I have to say that nuclear warfare was less of a human extinction risk than some people tend to think or is directly suggested by this text. Even a straight all out war between the United States and Soviet Union using their full arsenals would not have caused human extinction nor likely have prevented some technological societies from rebuilding if they didn't outright survive. I've seen out there expert analyses on raw destruction and on factors like subsequent global climate devastation showing this conclusion from any plausible military contigencies and actions. The remaining arguments in favor would have to be pretty convoluted, like by setting a sociopolitical precedent it would automatically guarantee any future or rebuilt societies would seek military conflict through further nuclear wars.
The most dangerous extinction risk that could be caused by human action in the 20th century probably would have been deliberate attempts at destruction of the ozone layer in a supervillain sense. (This could be facilitated by nuclear weaponry, of course.) No actual polity as far as anyone knows, I think, planned such a thing. Accidental destruction, timed differently in an alternate history pathway, could also have been pretty bad. To consider and compare a full range of hypotheses, biological warfare was (and still is) a threat but overall is probably less of an x-risk as well, if you understand the flat out mass extinction potential of ozone destruction.
It wouldn't be bad to invite debate on these points as I think actually fully understanding various x-risks, near misses in the real world, and all that is rather important to getting something useful out of this parable.
Been a lurker for a relatively short time, took the survey.
I had some concerns over the extra credit questions and one thing in particular that prompted me to respond. I agree it seems there was meant to be no right answer to a couple of the questions, and the babies in the hospital was at least a clear statistical problem. I also had an admittedly whimsical objection to the lack of details on one question, thanks to the level of specificity seen in riddles, puzzles, and so on here, and maybe due to a programmer background thinking of pointers and assignments. The first CFAR question should have specified to start something like there are three people in a room. Then it's clear there's not a person looking at himself in a mirror, or more than three people with some having the same first name, or creatively a statue or painting, with one human looking at the artwork which is facing another human. (Would be a good one with Lisa implying the Mona Lisa, but connotations of names shouldn't be relevant)
However, what I was really curious about was the redwood question. Surprisingly, I knew the answer pretty much exactly and later noticed the complaints about using feet as a unit which was rather strange. I remembered this exact question was from a recent study in a psychology journal on cognitive biases.
It seems likely the question was written with knowledge of the study in mind, to test for anchoring bias, considering many other things could have been chosen other than the height of redwood trees in feet. I really hope the intention was not to take these results to say, "LW readers conclusively have less anchoring bias than people in the psychology study." As the maximum number that could possibly be generated by the RNG (999) iirc is lower than an anchoring number given in the study (1000), presumably few survey participants if any would answer the tree height is greater than that. Due to the RNG anchor likely being much closer to the true value anchoring bias will be less than in the psychology study by nature of how the question was presented.
It feels like we have talked past each other given this and responses to other comments.
I do not think this really addressed a core misconception shaping the debate or a best a contradiction of historical expert analysis. Would you call it "industrial collapse" if, following a full scale nuclear war, present day Australia was still standing a month later with little military destruction nor human casualties?
I am not directly an expert in the field and climate science in particular has advanced a lot compared to historical research, on all topics not just nuclear winter, but I have read some different authors. Also to the point, the sheer volume of expert work characterized at best by conflicting opinions should you accept the most pessimistic nuclear warfare predictions is worth considering. Sagan and Turco and others repeatedly collaborated on several high profile works and the state of expert science I think could be accurately said to be considered to have advanced over time.
See for example: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ackerman/Articles/Turco_Nuclear_Winter_90.pdf
This particular paper doesn't discuss, say, military strategy other than very broad consensus, eg. both sides would favor Northern Hemisphere targets, though see a ton of cited and other sources. Even conditionally overcoming, for the purpose of hypothetical consideration, the lower prior probability of certain full scale military conflicts, direct, targeted destruction of more than about 20% of the world population as a military and strategic outcome just wasn't feasible, ever. This as a popular misconception might be readily dismissed by those of us here, but recognize that large amounts of past research was on fully trying to understand, admittedly we still don't completely, subsequent climate and ecological effects. The latter are the only real x-risk concern from a technological and natural science standpoint. A few degrees Celsius of temperature change globally and other havoc is not nothing but most predictions indicated low risk of a real extinction event. Much of the world would have nominally go on without the US and USSR and losses suffered by their respective allies, and by pretty much everyone's inspection it's not like those who survived would be all impovershed 3rd worlders who could never recover.
It is a stretch to describe predictions and understanding at times in the past, even "1980 Australia survives intact, with some climate and ecological repercussions" as "industrial civilization completely collapses." Those two statements are not equivalent at all. The former prediction might have been incorrect but it existed.
Clearly there are reasons to consider prior study on the matter less than ideal, experts lacking time or funding or facing political pressure. Though, saying that experts attempted to study the issue at the time and got it wrong is different from ignoring it and from others rejecting a correct conclusion by the experts. Very few expert predictions leaned in the direction of x-risk as considered here - not just immediate near extinction but also "permanent curtailment of potential," at least when putting nuclear warfare and low if uncertain nuclear winter predictions on the same scale as other x-risks.