If ‘Opt into Petrov Day’ was aside something other than a big red ominous button, I would think the obvious answer is that it’s a free choice and I’d be positively inclined towards it. Petrov Day is a good thing with good side effects, quite unlike launching nuclear weapons.
It is confusing to me that it is beside a big red ominous button. On the one hand, Petrov’s story is about the value of caution. To quote a top comment from an older Petrov Day,
Petrov thought the message looked legit, but noticed there were clues that it wasn’t.
On the other hand, risk-taking is good, opting in to good things is good, and if one is taking Petrov Day to mean ‘don’t take risks if they look scary’ I think one is taking an almost diametrically wrong message from the story.
All that said, for now I am going to fall for my own criticism and not press the big red ominous button around Petrov Day.
If I didn’t remember discussion from previous Petrov Days here, I’d probably have skipped it, on the heuristic that big red buttons on public websites are usually advertisements, which i’d rather not deal with. I doubt there’s any visual that could, without a LOT of explanation, make it seem like an ominous thing, rather than an annoying attention-grab. With the context of what petrov day is, and what LW has done in the past, it’s neither—just an interesting view into what the admins think is worth doing and what users weirdly extrapolate from.
If ‘Opt into Petrov Day’ was aside something other than a big red ominous button, I would think the obvious answer is that it’s a free choice and I’d be positively inclined towards it. Petrov Day is a good thing with good side effects, quite unlike launching nuclear weapons.
It is confusing to me that it is beside a big red ominous button. On the one hand, Petrov’s story is about the value of caution. To quote a top comment from an older Petrov Day,
On the other hand, risk-taking is good, opting in to good things is good, and if one is taking Petrov Day to mean ‘don’t take risks if they look scary’ I think one is taking an almost diametrically wrong message from the story.
All that said, for now I am going to fall for my own criticism and not press the big red ominous button around Petrov Day.
If I didn’t remember discussion from previous Petrov Days here, I’d probably have skipped it, on the heuristic that big red buttons on public websites are usually advertisements, which i’d rather not deal with. I doubt there’s any visual that could, without a LOT of explanation, make it seem like an ominous thing, rather than an annoying attention-grab. With the context of what petrov day is, and what LW has done in the past, it’s neither—just an interesting view into what the admins think is worth doing and what users weirdly extrapolate from.