Hacker News Reader

Comment by sugarpile | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see how pushing for a strategy that, from a game theory point of view, was sound makes him a lunatic.

Plenty of people don't view the preservation of life as the be all end all and if that strategy had been followed and it had led to a world where only the United States had ever been allowed to develop nuclear weapons I see a very easy argument for it being the more long-term humane option.

Edit: who's more of a lunatic: the man who presses a button that kills a million people and saves a billion or the man that doesn't? I'd argue the latter.

View on HN

It's a lunatic position. Consider the die-hard environmental activist who decides the best way to save the planet is to create a collection of deadly infectious pathogens, distribute them to every major city on the planet, and so reduce the human population by 75%, creating a glorious utopia for everyone to enjoy.

Several books and movies have employed this plot, 'Cobra Event' comes to mind.

Consider the psychology of the megalomaniacal individual who knows what's best for everyone based on their own personal views and experiences, who takes no input from anyone else, because everyone else in the room is an idiot who doesn't understand the genius of their position...

This might lead to arguments like "who's more of a lunatic, the woman who releases the virus that ends the insane human population explosion on Planet Earth, or the woman who doesn't? I'd argue the latter."

To quote William Gibson, roughly: "It's like they're all running around with luminous messages scrawled on the inside of their foreheads."

If your goal is preservation of Earth and not the human species then yes, that may be a sound action.

> who knows what's best for everyone based on their own personal views and experiences, who takes no input from anyone else, because everyone else in the room is an idiot who doesn't understand the genius of their position...

We're talking about von Neuman here. If I was to find myself in conflict with an assessment of his I would default to assuming I was likely wrong. From a statistical point of view anyone who wouldn't do the same is wrong to do so and ego, personality, or some other "thing" is likely getting in their way. It's not a big deal to cede to him imo.

To summarize my point, being a brilliant physicist and mathematician in no way qualifies one as a brilliant diplomat or foreign policy strategist. Would you want John von Neumann to do brain surgery on you, for example?

Is there a Kickstarter for that project? Asking for a friend.

I imagine once we start seeing serious migration levels due to global warming, some idiot genius will come up with something.

On some days, I look up at the stars and think "You know it's shit like this, why we don't have alien visitors. Intelligence is apparently a dead-end evolutionary tree."

I hope I'm wrong about that.

The Cobra Event was buried and lost by having a title not unlike 500 other novels by more recognizable authors like Ludlum, Clancy, etc. Too bad too, because it's a great read.

How long will that plot really be fiction?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cobra_Event

Good thing we were able to avoid billions of deaths without nuking every major USSR city?

And should nuclear war ever occur? ~70 years is a relatively short time frame. Check back with me in another 200 and let me know if your comment still holds.

Is your theory that nuking the USSR would have completely prevented nuclear proliferation for at least two centuries? That no other nation would have developed nukes in secret, or stolen some from the USA? Or is your theory that nuking China, India, Pakistan, France, Israel, etc., as soon as they started to get nuclear weapons would still be worth it?

If you're saying global thermonuclear war is a bigger risk than we tend to think, e.g. because of anthropic shadow effects, I agree. But I still don't think there's positive expected value in a pre-emptive all-out nuclear attack.

Yes. But it was a goddamned miracle. You can't read about Petrov and Arkhipov and tell me von Neumann was wrong.

There's a great analytical paper explaining why game theory fails: It's because humans aren't perfectly rational agents.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/5/1/53/htm

>Edit: who's more of a lunatic: the man who presses a button that kills a million people and saves a billion or the man that doesn't? I'd argue the latter.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would agree

"World domination through genocide is good, actually."

Well that's a strawman. That is not a belief I hold and no where did I claim or imply I did. There's nothing in my comment, or in von Neuman's stance that I'm aware of that, that endorses world domination. I also don't see any reason to evoke the emotions associated with the word genocide either...

What I believe is that preventing development and possession of nuclear weapons by other nations would very likely lead to less deaths over time than nuking Russia would have. Are you really not concerned that we as a species may eventually wipe ourselves out? I am.

You are advocating for a United States hegemony via a monopoly on nuclear weapons, maintained by nuclear first strikes on the population centers of any other nation which might develop them. Is that an inaccurate summary?

"Genocide is good actually, even if you don't aim for world domination." And it is genocide, no different then any other genocide in history.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com