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Nuclear weapons are a huge net positive for humanity. Have we had another big industrial war since WWII? No. Why not? Because the combatants understand that nowadays total war means total annihilation. Now we resolve our disputes in other ways. Nuclear weapons gave us an age of peace.



There’s a survivorship bias here. If nuclear weapons did totally annihilate society we could not have this conversation.


Their point is that anyone who can develop a nuclear weapon also is aware of this. It might be a survivorship bias, but it is also self-fulfilling.

The biggest threat, as I can see it, is a truly irrational actor. Luckily they're hard enough to build that this prerequisite has so far filtered out anyone truly irrational.




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