[benreesman]

I mean, all that game theory that the RAND corporation (and whatever their Soviet counterparts were called) seems to have worked out so far.

I think you’d need some pretty well-qualified people to crunch the numbers before just, winging it with something different. Given the stakes and all.

[sneak]

It worked out only because Stanislav Petrov decided to ignore it all and violate orders.

[RhodesianHunter]

Which is kind of the point. Everyone involved in the process from the leader at the top making the call, to the individuals manning the silos, has to make a conscious decision to end the world.

[sneak]

No, the point of mutually assured destruction is to ensure that retaliation is credible and even perhaps automated.

You seem to have it backwards. The only reason we are alive is because the designed system that was built failed following a computer error. The point was to respond.

[pfdietz]

It's observer selection bias. We're preferentially in a universe where global nuclear war didn't happen.