That's not an argument against nukes, but against all war and indeed all large scale hostile actions. The argument itself aside, I observe that in actual practice this does not deter nations from waging ruinous war. Hell, it doesn't even stop them from waging ruinous civil war, ethnic cleansing, etc. which damage their own economy. People may not be rational economic agents, but more importantly, they aren't agents who care about the economy over other things.
Yeah. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of nuclear annihilation, but you can't really do that without being overt. The best you could do is a few suitcase nukes.
A Ph.D student in neuroscience shot at least 50 people at a showing of the new Batman movie. He also appears to have released some kind of gas from a canister. Because of his educational background this person almost certainly knows a lot about molecular biology. How long will it be (if ever) before a typical bio-science Ph.D will have the capacity to kill, say,a million people?
Edit: I'm not claiming that this event should cause a fully informed person to update on anything. Rather I was hoping that readers of this blog with strong life-science backgrounds could provide information that would help me and other interested readers assess the probability of future risks. Since this blog often deals with catastrophic risks and the social harms of irrationality and given that the events I described will likely dominate the U.S. news media for a few days I thought my question worth asking. Given the post's Karma rating (currently -4), however, I will update my beliefs about what constitutes an appropriate discussion post.