alt Hacker NewsNukes gave us peace and freedom.
We've had no WW3 (so far) and no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war. Gatling might have thought his gun would reduce the number of war fatalities, but but Oppenheimer thought he would end the world. Both were wrong.
Alternative take: Inventors are bad at predicting the downstream societal effects of their inventions.
Replies
It very much depends on where "here" is.
At least, it gives impunity to attack others with less fear of retaliation…
> no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war
Lots of talk in the UK recently about conscription.
> no one here needs to worry about being drafted into a war.
here meaning the US or HN?
Nuclear weapons traded a high probability of a major war for a low probability of an apocalyptic war.
My question is, how low is that probability, exactly? Because the tradeoff looks very different if it’s one in a million per year, versus one in a hundred per year.
My assessment, looking at the history and the close calls, is that it’s more like one in a hundred.
Let's assume a nuclear exchange happens at some point during a war. There is a very high chance that this will cause an escalation leading to a nuclear apocalypse.
Since this result is presumably inevitable at increasing frequency, it's more like nukes prevented another major world war and stole a form of peace from the future, temporarily. That peace debt might be repaid with the end of everything.