Comment by luma
14 hours ago
The 80 years thing actually happened. One can argue about MAD and the nuclear threat, but we don't have to guess at what happened.
It worked.
14 hours ago
The 80 years thing actually happened. One can argue about MAD and the nuclear threat, but we don't have to guess at what happened.
It worked.
The problem with MAD is it's a deterministic framework. It doesn't properly account for the risk of a war caused by mistake.
If Stanislav Petrov hadn't been in the chain of command, MAD might not have worked. And it could still fail to work in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
(insert standard anthropic-principle counterargument)