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Comment by mitthrowaway2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not so sure. My parents were born well after the hydrogen bomb was developed, and they were never comfortable with it.

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> My parents were born well after the hydrogen bomb was developed, and they were never comfortable with it

The nuclear peace is hard to pin down. But given the history of the 20th century, I find it difficult to imagine we wouldn't have seen WWIII in Europe and Asia without the nuclear deterrent. Also, while your parents may have been uncomfortable with the hydrogen bomb, the post-90s world hasn't particularly been characterised by mass nuclear anxiety. (Possibly to a fault.)

You might have missed the cold war in your summary. Mass nuclear anxiety really characterized that era, with a number of near misses that could have ended in global annihilation (and that’s no exaggeration).

IMO, the Atoms for Peace propaganda undersells how successful globalization has been at keeping nations from destroying each other by creating codependence on complex supply chains. The new shift to protectionism may see an end to that

The supply chain argument was also made wrt European countries just before WW1. It wasn't even wrong - economically, it was as devastating as predicted for everyone involved, with no real winners - but that didn't preclude the war.

The scale of globalization post-WW2 puts it on a whole other level. The complexity of supply chains now are such that any country would grind to a halt without imports. The exception here, to some degree, is China, but so far they've been more interested in soft power over military, and that strategy has served them well. Though it seems the US are gearing up for a fight with a fully domestic manufacturing capability and natural resource pools of its own. It would require consistent protectionist policy over multiple administrations to pull something like that off, so it remains to be seen if that's truly possible.

Yeah, let's just ignore all the wars and genocides that nuclear powers engaged in and supported and all nuclear powers that are constantly at war or engaging in occupation of others since they started existing and millions of dead and affected people.

Nice "peace".

We had 100 years of such kind of peace among major europe powers before nuclear weapons. We're not even at 80 years of peace in nuclear age, this time, and nuclear armed power is already attacking from the east and from inside via new media.

I wouldn't call it done and clear, about the "nuclear age peace".

There are always a few things that people don't like. However your parents likely are comfortable with a lot of things that their parents were not.

Exceptions to rules exist, especially if you’re trying to think of a really extreme cases that specifically invalidate it.

However, that really doesn’t invalidate the rule.

That's true, but I think AI may be enough of a disruption to qualify. We'll of course have to wait and see what the next generation thinks, but they might end up envious of us, looking back with rose-tinted glasses on a simpler time when people could trust photographic evidence from around the world, and interact with each other anonymously online without wondering if they were talking to an astroturf advertising bot.

Would they prefer that only USSR had an H-bomb, but not USA?

Do two wrongs make a right?

That's not the point, GP is pointing out how we only control (at least theoretically, lol) our own government, and basic game theory can tell you that countries that adopt pacifist ideas and refuse to pursue anything that might be dangerous will always at some point be easily defeated by others who are less moral.

The point is that it's complicated, it's not a black and white sound bite like the people who are "against nuclear weapons" pretend it is.

And people don't have to feel comfortable with complicated things. The GP posted "would you prefer" as a disingenous point to invalidate the commenter's parents' feelings.

I eat meat. I know some vegans feel uncomfortable with that. But personally I feel secure in my own convictions that I don't need to run around insinuating vegans are less than or whatever.

Your survival doesn't depend on the amount of meat you consume.

Your survival also doesn’t depend on somebody’s discomfort or comfort with nuclear weapons, either. What’s the point of thought policing?

With enough anti-military, anti-nuclear, anti-whatever-looks-scary-to-them people we'll stand with our pants down, just like EU or Canada these days. There was a lot of activism during the Cold war of that kind, lucky for US there weren't enough "discomforted" people back then.

Three rights make a left.

I don't think that's the nature of the argument that I was responding to.

So what? Would they?

Nuclear arms races are a form of multipolar trap, and like any multipolar trap, you are compelled to keep up, making your own life worse, even while wishing that you and your opponent could cooperatively escape the trap.

The discussion I was responding to is whether the next generation would grow up seeing pervasive AI as a normal and good thing, as is often the case with new technology. I cited nuclear weapons as a counterexample, while I agree that nobody felt that they had a choice but to keep up with them.

AI could similarly be a multipolar trap ("nobody likes it but we aren't going to accept an AI gap with Russia!"), which would mean it has that in common with nuclear weapons, strengthening the argument against the next generation being comfortable with AI.

You don't need that much warheads to saturate your military needs. Number of possible targets is limited, in older plans there was clearly absurd overkill when a few nukes were assigned to a single target.

Also, nukes don't write code or wash your dishes, it's nothing but liability for a society.

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