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Right now, we are at a place of polarization, yet all of our art sucks (my opinion obviously but it seems to be shared). If you look back at the last time our country was this divided in the 1960's, we saw some of the greatest output of music and literature we have ever seen. We had incredible artists like the Beatles among others. Then of course that was probably the peak of black culture with incredible artistic output that they will probably never reach again. This was probably the last time you saw many black musicians and guitarists be better than their white counterparts. If you take it back to the French Revolution, you saw some of the best political philosophy ever created such as with Rousseau. Political discord creates art and philosophy that has usually never been seen before, but today we don't see any of that. Even Monty Python is more subversive than anything we see today. Clockwork Orange was more subversive than anything we see today. Why aren't we seeing a peak in art again like the time should predict?
You know, I just realized that the second era of great music corresponds almost exactly to Thatcher's time as the UK PM. That can't be a coincidence.
I've noticed a similar thing to your observation when it comes to approaching doom. Back in the day the cold war and threat of nuclear annihilation inspired a whole bunch of great songs. Today the doom is climate change and we get... nothing.
We have had ample proof of nuclear weapons' destructive capacity.
Meanwhile, the actual impact of climate change can, by one so willing, be ignored entirely with little ill effect, and the catastrophe scenarios spun up about it come from people with the air of the stereotypical madman claiming that "the end is nigh".
Nah, Nuclear Armageddon was a psyop. Yes, it would suck to have nuke dropped on your head, but not much more so than an artillery shell, or a conventional bomb or missile. It was probably even more exaggerated than the impact of climate change.
This is true insomuch as you will be dead in all 4 cases, but it's a rather facile observation considering the differences in magnitude of destructive power, not to mention the very serious dangers posed by radioactive fallout.
A full scale nuclear war between east and west in the mid to late cold war (assuming both sides launch their own weapons) would have resulted in the deaths of the majority of the population of all the countries involved, with any population centre worth mentioning being the target of multiple nuclear weapons, as well as sites of strategic importance such as airports, military installations, major hubs of industry, etc. The less important parts of the country that still remain would be very likely covered in radioactive fallout from the (relatively) close detonation of the aforementioned hundreds of nuclear weapons, which would kill a large proportion of the population in a matter of weeks, water, soil and food would be contaminated. Societal collapse would be unavoidable, those that managed to survive the first few months would still find themselves at a greatly increased risk for various cancers and their children would have a substantially increased risk of birth defects.
All of this is without mentioning the as of yet unforseen consequences of detonating tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at once, which I am going to assume would probably not be great.
Themotte likes to talk about "skin in the game" a lot, well if you want a good example of that then I'd point you to the fact that most nuclear planners and those informed about the nature of nuclear war stopped trying to build bomb shelters or bolt holes for themselves and their families at some point in the 60s.
This experiment has been run, and IIRC Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s elevated cancer rates aren’t incompatible with both of them being modern industrial societies.
Don't cancer rates vary quite a bit geographically even without nuclear fallout? IIRC Australia has absurd skin cancer rates, but hasn't seen widespread panic and fleeing from this danger. "Twice as likely to die of skin cancer" is concerning and unfortunate, but still not a huge absolute risk.
Yes, although ‘White people with heavy sunshine and lots of beaches’ is the obvious reason there- cancer rates seem mostly to correlate geographically with explanatory variables.
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