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Dear Max Tegmark,
I read your risk assessment with an abstract mathematical scenario model with great interest, but was also very worrying, because your result does not bode well and gives no prospect of a possible happy ending.
However, I see a number of errors in the approach or better it does not reflect our current world situation. There's just a bunch of undisclosed facts that put everything in a different light. In your statement, dear Max Tegmark, these developments in the world have not been taken into account. Your model turns out to be like a model for the Cuban Missile Crisis. So it's stuck with a look back at the sixties. It's like Hans Rosling's book "Factfulness": we always have to learn that the world is different today than it was in the past.
I believe that, on the one hand, we a r e already in the midst of a war between East and West; only the war is conducted differently today. And furthermore, both sides have a "new general" sitting at the war map tables today: I consider the development of artificial intelligence to be so advanced that it is definitely used for tactical consultation and strategic planning, and if that is not the case yet, it will shortly be involved in war planning and decisions.
Of course, Russia has similar support, only they are in a far weaker position as the US leads by miles in AI development. Alpha-Zero, the super chess-playing, self-learning system, like Alpha-Star, is ideal for transferring to "similar problems". And a constantly changing war situation poses similar problems. Here, too, it's basically about the best use of matter, space and time; and about tactics and strategies. The self-learning system is fed with data from space surveillance, the news from Ukraine and Russia and learns extremely quickly how wars are waged and won by absorbing all previous wars and battles in history, recorded on the Internet and in literature, and uses millions of battle simulations against itself for achieving highest levels to the point that his tactics and strategy are largely invincible, at least bringing Russia to the edge of defeat. At the same time, all measures and recommendations must be dosed in such a way that a psychological system component keeps Putin's potential decision on a nuclear strike as low as possible.
I think that's how warfare works today. And it is real, no SF.
And we saw the first results recently, with everyone wondering how Ukraine managed to launch such a successful counteroffensive.
Of course, a nuclear escalation by Russia cannot be ruled out 100%, but the probability is well below your 1:6 model.
If that were to happen, the possible consequences would be Armageddon, perhaps like Harlan Ellison's 1968 Hugo-winning story "I have no mouth and I must scream" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth, _and_I_Must_Scream) described. The status of today's AI leads not only to the best game players, whether chess, go or video games, the best medical scientists or chemical, biological inventors and future predectors, but also to the best war advisors, which the Pentagon has likely just integrated into the General Staff. Only with AI the Ukraine problem can and will be solved. And we will see that soon. At least in 2023 you will remember my words.
Rudolph Angeli, Hamburg