EA - Has Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Changed Your Mind? by JoelMcGuire

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Has Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Changed Your Mind?, published by JoelMcGuire on May 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.[This post was written in a purely personal capacity, etc.]I recently had several long conversations with a friend about whether my regular doom-scrolling regarding the Ukraine war had sharpened my understanding of the world or mostly been a waste of time.Unfortunately, it seems more of the latter. When my mind has changed, it's been slight, and it’s unclear what actions my new views justify. Personally, this means I should probably go back to thinking about happiness and RCTs.I set out what I think are some relevant questions Russia's invasion of Ukraine could change your mind about and provide some sloppy commentary, but I'm interested to know what other EAs and rationalists think about this issue.High-level questionsLikelihood of great power conflictIt seems like the Metaculus forecasting community is now more worried about great power conflict than it was before the war. I assume the invasion of Ukraine is a causal factor. But I feel oddly reassured about this, like the world was ruled by drunks who sobered up when the knives came out, reminded that knives are sharp and bodily fluids are precious.After the invasion, the prospect of a Russia-USA War shifted from a 5-15% to a 25% chance before 2050. I hadn’t known about this forecast, but I would have assumed the opposite. Before the war, Russia viewed the US as a waning power, losing in Afghanistan, not-winning in Syria, Libya and Venezuela, riven by internecine strife and paralyzed by self-doubt. Meanwhile, Russia’s confidence in its comeback rose with each cost-effective success in Crimea, Syria, and Kazakhstan.Now Russia knows how hollow its military was. And it knows the USA knows. And it knows that NATO hand-me-downs are emptying its once vast stockpiles of tanks and APCs. I assume it won’t recover the depth of its armour stocks in the near term (it doesn’t have the USSR’s state capacity or industrial base). The USA also doesn’t need to fight Russia. If Ukraine is doing this well, then Ukraine + Poland + Baltics would probably do just fine. I’d put this more around 6.5%.I think a Russian war with a European state has probably increased simply based on Russia’s revealed willingness to go to war, in conjunction with forecasters predicting a good chance (20%-24%) that the US and China will go to war over Taiwan. Russia may find such a conflict an opportunity to attempt to occupy a square mile of uninhabited Lithuanian forest to create a safe zone for ethnic Russian speakers and puncture the myth of NATO’s 5th article.Will there be a 'World War Three' before 2050? | MetaculusThe predicted probability to this question shifted by around 10%, from the 10-15% range to 20-25% after the war began. I assume this is mostly driven by Russia-NATO-initiated conflict. China-India conflict predictions have decreased from 30% pre-war to 17% before 2035 most recently. And China-US war predictions have stayed constant (20% before 2035). So the rise must stem from the increase in the likelihood of a Russia-US war or by other major powers between 2035 and 2050. I don’t think I agree with the community here, as I explained previously.Will China get involved in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict by 2024?China hasn’t involved itself in the Ukraine war yet. And the prospects for its involvement seem like they should dim over time — surely it would have acted or given more hints that it was considering doing so by now?This makes me more confused about whether China committed to a military confrontation with the West. If it has, and China believed it had more military-industrial capacity than the West (which is what I’d believe if I was China), then now is the perfect opportunity to drain Western stocks ...