Agree with most of what you say here.
If technological progress is halted completely this won't be a problem.
No, if technological progress is halted completely then we'll never be able to become transhumans. From a certain perspective this is almost as bad as going extinct.
The question as phrased also emphasizes climate change rather than other issues. In the case of such a nuclear war, there would be many other negative results. India is a major economy at this point and such a war would result in largescale economic problems throughout.
The Robock and Toon article estimates 20 million immediate deaths from an India-Pakistan war, less than 5% of the relevant population (although presumably among the most productive such people). This number is roughly consistent with extrapolating from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In light of this, would you guess that the India-Pakistan specific economic disruption would be greater than the economic disruption caused by a billion deaths due to starvation?
One serious problem with coming back from societal collapse that is often neglected is the problem of resource management. Nick Bostrom has pointed out that. to get to our current tech level we had to bootstrap up using non-renewable fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources.
Do you know if anyone's attempted an analysis of the issues relevant here? On the most crude level we can look at the amount of oil that's been used so far.
Overall, nuclear war is an example of many sorts of situations that would increase existential risk across the board. In that regard it isn't that different from a smallish asteroid impact (say 2-3 km) in a major country, or Yellowstone popping, or a massive disease outbreak or a lot of other situations.
Agree, but I think that the probability of nuclear war is higher than the probability of the other possibilities that you mention. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/75b/link_brief_discussion_of_asteroid_nuclear_risk/ if you haven't already done so.
No, if technological progress is halted completely then we'll never be able to become transhumans. From a certain perspective this is almost as bad as going extinct.
A halt to technological progress would be temporary. Would you rather have a twenty year halt on new technologies or a massive rush of new technologies that end up destroying everyone?
...The Robock and Toon article estimates 20 million immediate deaths from an India-Pakistan war, less than 5% of the relevant population (although presumably among the most productive such people). This number i
Last month I was involved in a conversation thread about what the impact of a hypothetical nuclear war would be on existential risk.
There are many potential nuclear war scenarios which would have varying impacts on existential risk. It's difficult to know where to start to gain an understanding of the long-term of nuclear proliferation.
For concreteness, consider the case of an India-Pakistan nuclear war.
According to Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering by Robock and Toon,
[...]
Note that this would presumably cause some degree of chaos in the developed world.
I have not yet investigated the credibility of the papers' claims. However,
Suppose that an all-out nuclear war between India and Pakistan were to occur and were to result in climate change killing 1 billion people. Then would the probability of a positive singularity increase or decrease and if so why?
This question seems very difficult to answer; maybe altogether too difficult for humans to answer. I welcome responses raising relevant considerations even in absence of a good way to compare the relevant considerations. Please read the linked conversation thread before commentating.