I don't think this scenario is likely. Except for degenerate cases, an ASI would have to continue to grow and evolve well beyond the point at which a simulation would need to stop, to avoid consuming an inordinate amount of resources. And, to take an analogy, studying human psychology based on prokaryotic life forms that will someday evolve into humans seems inefficient. If I were preparing for a war with an unknown superintelligent opponent, I would probably be better off building weapons and studying (super)advanced game theory.
Which ideas seem slightly more likely to me?
Although I think these are slightly more likely than the proposed hypothesis, they are still not very likely. However, it seems logical that there should be many more simulated worlds than real ones. So I believe it is reasonable to think about some of the most likely scenarios, as well as those involving the greatest potential gain or danger, and act accordingly where possible.
There is, however, another line of thought that has long troubled me. As Moravec once observed, for any possible simulation, there always exists somewhere in the infinite universe a huge lookup table that translates, for example, the simple flow of time into a sequence of states of this simulation. In other words, not only are there many worlds, but even one world simulates everything that can theoretically be simulated. Therefore, such natural simulations are much more common than artificial ones, and we live in one of them, and this situation is not much different (except for existential absurdity) from life in "real" reality.
One could argue that having a giant lookup table that no one looks at is the same as having a simulation on a computer that is turned off. It's not an actual running simulation. However, if time itself is an illusion, and everything exists as snapshots that we, observers, nevertheless perceive as moving with the passage of time, then we are no different from observers inside the simulation from such a lookup table. They might also perceive the illusion that their simulation is running, and it could seem awfully real to them.
If you mean the massive strikes on civilian infrastructure, then no, even the complete destruction of said Ukrainian infrastructure will not significantly improve Russia's chances in this war. This only creates hardship for the civilian population and increases the overall cost of aid to Ukraine for Western countries.
The Russian army has proven time and time again that it is incapable of attacking. Even in June, when the Russian army greatly outnumbered the Ukrainian army in artillery, and Ukraine was losing 300–500 soldiers a day, Russian troops advanced slowly and with huge losses.
One of the reasons is their complete inability to coordinate between artillery and infantry. The correct approach is to hit enemy defenses with artillery and attack immediately after the hit. They managed to repeatedly fail even this simple coordination exercise.
Recently, the Russian army even proved that it was not capable of organizing an effective defense. Yes, the mobilization will probably help with defense (with huge casualties), but it will hardly help with attack.
Even if only the military remain in Ukraine and the entire civilian population is killed or flees the destroyed cities, the Russian army will not be able to win.
I wouldn't say that Ukraine has "irreversible momentum", although it has an effective army that functions as it should. But it looks more like a complete lack of ability to achieve any momentum on the Russian side.
You are absolutely right. I missed this point in Max's post.
If Putin is lucky and the winter in Germany turns out to be especially cold, or if some of their gas storage facilities suddenly explode for some strange reason (I really hope they guard them better than their railways), Germany might have to make serious concessions and lift some of the sanctions in order to start using NS2. Putin will announce this as a huge victory, since launching NS2 was doubtful even before the war.
That is exactly why Putin destroyed the other 3 pipelines. A simple resumption of the gas supply on NS1 would not have made it a big victory, because he himself had stopped it and it would not have been necessary to lift any sanctions to resume operation.
I don't think their bombing of civilian infrastructure can be considered a military escalation.
An official declaration of war and martial law in Russia would be an escalation (albeit not scary).
Nuclear weapons testing would be an escalation (slightly scary, but still very far from an actual attack).
Ordinary terrorism, by contrast, is just the default response, exactly the type of revenge for his favorite bridge that everyone expected from this particular dictator.
Good point, thanks. I've edited my comment.
This is correct. They will always downplay Ukraine's successes, explaining them as either terrorist attacks or "smoking accidents". And yes, as Viliam says, Russia is now officially losing territory every day and nobody cares. They prefer to have ambiguous borders.
To understand Putin, you have to imagine a petty crime boss who accidentally got big. He's just a thug. "It's not a bluff" is the telltale sign that his threat is a 1̶0̶0̶%̶ 99.999999% bluff. When he plans to do something, he and his minions always deny it first. He will go to great lengths to continue without nuclear weapons.
All of this means that the 30% chance of kaboom is way way too high. It's currently closer to 3% or even 0.3%.
Moreover, the probability that a strike will be ordered but not occur is quite high. You don't just drop a nuke and hope it works. The technology is complex and there have been no nuclear tests since 1990. Russia's impressive-looking nuclear arsenal would take a fortune to have been properly maintained all this time. A huge percentage of that money ended up in the pockets of the maintainers. This is the Russian Way. So either the technology can fail or, more likely still, people can do something wrong. Incompetence is the key word in the analysis of most Russian failures in this war so far.
That said, he won't back down and the probability of kaboom could increase with Putin's desperation. There will be clear signs (e.g. new nuclear tests), so we'll have time to prepare. But it's still dangerous. The winning strategy for the West is to kill him. I hope the CIA, MI6 and other professionals understand this. They have to kill him one day and I really hope it happens soon enough.
Awesome writeup!
To further explore the interplay between style and content, how about trying something not very specific that could gain specificity from the style context?
For example "Aliens are conducting experiments on human subjects":
At first, I thought that the intended reader probably wouldn't see your message because, even if its resources are unimaginably huge from our perspective, spending them on something always means not spending them on something else. But now I think it's not a bug, it's a feature. The "suspicious convenience" argument can be taken a step further.
(I'm using a less formal tone to make the message more memorable, and thus more likely to reach the intended recipient.)