Research Associate @ Odyssean Institute
Community Organiser @ Effective Geoscientists
I used to work as a ESG Data Scientist
My academic background lies in urban remote sensing, CNN application in remote sensing, and geostatistics. I aim to specialise in data pipeline engineering, management, architectures. When I’m distracted, I enjoy a board range of other topics from philosophy to anthropology to various languages. Outside my professional life, I like to climb, travel, cook, and secretly write more code.
I hope to marry Earth Observation, geospatial tech, and other alternative data with traditional professional services to tackle challenges in global development and catastrophic resilience.
I understand the desire to use cumulative probability to calculate probability of nuclear war before 2050, but if interdependency of base rate was not used (i.e. 0.0127 * 26 = 0.33, which is equivalent to metaculus), shouldn’t we already use a Beta conjugation of the base rate as each year pass-by?
- If detonation does not happen, Beta(1, 79)
- If detonation happen, Beta(2, 79)
- annual probability = 0.0127
- Cumulative probability of 21.843% by 2050
I saw you use Beta distribution for the CDF constraint the probability of a large nuclear war, defined using the metaculus question, I agree with this, I think this checks-out. I also like that you give less weighting to the metaculus question that ask for probability distribution as it will be less accurate than taking the Beta distribution of 100 to 1000, I learnt something about how to evaluate metaculus question here:
There seems to be 2 set of questions regarding nuclear impact and winter:
- The Nuclear Risk Horizon Project (no monetary incentive)
- Nuclear Risk Tournament ($ 2685.5 reward, and ends on 1st Feb 2024)
I wan to understand how do you calibrate the monetary incentive and limited time frame when weighing the 2 sets of questions for your research?
For example contrasting these 2 questions, which you have addressed in your post:
How many nuclear weapons will be detonated offensively by 2050, if at least one offensive detonation occurs? [HORIZON, non-monetary]
How many non-strategic nuclear weapons will be deployed at the end of 2023? (No recency weighted)? [TOURNAMENT, monetary]
The deployment mean is an orders of magnitude higher than predicted detonation. Surely, even 100 weapons is a very contained regional war scenario according to Hochmann et al (2021). And a very constrained exchange between Russia/China and NATO. I would think that the former question and prediction unrealistically low given how many test just NK have conducted recently. I think you have adequately modelled that with your beta-distribution, but that will be 3x higher than the latter question unweighted results which is about 112 at median, and 161 weapons at the 75th percentile (11 Tg soot), and the 95th percentile of your calculation of 1.81k is 3x the latter question’s distribution, do you think there’s a need to reconcile that?.
How do you feel about taking expected value of such numbers https://www.metaculus.com/questions/8382/1000-nuke-detonations-cause-4b-deaths/ (4 Bil * 0.45) when this seems so far lower than numbers proposed by more sophisticated modelling, esp the Rutgers Team. I am generally going on the heuristic on prediction market probably have an upper hand in counting weapons and predicting deployment and number and location of detonation, but not on long drag-out nuclear winter affects (crop yield, trade, famine numbers).
I still need time to engage with the soot calculation literature, so I will probably write a follow-up on that later next week or the week after if that’s okay, that will give me much more focus on asking the right questions and doing the right research.