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MileyCyrus comments on Politics Discussion Thread February 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (146)
What's the probability of a major war between Japan and China in the next decade?
Wait a little while and then check here.
I was hoping someone would do that. I wrote down a low prediction (1%) after looking up some news stories because I expect the media to err on the side of exaggerating such situations in general and my priors are low.
Good question. I would say the probability is low, but the event has high expected impact (i.e. high expected number of deaths and economic losses).
I am just reciting Taleb's philosophy of history here, but it seems likely that history is dominated by events with this character (= low probability but high expected impact).
A difficult but important problem would be to rank events by expected impact.
I think you also want to incorporate some measure of their probability in there as well.
That's what "expected" means.
I would say sub- 5% given a low prior for rich, well-governed nations fighting all out wars, Japan being relatively demilitarized still (and war being technically illegal), and the US having a defense commitment there.
On paper, sure. In practice the JSDF is one of the world's top ten military forces by overall measures.
Cite?
Japan ranks #6 in the world for total military expenditures, according to SIPRI 2012.
The JMSDF ranks #4 for tonnage of the world's navies (counting only active, commissioned combat-oriented vessels).
On the other hand China is facing social unrest and as well as problems due to its gender imbalance, so a war that gives people an enemy besides the government to focus their anger as well as killing of excess males might make sense from its point of view.
Sub-5% is very conservative. It's likely sub-2%. Japan is simply too anti-military, and China owns too many US dollars.
Next decade? Extremely low.
What about next 3 decades?
I am going to guess still pretty low although highly militarized intrigue, cyberwar, etc might happen. Or a false start (in either direction).
I also really wonder just how strong the Peace of Europe is.