Applied mathematician, chaotician and graph theorist gone wrong. Surfer of latent spaces. I make things that glow at 365nm. One of the original thymonauts.

  • 0 Posts
  • 2 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: November 1st, 2022

help-circle
  • @mattblaze@federate.social @CStamp@mastodon.social @60sRefugee@spacey.space @nyrath@spacey.space @simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org

    Students in my class play a simple game called the escalation game which I started a couple of years back after physicist Max Tegmark claimed there was a 1/6 chance of a nuclear war starting over Ukraine.

    The first time we played we had 1/7 teams end in nuclear war. This year half of the teams ended with a nuclear war.

    It’s more about the competitive nature of the players than a real estimate of any probability of course.

    It was very convenient that the first year my boss was in the class and I was being evaluated for my teaching abilities and we got 1/7 vs. Tegmark’s 1/6. Phew!

    See Ellsberg’s book The Doomsday Machine.

    PS Most estimates of the annual probability are lower, generally below 1% but of course not zero.