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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

,,AI has limited real world experience or grasp of the consequences.''

People in the world have limited experience about war.

We're living in a world where doing terrible things with 1000 people with photo/video documentation can get more attention then a million people dying, and the response is still not do whatever it takes so that people don't die.

And now we are at a situation where nuclear escalation has already started (New START was not extended).

It would have been the biggest and most concerning news 80 years ago, but not anymore.

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> People in the world have limited experience about war.

Right, but realistically, how many people today would carelessly chose "Nuke em" today? I know history knowledge isn't at its all time high directly, and most of the population is, well, not great at reasoning, but I still think most people would try to do their best to avoid firing nukes.

> but I still think most people would try to do their best to avoid firing nukes.

"most people" are not in the positions that matter. A significant portion of the people who are in a position to advocate for such a decision believe that:

- killing people sends em to heaven/hell where they were going anyway; and that this is also true for any of your own citizens that get killed by a counterstrike.

- the end of the world will be the best day ever

> "most people" are not in the positions that matter

If polling were to reveal a majority of either party were more open to nuclear strikes than their predecessors, that gives policy makers a signal and an opening.

The current administration does not seem to be considering the majority within their own party considering how unpopular the current approach to immigration enforcement is. Or for another example, the glycophosphate/MAHA situation.

There were lots of administrations who could have said to other countries ,,let's get rid of the nukes together'' while USA was the only string power.

Deescalation stopped because of people in general not caring enough (and making money of being the biggest power), not because of administrations that come and go.

As to the immigration situation: we know that governments are not executing in general how they should be, but people are able to enforce some policies if they fight together united and in agreement. But right now they are not in agreement.

> There were lots of administrations who could have said to other countries ,,let's get rid of the nukes together'' while USA was the only string power.

There was only one administration with that opportunity, really; Truman.

Every other administration has had a nuclear armed Russia in play.

Attempts to do what you describe were still quite common, starting as early as the 1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race#Treaties

> current administration does not seem to be considering the majority within their own party considering how unpopular the current approach to immigration enforcement is

55% of Republicans say ICE's efforts are about right; 23% think they don't go far enough [1]. There is limited evidence Trump has lost touch with his supporters on this issue. The question is if this is this GOP's pronoun issue–popular in the base but toxic more broadly.

[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/where-americans-stand-immigratio...

There have always been a handful of Internet Tough Guys saying things on forums like "LOL Nuke them! hur hur hur hur!" Totally disregardable vibes and memes. Now, we have an actual US government administration that is run on the same Tough Guy vibes and memes. I don't think it matters what most people think. The people in power might just do it for the lulz.

And yet the people in positions that matter have not fired a nuke since ending WW2. Even the craziest sounding regimes like Russia and NK.

I think it's a higher number than you would expect. Which, in the context of nukes, is too high a number as long as it's greater than 1.

Carelessly probably not much. Carefully - way more than you imagine.

Deploying nukes and "carefully" are opposite ends of the spectrum.

Not quite. The people that will agree that turning X from urbanized into rural society if they can't strike back is a good idea are not few and far between. Everyone has different view who X are.

The basic game theory of nukes is that either the world is escalating or deescalating, there's no other long term stable agreement.

Maybe people don't agree with ,,nuke them'', but OK with USA starting nuclear experiments again (which USA is preparing for right bow), which is a clear escalation.

Russia is waiting for USA to start the nuclear experiments to start them itself for defending itself to be able to do a counterstrike if needed.

After that there will be no stopping of Japan, South Korea and Iran rightfully wanting to have their own nukes.

You don't have to have the ,,nuke them'' thinking, even one step of escalation is enough to get to a disastrous position.

> After that there will be no stopping of Japan, South Korea and Iran rightfully wanting to have their own nukes.

And I'm afraid they'll be far from the only ones...

I don't really buy the nuclear deterrence thing. Say a country just invested in conventional military and went to war with a nuclear one, maybe even full-on invasion trying to capture it. They really gonna get nuked?

Arab nations did try to capture Israel multiple times, but maybe you don't count this because the war never swayed much in their favor.

On social media, there are many, and this feeds back into training data. Unfortunately.

> And now we are at a situation where nuclear escalation has already started (New START was not extended).

This is a massive understatement. Russia has announced, and probably tested, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik . This is basically Project Pluto reloaded, but now as a Russian instead of a US missile.

I remember reading about Project Pluto some 25 years ago or so. It was terrifying to read about. And now Russia has realized it.

> People in the world have limited experience about war.

Most (but not all) people have empathy, which allows them to understand the harm of their actions even without direct experience.

I don't think I will ever trust that any AI has empathy even if it gives off signals that it does.

I only trust that it exists in people because of my shared experience with their biology.

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