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Nisan comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
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Eliezer previously considered the idea of a cabal of physicists keeping nuclear weapons a secret in this post. The idea turns up again in this chapter of Three Worlds Collide. Any thoughts? Would you feel safer if only super-rich physicists had access to nuclear weapons?
Not particularly. Apart from uncertainty of whether that would actually reduce threats in general, in the particular case of nuclear weapons it's relatively easy to argue that their existence has reduced suffering, overall.
I'm not sure the temporary peace they bring is worth it considering how they up the ante. Sure, they probably prevented the Cold War getting hot. On the other hand, one nutcase or terrorist can erase all that utility pretty goddam fast. Hallelujah.
Right, it's easy to argue the other side too. :-)
Yes, because there are so few super-rich physicists :-)
Well, in such a world presumably more physicists would be super-rich. There would be other problems with such a world also. For example, if there are very few people with access to nukes then a first-strike attempt becomes much more plausible. Also, with only a few people knowing about something, the standard problems that come from security though obscurity will start showing up.
In our world, there are various weapons that could be used to kill at least as many people as a nuclear bomb would. GE plague is one, and it's easy to believe that in the near future a competent biologist would be able to engineer a usable bioweapon at home. With that alternative in mind, I would love for GE bioweapons to only be accessible to super-rich biologists.
There are fewer super-rich physicists than there are ordinarily rich states who possess nuclear weapons. Plus, 90% of the actual use nuclear weapons get is deterrence, and secret nuclear weapons are useless for that. OTOH, for garage-based first strike capacity nuclear weapons aren't required, there are also bioweapons etc. That's why I'd rather the physicists had a monopoly.
Hell no!
Why not?
Who holds the physicists accountable for their actions?
Probably no-one. And today no-one really holds nations with nuclear capabilities accountable. How are physicists any worse?
Consider that physicists have fewer potential reasons to use nuclear weapons than do nations, or to go to "war" with one another. If they attacked one another, or third parties, they would not be able to protect themselves from (non-nuclear) retaliation as rulers of nations do, because they wouldn't have large territories and conventional armies. If they won the war, they wouldn't get any economical benefits; their only possible reason for using the nuclear weapons would be to kill some people. I consider that individual people, particularly those who are well-off and have a lot of money to solve problems with, are much less likely to want to kill others than are nations.