I would be curious to know whether you have any thoughts my analysis on the chance of a war causing human extinction.
Historical annual war deaths of combatants suggest the annual probability of a war causing human extinction is astronomically low once again. 6.36*10^-14 according to my preferred estimate, although it is not resilient, and can easily be wrong by many orders of magnitude (OOMs).
I used data from 1816 to 2014, thus arguably accomodating your contention the destructiveness of the most destructive conflicts is increasing. However, this is not clear to me. Eyeballing the red line of OWID’s graph, which is below, the maximum death rate in a 15 year period each century:
Increased 3 centuries, from the 15th to the 16th, the 16th to the 17th, and the 19th to the 20th.
Decreased 2 centuries, from the 17th to the 18th, and the 18th to the 19th.
I very much think one would not find a clear trend running a statistical analysis. My understanding is that, since the death rate is heavy-tailed, just a slight appearance of increase of worst case outcomes is not enough to confidently establish a trend. Relatedly, it is also difficult to establish a clear trend towards piece based on the absence of large conflicts since WW2. Clauset 2018says:
Using the empirical distributions of interstate war sizes and onset times from 1823 to 2003, we parameterize stationary models of conflict generation that can distinguish trends from statistical fluctuations in the statistics of war. These models indicate that both the long peace and the period of great violence that preceded it are not statistically uncommon patterns in realistic but stationary conflict time series. This fact does not detract from the importance of the long peace or the proposed mechanisms that explain it. However, the models indicate that the postwar pattern of peace would need to endure at least another 100 to 140 years to become a statistically significant trend.
I’m sorry for not getting around to responding to this, and may not be able to for some time. But I wanted to quickly let you know that I appreciated both this comment and your post, and both updated me significantly toward your position and away from my Reason 4.
I consider grantmakers and donors interested in decreasing extinction risk had better focus on artificial intelligence (AI) instead of nuclear war (more).
I would say the case for sometimes prioritising nuclear extinction risk over AI extinction risk is much weaker than the case for sometimes prioritising natural extinction risk over nuclear extinction risk (more).
I get a sense the extinction risk from nuclear war was massively overestimated in The Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT) (more).
I have the impression Toby Ord greatly overestimated tail risk in The Precipice (more).
I believe interventions to decrease deaths from nuclear war should be assessed based on standard cost-benefit analysis (more).
I think increasing calorie production via new food sectors is less cost-effective to save lives than measures targeting distribution (more).
Nice piece, Cullen!
I would be curious to know whether you have any thoughts my analysis on the chance of a war causing human extinction.
I used data from 1816 to 2014, thus arguably accomodating your contention the destructiveness of the most destructive conflicts is increasing. However, this is not clear to me. Eyeballing the red line of OWID’s graph, which is below, the maximum death rate in a 15 year period each century:
Increased 3 centuries, from the 15th to the 16th, the 16th to the 17th, and the 19th to the 20th.
Decreased 2 centuries, from the 17th to the 18th, and the 18th to the 19th.
I very much think one would not find a clear trend running a statistical analysis. My understanding is that, since the death rate is heavy-tailed, just a slight appearance of increase of worst case outcomes is not enough to confidently establish a trend. Relatedly, it is also difficult to establish a clear trend towards piece based on the absence of large conflicts since WW2. Clauset 2018 says:
I’m sorry for not getting around to responding to this, and may not be able to for some time. But I wanted to quickly let you know that I appreciated both this comment and your post, and both updated me significantly toward your position and away from my Reason 4.
Thanks for the update, Cullen! Relatedly, you may want to check my post on Nuclear war tail risk has been exaggerated?.