believed it.
Thanks for your comments — I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the series!
If you have written or do write about how future changes in arsenals may change your conclusions about what scenarios to pay the most attention to, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
I haven’t written about this yet, but I’ll consider working it in as I continue to explore the topic in the next few months. I’ll update this thread if I do.
To what extent do you think the survey you use for the probabilities of particular nuclear scenarios is a reliable source?
I’ll be sharing a post on the probability of a US-Russia nuclear war soon. It talks a little bit about the relative merits and weaknesses of some of these probability estimates.
This series (#2, #3) has begun as the most interesting-to-me on the Forum in a long time. Thanks very much. If you have written or do write about how future changes in arsenals may change your conclusions about what scenarios to pay the most attention to, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
In case relevant to others, I found your spreadsheet with raw figures more insightful than the discrete system in the post. To what extent do you think the survey you use for the probabilities of particular nuclear scenarios is a reliable source? (I previously distrusted it for heuristic reasons like the authors seeming to hype some results that didn’t seem that meaningful.) I’m interested because, as well as the numbers you use it for, the survey implies ~15% chance of use of nuclear weapons conditional on a conventional conflict occurring between nuclear-armed states, which seemed surprisingly low to me and would change my thinking about conflicts between great powers in general if I believed it.
Hi Kit,
Thanks for your comments — I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the series!
I haven’t written about this yet, but I’ll consider working it in as I continue to explore the topic in the next few months. I’ll update this thread if I do.
I’ll be sharing a post on the probability of a US-Russia nuclear war soon. It talks a little bit about the relative merits and weaknesses of some of these probability estimates.
Also, I see you’ve left some great feedback on posts 2 and 3. I’ll be replying to those comments shortly.