[sandworm101]

On an individual level, we all have a variety of hammers over our heads. Cancer has killed far more people prematurely than nuclear weapons. Something like 500,000 people a year are murdered. Traffic/bicycle/pedestrian accidents also kill more than nuclear weapons. Even compared to a once-in-a-century nuclear war that perhaps kills a billion people, cancer will kill roughly a billion in the next century anyway. So, for the rational/selfish person, the nuclear threat isn't worth worrying about.

[squigz]

I'd like to think of myself as a rational person, yet I worry about it. Because it's not just a matter of math; the effects of a billion people dying at once would be far more detrimental than the deaths from cancer over a century.

(One might think this line of reasoning that some people apply is a coping mechanism to ignore the reality, but that might be a different conversation)

[timeon]

But it is not just about coping. We as society, can make policies to decrease chance of getting a cancer and decrease traffic deaths. We just chose not to out of convenience and profit.

[w0m]

it's easier to ignore 100 papercuts than it is to ignore missing a hand.

[valval]

Your analogy makes no sense whatsoever. More mundane causes of death aren’t paper cuts, and nuclear war isn’t losing a hand.

[squigz]

It makes sense to me. You understand it's not meant to be taken literally, right?

[mensetmanusman]

Not really, we all eventually die. No need to worry about how you will die past 70.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

If I fall 1 feet one hundred times, I'll probably be Ok

If I fall 100 feet once, I won't.

1m people dying in 1 day is not the same as 1M people dying over a decade.

Also. People generally dont fear death itself. This is expressed by people in pallitative care. Its the chaos and uncertainty preceding death that is really feared

[wang_li]

If that one million people dying is followed by 3649 days of no one dying from that cause, yes it is.

[kortilla]

No, abrupt deaths are much more disruptive to society

[specialist]

Does your risk assessment methodology also account for near misses? Agency? Morality? Source of risk? Costs of mitigation? Benefits? Something like actuary tables?

Mitigation of bike and pedestrian deaths is cheap. Just reform land use, advantage people over vehicles. Oops, now you're into culture and values.

Mitigation of cancer deaths is very expensive. Though we didn't invent cancer, we feel the moral imperative to "cure" it. And yet, while we're mitigating it, we're also making it worse. Cross purposes. What's your balance sheet for this conundrum?

Drugs kill lots of people. We own that one, right? How's the War on Drugs working out?

In conclusion, I wish I could wave away these dilemmas with a cute nominator and denominator. But I can barely reason about them before my head explodes. So I'm not buying what you're selling. Life's a bit more complicated, a bit more empirical, a bit less rational, than your tidy equations.

[brightball]

I think for a lot of people, myself included, you try not to worry about things you can't control.

"Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. Write that down." - Van Wilder

[jszymborski]

While this apathy is an important coping mechanism to some degree, it's important not to become complacent. It's precisely this apathy and hopelessness that authoritarian regimes cultivate to prevent action.

[dfxm12]

I don't think this registers as apathy in this context. Maybe you live in a country that has nuclear weapons and can vote for one leader or another. This may or may not have some impact on things. Certainly, we cannot influence what other countries do with their arsenals. Our mental stacks can only run so deep & I'd wager for most of us, the things that are in our sphere of influence simply take priority.

[jszymborski]

> This may or may not have some impact on things. Certainly, we cannot influence what other countries do with their arsenals.

It demonstrably does. Nuclear arms reduction treaties have been enacted in the past and it is hard to believe that it would have happened without the popular support it enjoyed.

Just because we are at a time in history where many of those treatise have been weakened or left by the wayside shouldn't be a reason for us to forget them and the good they did.

> Our mental stacks can only run so deep & I'd wager for most of us, the things that are in our sphere of influence simply take priority.

It's a challenge to look beyond ourselves, but we must have the courage to do so. Many people here have the resources to act in the interest of their family, their neighborhood, their community, and their country. It's hard not to be selfish. We can't all afford not to be. Most of us can, however.

[mistermann]

This makes it sound like regimes like ours necessarily do not also engage in it, which seems "a bit off" to me.

[jszymborski]

I'm not sure what you mean by "ours" as this is the internet, but yes, to the extent that there are authoritarian elements in every government, most governments do this to some degree. It's important to fight against these authoritarian elements as best as one can, especially if you are in a position of influence.

It's also important, however, not to equivocate between totalitarian regimes like Russia and (albeit imperfectly) open democracies like the USA in instances like this. Just because no government is without sin does not mean they are all the same.

[mistermann]

And just because you believe that yours is better (as most of your countrymen do, purely by coincidence) does not mean that it is necessarily true.

Humans love telling stories about the superiority of this or that. Humans hate wondering if these stories are true. Most cannot even try.

[mistermann]

Most people also don't worry about whether what they think they have no control over is actually true.

[js8]

Rocking chair is better than worrying, because rocking chair at least calms your anxiety.

[klibertp]

Cancer isn't something that humans develop and control. It's also very unlikely to kill 20-year-olds. On the other hand, it's almost guaranteed if you happen to live long enough. Finally, getting cancer doesn't mean that everybody around you also gets one. Getting hit by a nuke is something that is totally under human control, it's not going to discriminate by age or gender, and is likely to wipe out most of the humans you care about along with you.

A better comparison would be climate change vs nukes. If you have the time to worry about the former, you should also worry about the latter since if the nukes go off, we won't even get a chance to get killed by the environment.

[LeifCarrotson]

Worry is unproductive in the sense of feeling anxiety, sure, but it's noble to worry at the various hammers in the archaic definition to "move, proceed, or progress by unceasing or difficult effort, to shake or pull at with the teeth."

Some of the hammers such as the hammer representing nuclear weapons - are caused by people and can be solved by people. There's a big game theoretic hill to climb over, but social pressure and advocacy have been effective at making progress. Others, like cancer and general senescence, are more of a looming threat that's a fundamental characteristic of biology, we can (and should) worry at them to make incremental progress but we're unlikely to suddenly eliminate them. The murder rate is enormously dependent on individual location and individual relationships. Traffic/bicycle/pedestrian accidents are enormously dependent on individual behavior.

Of those threats, addressing the problem of nuclear weapons - especially for a member of Nihon Hidankyo, with a personal and persuasive story of the damages these weapons caused - is probably near the top of the list for actions which can have the greatest positive change.

[w4]

> So, for the rational/selfish person, the nuclear threat isn't worth worrying about.

Until you have children and future generations to worry about. Then it suddenly seems quite a bit more pressing that their world could be obliterated at a moment's notice by a small handful of decision makers.

[BurningFrog]

So what value do you get out of worrying about the nuclear threat, that makes it worth it?

[valval]

What? I have a son and a wife and I couldn’t care less about nuclear war or climate change or any abstract and distant catastrophe that could face humanity as a whole.

Living in the future is a silly affair. There’s only one moment and it’s the present.

[cynicalpeace]

Those other things are also worth worrying about too.

Gee, I hope the people in charge don't think "the nuclear threat isn't worth worrying about"

[smokel]

Extrapolating from two samples to "once-in-a-century" does not strike me as rational.

[mistrial9]

I once knew an academic who would not fly in an airplane. He was invited to a distinguished conference across the country, but complained to me that he was too scared to fly. "Why?" I ask.. "Terrorists" he replied.. "it is too serious. I just can't do it". so a year or two pass and then I see this Academic again. While talking he mentions that he just returned from a great conference far away. "What? I thought you were afraid to fly in an airplane!" .. He replies "that was true, I was scared of someone carrying a bomb on the flight. But, I calculated the statistical odds of there being TWO bombs on a single plane, and it was infinitesimal..."

"So now I carry my own!"

[thimabi]

That depends on where you live. There are people right now in certain places who are terrified of the nuclear threat.

[petra]

Everybody dies so there's nothing to fear from war?

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Chaos , without death.