Max Tegmark on why there's now a 1-in-6 chance of an imminent global Nuclear War | Hacker News Reader

Max Tegmark on why there's now a 1-in-6 chance of an imminent global Nuclear War

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14 pointsmemish20 comments

1 in 6 is instantly suspicious to me since it maps cleanly onto the roll of a standard six-sided die. Surely it's just a coincidence that the odds would perfectly map onto a very accessible metaphor for randomness that most laypeople would understand. Plus, given the subject matter, it conjures terrifying images of playing a child's board game where the stakes are the fate of the world. How convenient for fear mongers! The headlines and stock art hero images practically create themselves!

If you think a little further you'll realize that any precision between 1 in 6 and 1 in 5 or 1 in 7 would be pointless, so your argument is complete nonsense.

Notice anything else unusual about the numbers in his graph? Tegmark is presenting his opinion as scientific fact by making up a flow chart and assigning some numbers to each branch that have been pulled out of thin air.

This guy has every right to shout his opinion into the void. That's the double-edged blade of Twitter. But trying to claim your opinion is objective fact by saying "it's science" like Ron Burgundy makes him look awfully dishonest.

I know that's what he's doing because you can't bullshit a bullshitter. I used to do this same nonsense when I was in middle school and I thought I was smarter than everyone else. But I grew up.

If you try to forecast the future or gauge risks as a professional responsibility, it is reasonable to create a model to reflect the contingencies in your analysis to reflect an overall likelihood number. Tegmark is not claiming his opinion is fact because of his diagram/model, he is openly putting his mental model of contingencies out there for inspection and critique. You are welcome then to critique either the model or the percentages in the model or both, which is slightly more helpful for discussion than arguing about some overall risk number since it allows you to disagree and identify more specific areas of weakness in the analysis.

Your claim that Tegmark is treating this as fact is not supported by the evidence I see in his lesswrong article (note: not a scientific publication) where he is asking others which percentages in his model they disagree with; that is not the behavior of someone claiming his assumptions/conclusions are a fact.

You yourself are being sloppy with the truth. The numbers on the graph are made up? Agreed. Out of thin air? No, RTFA. Non-authoritative? Agreed. Tegmark is presenting his opinion as scientific fact? What are you smoking? Quit projecting your teenage self onto Tegmark.

Tegmark is a skilled cosmologist/physicist/mathmetician who has turned his area of research to covering nuclear and AI risk in the last decade. He might be wrong, but he is not dumb and he is not just posing as an intellectual; he is one. I saw talks with him discussing nuclear risks pre-Ukraine.

Tegmark just made up some numbers. It's laughable.

There is something seriously wrong with the Physics department at MIT. Tegmark isn't the only charlatan with tenure in that place.

Chatted with him at a party.. he does have that vapid Hollywood angle down (which Elon aspires to as well it seems).

Who are the other ones? XG Wen, Marin Soljacic? I haven't met them, just that their publicized results in my opinion are more flash than substance, like Tegmark's. And generally not really taken up by other people.

Tegmark and Musk are both dumb people posing as intellectuals, but they are always in it for the attention, that's why their opinions are so out there. Tegmark totally didn't make up the one-in-six chance because it sounds scary.

You can't de-escalate a bully, let alone a madman by appeasing him. It's just not how it works, but these two geniuses always know everything better. WW3 alert my ass, that's what Putin wants you to be, scared. But we are not scared, even if the worst happens we are ready for it. It's Putin who should be scared, he is surrounded by enemies, just about everyone around him is waiting for him to be put down, they might even end up doing it themselves if he keeps this up. So far the Russians proved to be adequately level-headed and responsible when it comes to avoiding nuclear war, which probably only be nuclear on their side, because we have better tools in our arsenal that can be used to take them out.

Putin might copy Nixon:

https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/nixons-madman-theory...

I have no clue who Tegmark is but it's pretty indefensible calling Musk dumb. Immature, Immoral, Out of touch? Sure. But not dumb.

Everybody is dumb some of the time. Some more than others but nobody is perfect in all spheres of life.

> Everybody is dumb some of the time.

Says the liar[0]!

[0] Everybody is lying some of the time. Some more than others but nobody is perfectly truthful all the time.

> Everybody is lying some of the time. Some more than others but nobody is perfectly truthful all the time.

True!

I don't know if Musk is dumb, but he certainly says a lot of very dumb things, and places himself in many situation that I would attribute to something akin to that. News about Musk these days is "well, what new dumb thing did he tweet this time? Or rather, I'll just pass".

> even if the worst happens we are ready for it.

Speak for yourself.

I support Ukraine. But I hope our leaders will have the sense to abandon them and negotiate *if the alternative is nuclear war.*

It's not a black and white situation. The nuclear war is always an alternative to something, but also you can't just give up because it's mentioned. Otherwise it with be "Crimea or nuclear war", "Ukraine or nuclear war", "Poland or nuclear war", "Germany or nuclear war", ...

Original post is discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33138744

Just a couple of paragraphs and then a dialog asking me to create a Twitter account.

> Moreover, there is a near-consensus in mainstream Western media and policy circles against peace negotiations, exemplified by e.g. the hostile response to Elon Musk's recent suggestion of a peace deal.

Is he intentionally misconstruing "peace deal" to mean handing chunks of Ukraine over to Russia and caving to their demands?

Why are smart people saying such dumb things on this topic? Just for attention?

He's not misconstruing anything. Peace talks will involve compromise. Nobody said it won't.

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