That's been a posited theory for decades - it's not just some HN edgelord thing. There are some obvious problems with it of course and the P5 have instead taken a maximalist attitude towards keeping the genie in the bottle (notwithstanding Atoms for Peace and accommodating India/Pakistan when it became inevitable).
replyThe 80 years thing actually happened. One can argue about MAD and the nuclear threat, but we don't have to guess at what happened.
replyIt worked.
The problem with MAD is it's a deterministic framework. It doesn't properly account for the risk of a war caused by mistake.
replyIf Stanislav Petrov hadn't been in the chain of command, MAD might not have worked. And it could still fail to work in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
(insert standard anthropic-principle counterargument)
reply- Ukrainians, definitely.
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