Nuclear problem

eheathWe need to transform all of the nukes in the world into power plants, easy solution to war and climate change.

700billionNuclear war is imminent. In a poll of experts at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference in Oxford (17–20 July 2008), the Future of Humanity Institute estimated the probability of complete human extinction by nuclear weapons at 1% within the century. Being that a century is 100 years- this means nuclear war will happen within the century (like given the timeframe the probability of nuclear war is actually 100% lol). The UN agrees no nuclear power can win a nuclear war so like what's the point anyways lol. China, US, and Russia all have the nuclear power to end life on Earth. If say Russia bombed, and the US retaliated- where the hell would it end?

So long as countries continue to resort to war, and continue to sustain their nuclear power, we will have a nuclear war, and most likely in our lifetime. Sweet deal yo

I'm pretty fucking concerned about this Russia-Ukraine conflict. And Russia is scheduling nuclear drills for tomorrow.. Like seriously why? You can't fucking win with nuclear. the world is too far gone. at least if it was gonna end with climate change id be able to live to like 60 or some shit god damn

**This thread was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 8:44:23am

**This thread was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 8:45:48am

r00kieIf this how math works now I'm buying lotto tickets this afternoon.

abcdefuthis is in fact how probability works when you put probability in relation to a specific timeline yes. and in the case of nuclear war, it does not make sense to say that it has probability without attaching a timeline.

in the case of the lotto, youre gonna run out of money before you win. or time

**This post was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 2:58:03pm

eheathAccording to your post, "the probability of complete human extinction by nuclear weapons at 1% within the century"

and that this means "Being that a century is 100 years- this means nuclear war will happen within the century"

Like I think you made an honest mistake here, but that is a very inaccurate conclusion.

abcdefuoh yeah hahhahahah well we can expect it in 10,000 years then were chilling sort of my bad still very concerned about this Russia predicament

**This post was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 3:03:27pm

eheathI mean thats not how probability works either, it doesn't just add up % chance every year until its 100%.

Dustin.1% chance of war in the century does not mean you simply add up 1% one hundred times to reach virtual certainty. It means they gave it the lowest measurable likelihood that wasn't zero. In addition, that conference you cited was just two dudes at Oxford asking people what their opinion was. It is a collection of guesses, not research. Put the pandemic and nuclear war numbers side by side and you'll begin to wonder who thought these things were of such similar likelihood.

I would contest that between states, real nuclear war as we know it is beyond unlikely in the 21st century. Nuclear weapons are a badge of power and influence, but no one has anything to gain by using them.

Good job looking into something that concerns you, but realize how easy it is to create content and appear authoritative in the internet era. It takes a decent bit of work to decipher what news is worth reading, "studies" require a lot of leg work to sort as well. Don't let sensationalism scare you into fits.

As for Ukraine, I think it's gonna happen. I don't think anyone is going to do anything about it. And I personally don't think it's all that surprising based on what I've been studying the last couple years. The only thing Russia has needed to wait for is an environment that allowed them to move without being challenged. The EU has several large players that are highly dependent on Russian energy, and the Biden administration can't go 24 hours without stepping on their own dicks. Unfortunately, if now isn't the time, I don't know what is.

LonelyBrother a percentage like that is not just a number that you can multiply or add to the time to get a date when something happens. That's not how probability works.

Did they remove math from the curriculum in public schools? Yeesh

But as far as nuclear war goes, we are always at the precipice simply because nuclear ibms exist. That doesn't mean it's going to happen, or that it's even likely to happen, but we are absolutely on a precipice. This is inherent to the fact that they exist.

But if you're interested in it, read up on tit for tat and some of the close calls. Interesting stuff.



https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/Bunn_Tit-for-tat.pdf

abcdefuThe probability thing was really just for shits. I’m not an expert. But if you take the point in time the probability is estimated and fix it to a timeline, why wouldn’t probability increase over time line?

abcdefuCan you just explain to me how if a probability of nuclear war is estimated at a point in time, why you can’t fix that probability to a timeline so it would increase over time?

because in the case estimating probability of nuclear war- finding the probability is concerned with event occurring over time so I think it would make sense to fix a timeline.

I was thinking about it like with lotto tix, the more you buy the higher probability of winning.

and judging probability of an event occurring within a fixed timeframe- the more days go by the higher probability of event occurring.

I don’t understand why it doesn’t work this way, but I’m interested to learn

**This post was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 4:06:28pm

abcdefuThe probability thing was really just for shits. I’m not an expert. But if you take the point in time the probability is estimated and fix it to a timeline, why wouldn’t probability increase over time line?

byuboundWorks this way:
If there is a 1% of it happening in this century (This is a very very rough estimate), there is a 99% chance it doesn't happen. We can then multiply this by the timeline: Say 10 100 year periods or 1000 years. We can do .99^10 to get the probability it does not happen, .90. Then 1-.9=.1. 10% chance that there is a complete human extinction due to nuclear holocaust in 1000 years. Your mistake is assuming that you can just add probability year to year, but really because every year is independent of the next you can't just add things up. You're right that the probability increases with more time, but not nearly at the rate you have proposed.

**This post was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 4:13:55pm

LonelyProbability isn't a coefficient it's a solution.

I mean, that's not really true, but I think you are looking at this as an equation something like 1(x)=probability with 1 being the percentage and x being the time. So if I say there is a 1% chance of something happening within 100 days, at day 99 the probability would be 99%....which is incorrect.

We say that in a coin flip there is a 50% probability of landing on either heads or tails. You could flip it 10 times and only get heads, which wouldn't make much sense looking at it through the lense you are. It should only be 5 times, right? It's not a coefficient so it's not. Now, if you were to flip a coin a hundred billion times you would notice that the sets of 10 would still be inconsistent, but as a whole group, they slowly approach 50% heads 50% tails. If you were to flip it an infinite amount of times it would continue to approach 50%, so there is utility in saying there is a 50% chance, but that 50% chance also doesn't mean much. Hence the gambler's dilemma.

If you land on red 10 times, you'd think that it would be almost guaranteed to be black the next time. But the real world doesn't care and you have the same likelihood of landing on red as you do on black. Nothing that has happened previously affects it.

Probability works best in big numbers and is almost never an absolute outside of some stupid mathematical proofs.

**This post was edited on Feb 18th 2022 at 4:07:33pm

LonelyNot sure if it does increase with time though. I'm not sure what they used to reach that timescale and percentage, but hypothetically, if all things are held equal, then the probability should not increase just because times is passing.

I'd imagine that they have some adjustment for this, like "people are getting more polarized every year" or something like that to play in as a variable to the equation that would cause an increase in the probability.

Dustin.1% chance of war in the century does not mean you simply add up 1% one hundred times to reach virtual certainty. It means they gave it the lowest measurable likelihood that wasn't zero. In addition, that conference you cited was just two dudes at Oxford asking people what their opinion was. It is a collection of guesses, not research. Put the pandemic and nuclear war numbers side by side and you'll begin to wonder who thought these things were of such similar likelihood.

I would contest that between states, real nuclear war as we know it is beyond unlikely in the 21st century. Nuclear weapons are a badge of power and influence, but no one has anything to gain by using them.

Good job looking into something that concerns you, but realize how easy it is to create content and appear authoritative in the internet era. It takes a decent bit of work to decipher what news is worth reading, "studies" require a lot of leg work to sort as well. Don't let sensationalism scare you into fits.

As for Ukraine, I think it's gonna happen. I don't think anyone is going to do anything about it. And I personally don't think it's all that surprising based on what I've been studying the last couple years. The only thing Russia has needed to wait for is an environment that allowed them to move without being challenged. The EU has several large players that are highly dependent on Russian energy, and the Biden administration can't go 24 hours without stepping on their own dicks. Unfortunately, if now isn't the time, I don't know what is.

abcdefuMy understanding is it makes sense probability would increase over time if you fix it to a timeframe and the point in time it was estimated. If it’s not fixed to a timeframe from the point it’s estimated then probability would remain static. You know a lot more about math than me though.

LonelyNot sure if it does increase with time though. I'm not sure what they used to reach that timescale and percentage, but hypothetically, if all things are held equal, then the probability should not increase just because times is passing.

I'd imagine that they have some adjustment for this, like "people are getting more polarized every year" or something like that to play in as a variable to the equation that would cause an increase in the probability.

SuspiciousFishThere was actually a nuclear exchange back in 1978 but aliens zapped the missiles and Russia and US governments figured it was better than total annihilation agreed to never talk about it.

CrunnchyPissFartbars, we also need to oust old white men from power and replace them with young leaders who are competent in not making meat brained decisions to fuck up the future that the old farts who dont give a fuck about what happens to the world that they maybe have 5-20 years left in

byuboundThe probability of it happening in each 100 year period does not increase, you are correct there. The probability of an event happening at least once does increase if you increase the time period does though.

Take the coin flip example:

I flip a coin once, the probability of hitting heads once is 50%.

I flip the same coin once, the probability of hitting heads is still 50%.

If I flip one coin twice, the probability of hitting heads at least once is

1-.5^2 = .75.

This means if I were to flip a coin in sets of two a large number of times, the number of sets where I hit heads at least once is going to be roughly 75% of the total number of sets of two flips I did.

byuboundYo I was thinking about this again and I have a correction to make to my math.

So this math works for the cumulative probability of independent events like coin flips.

For two flips:
1-.5^2=.75

and the possible outcomes:
HT
HH
TH
TT

3 of the 4 have at least one head, so .75.


However, what happens if the outcome 'heads' would terminate the test, such as in the OP where you could not have two extinction of mankind events in a row?

Your possible outcomes for two coin flips would become
H
TH
TT

So .67.

For three coin flips we go from:
1-.5^3= .875

Demonstrated in the outcomes
HHH
HHT
HTH
HTT
THH
THT
TTH
TTT

7/8=.875

To:

H
TH
TTH
TTT

3/4=.75

And for 4 iterations

H
TH
TTH
TTTH
TTTT

4/5=.8

vs.

1-.5^4=.9375.

Here's where we get beyond my knowledge of statistics though:
For the regular cumulative probability of independent events described in OP,
1-.99^10=.0956 chance of an event that has a 1% chance of occurring in 100 years happens in 1000 years. Does anybody know how to apply the second case (Positive outcome causes a termination of the test) to a probability that isn't 50%? I guess you could write a script to solve it but I'm curious if there is a symbolic solution.

DrZoidbergThat's not how stats work, as others have pointed out. But to assign a number to nuclear war is pretty silly. It's not a game of chance or otherwise under probabilistic control.

VTshredder69Nice try but we already have the equivalent of a toddler in the White House and look how thats working out.