Well exactly... doesn't that show you that it's a bad idea? People don't know if they could bring themselves to throw the switch even if everyone thinks it makes rational sense.
You're taking a rational, well-considered, strategic decision... and making the interlock a messy personal emotional one unrelated to the actual issue at hand. That sounds like the wrong way around to be doing things?
I don't think so, no. Sometimes we think too abstractly and make what turn out to be poor decisions. Emotions are really valuable heuristics and should be harnessed at a time like this.
Not really. You would need to be absolutely certain that the other party won’t carry out a retaliatory strike before they’re destroyed.
The only thing that matters is that the other party is capable of indescriminate destruction, not the certainty they’ll actually do it.
It’s like punching someone holding a gun in the face.
If the answer to launch-nukes-by-cutting-a-human-aide is "well, I need more time to think" then maybe that's a good outcome?
It's an attempt to make an abstraction concrete. Think of it as the trolley problem in real life.
Stalin is famously supposed to have said, "one death is a tragedy, 100,000 is a statistic". Cynical or not it is how humans think.
> If you believe we should never use nuclear weapons, then don't have them at all.
Strategic game theory and Mutual Assured Destruction depend on the possibility that the other guy will use them if you do, and may be the only way to prevent their use. Interestingly this is one reason why you want the other guy to know your procedures, capabilities, deployments etc. Secret weapons have no deterrent value.