Wow, many thanks, quite an eye-opener though I’m quite new to the literature on this question and to the forum itself!
Just a worry about the modelling which may have been taken care of anyway through the mention of inferential uncertainty (I haven’t checked the definition of this so far).
So, here goes: I wonder whether the inclusion of wars of more than say 20 years ago in the calculations (for example for the conventional war injuries) are pertinent, since the conditions then were significantly different. More specifically, for example, there was no internet and no possibility of cyber-warfare and the world was a far less interconnected place.
More generally, I wonder whether even considering the last ten or twenty years or even two years the political conditions are such that render each conflict a sui generis event, and whether this should be a worry for any modeller.
I think these are fair points, and in particular I’m worried about the reliance on Korean War data to model US-China conflict—if I had more time, I would go look at the expected deaths in a Taiwan conflict, but there aren’t any really available as far as I can tell.
From a bigger picture perspective, all this probably doesn’t matter too much, insofar as the costs of more fatalities/casualties from more conventional war get swamped by the benefits of reduced nuclear risk anyway.
yeah, I agree that what’s most important is the bigger picture, and regarding that, I totally agree with your conclusions!
(though, coming just after listening to Ian Morris’s podcast on his history book (here: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-morris-big-picture-history/) I just got the thought that politics may dictate a quantification also for the scenaria for nuclear conflict as politically speaking, use of a nuclear weapon by say Russia would be qualitatively different to use by say Pakistan because of (for lack of better words) there’s a ‘hierarchy’ of states judged on their power on the world stage. Something which I think it would be hard for a model to capture. But I may be wrong and you have covered this, and as I said before, I do agree with your conclusions and estimates
Wow, many thanks, quite an eye-opener though I’m quite new to the literature on this question and to the forum itself!
Just a worry about the modelling which may have been taken care of anyway through the mention of inferential uncertainty (I haven’t checked the definition of this so far).
So, here goes: I wonder whether the inclusion of wars of more than say 20 years ago in the calculations (for example for the conventional war injuries) are pertinent, since the conditions then were significantly different. More specifically, for example, there was no internet and no possibility of cyber-warfare and the world was a far less interconnected place.
More generally, I wonder whether even considering the last ten or twenty years or even two years the political conditions are such that render each conflict a sui generis event, and whether this should be a worry for any modeller.
Best Wishes,
Haris
I think these are fair points, and in particular I’m worried about the reliance on Korean War data to model US-China conflict—if I had more time, I would go look at the expected deaths in a Taiwan conflict, but there aren’t any really available as far as I can tell.
From a bigger picture perspective, all this probably doesn’t matter too much, insofar as the costs of more fatalities/casualties from more conventional war get swamped by the benefits of reduced nuclear risk anyway.
yeah, I agree that what’s most important is the bigger picture, and regarding that, I totally agree with your conclusions!
(though, coming just after listening to Ian Morris’s podcast on his history book (here: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-morris-big-picture-history/) I just got the thought that politics may dictate a quantification also for the scenaria for nuclear conflict as politically speaking, use of a nuclear weapon by say Russia would be qualitatively different to use by say Pakistan because of (for lack of better words) there’s a ‘hierarchy’ of states judged on their power on the world stage. Something which I think it would be hard for a model to capture. But I may be wrong and you have covered this, and as I said before, I do agree with your conclusions and estimates