Candidate Scoring System, Fifth Release

Also on the topic of nuclear war: I found it very surprising to see that, according to the report, the expected deaths of a US-Russia exchange is lower (3 billion) than US-China or (5.5 billion) or Russia-China (7 billion). This implies that the existential risk from nuclear war is higher from a Russia-China exchange than from a US-Russia exchange. How should we translate these expected deaths to existential risk?

Hi Siebe,

I'm the author of those Guesstimate models — glad to hear you found them interesting! I wanted to flag that the models are still evolving, and there's a chance the results will change a bit. I'll be publishing full write-ups of my findings and possible implications for x-risk over the next few months.

But there's a factor in TSG1 ("total smoke generated by nuclear weapons detonated in China (Tg)") that I don't understand, but that factor drives much of the differences in total smoke generated.

I plan to go into detail about this in the reports, but the short answer is that the amount of smoke generated by nuclear detonations depends on a lot on the kinds of targets being hit. Really big, densely populated cities have a lot of flammable material, so bombing a country like China produces much more smoke than bombing the US or Russia. I do think this might have interesting implications for which conflict scenarios should trouble us, but there are a few more factors I’m still building into the models that may end up being more important.

I made a significant mistake in this. I calculated the sensitivity analysis for Buttigieg's electability incorrectly and this underestimated the amount by which his position in the nomination scoring can climb. With recent boosts in his popularity and prediction market expectations since CSS5 was published, Buttigieg could be a viable recommendation. I will review this stuff and put out CSS6 fairly quickly.

Also on the topic of nuclear war: I found it very surprising to see that, according to the report, the expected deaths of a US-Russia exchange is lower (3 billion) than US-China or (5.5 billion) or Russia-China (7 billion). This implies that the existential risk from nuclear war is higher from a Russia-China exchange than from a US-Russia exchange. How should we translate these expected deaths to existential risk?

I found the Guesstimate models interesting, and figured out that this is largely because a nuclear bombing of China is expected to produce the most smoke. But there's a factor in TSG1 ("total smoke generated by nuclear weapons detonated in China (Tg)") that I don't understand, but that factor drives much of the differences in total smoke generated. In the US-China model it's 1.58, and the Russia-China model it's 2.04, while a Russian bombing of the US has only a factor of 0.664. Could you explain what this factor is and where it's derived from?

Also: the Russia-China model has some broken links due to an extra "]" in MNO2.

I found a possible error in CSS6. On page 91 you say:

Buttigieg supports increased taxes on the wealthy, which presumably would include millionaires andbillionaires, and did not mention equalizing the capital gains tax with the income tax. We give him 1 point.
We’ve found no information to judge Buttigieg, so we give him 0.3 points.

About Nuclear Nonproliferation you write:

Candidates should be good at handling nuclear proliferation and threatening states such as North Korea [my emphasis], Iran and Pakistan. These states do not have the nuclear capacity to pose any existential risk, so they get less attention here than the primary powers, but they complicate calculations of international deterrence and might indirectly increase the risk of a major nuclear war.

What do you mean by 'being good at threatening'? It seems counterproductive to threaten North Korea, as this could cause international conflict, and backfire by triggering action from North Korea against South Korea and possibly Japan. As argued in this article, it seems that the only options are to persuade China to increase economic pressure, or to accept a nuclear North Korea. North Korea has always been consistent and, given their goal, rational: they aim for nuclear weapons for deterrence and know that using nukes will mean assured destruction.