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by xpe 499 days ago
A lot hangs on what “realistic” means. The world is probabilistic, but people’s use of language often butchers the nuance. One quick way to compare events is to multiply its probability times impact.
1 comments

India and China almost went to war with each other in 2020.

The decision of whether or not to shell Chinese troops and start a war between two nuclear states came down to one brigadier [0]

Conventional War between two nuclear states is a MAJOR risk, and has already happened before in 1999 (even if Clinton's State Department didn't want to call it that).

These kinds of flashpoints are way more likely to cause suffering in the near future than some sort of AGI/ASI.

[0] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...

> These kinds of flashpoints are way more likely to cause suffering in the near future than some sort of AGI/ASI.

Ok. Then where does your thinking lead?

One good starting question is: what set of mitigation strategies do we pursue for a probabilistic mix of failure modes?