The risk is still there. You can talk about economic reasons or MAD all you want, but then some idiot loads a training tape into the live system, or scientists launch a sounding rocket and somebody forgets to tell the early warning people, or a head of state starts going crazy, and suddenly you're one bad decision away from catastrophe.
Some things are much improved since the Cuban Missile Crisis. For example, the US Air Force is no longer eager to wage preemptive nuclear war on our enemies. Some things are much worse, though, such as the transition from bombers to ICBMs, resulting in a need to launch quickly to respond to an attack and an inability to recall a strike, or the change from a bipolar to a multipolar world with multiple conflicting nuclear weapons states.
I think of it in terms of probability per year. The fact that we haven't had a nuclear war yet suggests that this probability isn't super high. 10% would be implausible given history. But 1% is pretty plausible. So is 0.0001%. There's a massive difference between those two probabilities, though! 0.0001% means it probably doesn't matter, and human civilization is very likely to either collapse from some other problem or advance to a point where MAD can't happen long before a nuclear war breaks out. 1% makes it perhaps the most dire threat we face.
I personally think it's closer to 1% than 0.0001%. The systems are error-prone and too many of the people involved are stupid or potentially insane.
>I think of it in terms of probability per year. The fact that we haven't had a nuclear war yet suggests that this probability isn't super high.
This is super misleading reasoning because of anthropic bias. There are many possible Earths. On all the ones were nuclear war happened, we wouldn't be here to observe it. You can only ever observe the "surprising" result that you continue to exist. So you can't use it as evidence in a probability estimate.
We came so close to nuclear war on multiple occasions. The chance can't be that low.
Can we really apply the anthropic principle so narrowly? Are we to conclude that my risk of death when crossing the street could be really high, and I can’t tell anything from the fact that it hasn’t happened because I wouldn’t be around to think about it if it had?
You can look at how often other people are hit by cars. You can also look at "close calls" where you were almost hit but miraculously saved.
But if you have personally walked into traffic without looking hundreds of times, I'd think you are just lucky. And that using your survival as a single data point is just survivorship bias.
Some things are much improved since the Cuban Missile Crisis. For example, the US Air Force is no longer eager to wage preemptive nuclear war on our enemies. Some things are much worse, though, such as the transition from bombers to ICBMs, resulting in a need to launch quickly to respond to an attack and an inability to recall a strike, or the change from a bipolar to a multipolar world with multiple conflicting nuclear weapons states.
I think of it in terms of probability per year. The fact that we haven't had a nuclear war yet suggests that this probability isn't super high. 10% would be implausible given history. But 1% is pretty plausible. So is 0.0001%. There's a massive difference between those two probabilities, though! 0.0001% means it probably doesn't matter, and human civilization is very likely to either collapse from some other problem or advance to a point where MAD can't happen long before a nuclear war breaks out. 1% makes it perhaps the most dire threat we face.
I personally think it's closer to 1% than 0.0001%. The systems are error-prone and too many of the people involved are stupid or potentially insane.