This was the single most valuable piece on the Forum to me personally. It provides the only end-to-end model of risks from nuclear winter that I’ve seen and gave me an understanding of key mechanisms of risks from nuclear weapons. I endorse it as the best starting point I know of for thinking seriously about such mechanisms. I wrote what impressed me most here and my main criticism of the original model here (taken into account in the current version).
This piece is part of a series. I found most articles in the series highly informative, but this particular piece did the most excellent job of improving my understanding of risks from nuclear weapons.
Details that I didn’t cover elsewhere, based on recommended topics for reviewers:
How did this post affect you, your thinking, and your actions?
It was a key part of what caused me to believe that civilisation collapsing everywhere solely due to nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely without a large increase in the number of such weapons. (The model in the post is consistent with meaningful existential risk from nuclear weapons in other ways.)
This has various implications for prioritisation between existential risks and prioritisation within the nuclear weapons space.
Does it make accurate claims? Does it carve reality at the joints? How do you know?
I spent about 2 days going through the 5 posts the author published around that time, comparing them to much rougher models I had made and looking into various details. I was very impressed.
The work that went into the post did the heavy lifting and pointed a way to a better understanding of nuclear risk. The model in the original version of the post was exceptionally concrete and with a low error rate, such that reviewers were able to engage with it to identify the key errors in the original version of the post.
This was the single most valuable piece on the Forum to me personally. It provides the only end-to-end model of risks from nuclear winter that I’ve seen and gave me an understanding of key mechanisms of risks from nuclear weapons. I endorse it as the best starting point I know of for thinking seriously about such mechanisms. I wrote what impressed me most here and my main criticism of the original model here (taken into account in the current version).
This piece is part of a series. I found most articles in the series highly informative, but this particular piece did the most excellent job of improving my understanding of risks from nuclear weapons.
Details that I didn’t cover elsewhere, based on recommended topics for reviewers:
How did this post affect you, your thinking, and your actions?
It was a key part of what caused me to believe that civilisation collapsing everywhere solely due to nuclear weapons is extremely unlikely without a large increase in the number of such weapons. (The model in the post is consistent with meaningful existential risk from nuclear weapons in other ways.)
This has various implications for prioritisation between existential risks and prioritisation within the nuclear weapons space.
Does it make accurate claims? Does it carve reality at the joints? How do you know?
I spent about 2 days going through the 5 posts the author published around that time, comparing them to much rougher models I had made and looking into various details. I was very impressed.
The work that went into the post did the heavy lifting and pointed a way to a better understanding of nuclear risk. The model in the original version of the post was exceptionally concrete and with a low error rate, such that reviewers were able to engage with it to identify the key errors in the original version of the post.