5 forecasters from Samotsvety Forecasting discussed the forecasts in this post.
First, I estimate that the chance of direct Great Power conflict this century is around 45%.
Our aggregated forecast was 23.5%. Considerations discussed were the changed incentives in the nuclear era, possible causes (climate change, AI, etc.) and the likelihood of specific wars (e.g. US-China fighting over Taiwan).
Second, I think the chance of a huge war as bad or worse than WWII is on the order of 10%.
Our aggregated forecast was 25%, though we were unsure if this was supposed to only count wars between great powers, in which case it’s bounded above by the first forecast.
There was some discussion of the offense-defense balance as tech capabilities increase; perhaps offense will have more of an advantage over time.
Some forecasters would have preferred to predict based on something like human suffering per capita rather than battle deaths, due to an expected shift in how a 21st century great power war would be waged.
Third, I think the chance of an extinction-level war is about 1%. This is despite the fact that I put more credence in the hypothesis that war has become less likely in the post-WWII period than I do in the hypothesis that the risk of war has not changed.
Our aggregated forecast was 0.1% for extinction. Forecasters were skeptical of using Braumoeller’s model to estimate this as it seems likely to break down at the tails; killing everyone via a war seems really hard. There was some uncertainty of whether borderline cases such as war + another disaster to finish people off or war + future tech would count.
(Noticed just now that MaxRa commented giving a similar forecast with similar reasoning)
5 forecasters from Samotsvety Forecasting discussed the forecasts in this post.
Our aggregated forecast was 23.5%. Considerations discussed were the changed incentives in the nuclear era, possible causes (climate change, AI, etc.) and the likelihood of specific wars (e.g. US-China fighting over Taiwan).
Our aggregated forecast was 25%, though we were unsure if this was supposed to only count wars between great powers, in which case it’s bounded above by the first forecast.
There was some discussion of the offense-defense balance as tech capabilities increase; perhaps offense will have more of an advantage over time.
Some forecasters would have preferred to predict based on something like human suffering per capita rather than battle deaths, due to an expected shift in how a 21st century great power war would be waged.
Our aggregated forecast was 0.1% for extinction. Forecasters were skeptical of using Braumoeller’s model to estimate this as it seems likely to break down at the tails; killing everyone via a war seems really hard. There was some uncertainty of whether borderline cases such as war + another disaster to finish people off or war + future tech would count.
(Noticed just now that MaxRa commented giving a similar forecast with similar reasoning)