World War III
Article
World War III is a recurring event in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 23, 2021 and September 11, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “The cost is the risk of World War III between NATO and the Warsaw Pact”; “it’s anyone’s plan to start World War III to destroy Iranian centrifuges”. It most often appears alongside 2008 crisis, A Failure, But Not Of Prediction, Aella.
Metadata
- Category: Events
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: March 23, 2021
- Last seen: September 11, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- 2008 crisis (1 shared issues)
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- A Failure, But Not Of Prediction (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
This is one reason (among many) Taleb disagrees so strongly with Steven Pinker's contention that war is declining. Pinker's data shows far fewer small wars, but does show that World Wars I and II were very large; he interprets the World Wars as outliers, and notes that since WWII the trend has been excellent. Taleb interprets the constant small wars that used to happen as "controlled burns", and the various institutions set up to prevent those wars - the Concert of Europe, multilateral alliances, the UN - as the same sort of dangerous volatility-buffering you get from a corporate job or a government bailout. It ensures fewer small wars - until the system gets overwhelmed, and you get a giant one. As long as NATO is intact, there's no risk of some dumb war between France and Britain over fishing rights; and as long as the Warsaw Pact is in place, there's no risk of Poland and Ukraine scuffling over borders. The cost is the risk of World War III between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
First, their bad-faith critics - of whom they have many - take great delight in over-emphasizing the “bomb rogue states” part of this plan. “Yudkowsky thinks we should start nuclear wars to destroy data centers!” I mean, that’s not exactly his plan, any more than it’s anyone’s plan to start World War III to destroy Iranian centrifuges, but the standard international arms control playbook says you have to at least credibly bluff that you’re willing to do this in a worst-case scenario. If it were me, I would defuse these attacks by summarizing this part as “yeah, we’ll follow the standard international arms control playbook, playbooks say lots of things, you can read it if you’re interested” and then moving on. But in keeping with their usual policy of brutal honesty and leaning into their own extremism, they make the strikes-against-rogue-states section unmissable.