Could you speak a little to the adversarial nature of nuclear war adaptation? (Apologies if it’s already discussed and I missed it, I’m quite bad at tracking the maths often used in the EA community.)

As far as I know, a full-scale nuclear exchange is still understood strategically as mutually assured destruction. If agricultural adaptation becomes a confounding factor for MAD, then would this not just increase pressure to increase stockpile sizes/yields, or encourage the use of deadlier alternatives (e.g. cobalt-60 weapons, or the effective equivalent thereof), until MAD is achieved again? It strikes me as a situation somewhat analogous to ICBM shields - in a vacuum it’s a countermeasure to the status quo, but there’s an obvious counter-countermeasure available.

I'd also appreciate additional guidance on "books for getting literate in the stuff you need in order to understand the recommended books." Sometimes the stuff that follows "lemme just do a little back-of-the-envelope math here" kinda runs away from me. (e.g. https://rationalaltruist.com/2013/05/10/what-is-the-return-on-giving/)

I do quite like Robert Ornstein's The Evolution of Consciousness.