NancyLebovitz comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong

108 Post author: lukeprog 13 January 2012 01:28AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (354)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vaniver 13 January 2012 01:01:09AM 4 points [-]

The human species was always too weak to render itself extinct. Until we discovered the nuclear chain reaction and manufactured thousands of atomic bombs.

Again, it's still not clear that this is true. There aren't enough bombs to kill everyone, and it's likely humanity would survive a nuclear winter (even if most humans wouldn't).

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 January 2012 01:47:28AM 5 points [-]

It's possible that we'd be able to wreck civilization with a relatively small number of decisions, but "wreck civilization" is vague, and might not be true. It's certainly the case that it's possible to kill more people with fewer decisions than ever before.