I am opposed to the implementation of this exercise, I believe its basic concept seriously undercuts the moral lesson we should take from Petrov Day.
The best way to not blow ourselves up is to not make nuclear weapons. On a day dedicated to not blowing ourselves up, LW has decided to manufacture a bunch of completely unneeded nuclear weapons, hand them out to many people, and then hope really hard that no one uses them. This is like a recovering addict carrying drugs on his person in order to make a point about resisting temptation: he is at best bragging and at worst courting disaster so boldly that one should wonder if he really wants to avoid self-destruction. This makes a good allegory for the senseless near-apocalypse of the Cold War, but deliberately creating a senseless risk does not seem like an appropriate way of celebrating the time we narrowly avoided triggering a senseless risk.
My perspective is that the ritual has more than one dimension: I claim that this is low-risk training for future events, rather than only a celebration of a past event. Many senseless risks remain (including nuclear weapons), and we have no control whatsoever over whether they persist. Petrov is a foundation story because rationalist-as-we-use-it means making good decisions; even when we did not make the risks; even when the situation fundamentally stupid.
If we never even attempt to simulate these situations, then I believe we’re not giving the problem its due.
I think to the extent that the Petrov Day game is training anything, it’s training the opposite of what we should want. In the game, all the social pressure is unanimously and strongly opposed to pressing the button (sometimes to the extent of ostracizing people and threatening their careers). But in real life, if everyone were unanimously opposed to pressing the button, the button would never have been constructed in the first place. The real Petrov was not rewarded for his actions but demoted and sidelined. In the real situation that’s supposedly being trained for, the social pressure will be ambivalent at best, but more likely telling you that you should press the button, and only your own moral compass and fear of death would be telling you not to.
A thousand times this! I haven’t seen anyone pointing out what’s wrong with this ritual more clearly. Exactly, we turn the celebration of individual courage into a celebration of unity/conformity, what an irony.
I am opposed to the implementation of this exercise, I believe its basic concept seriously undercuts the moral lesson we should take from Petrov Day.
The best way to not blow ourselves up is to not make nuclear weapons. On a day dedicated to not blowing ourselves up, LW has decided to manufacture a bunch of completely unneeded nuclear weapons, hand them out to many people, and then hope really hard that no one uses them. This is like a recovering addict carrying drugs on his person in order to make a point about resisting temptation: he is at best bragging and at worst courting disaster so boldly that one should wonder if he really wants to avoid self-destruction. This makes a good allegory for the senseless near-apocalypse of the Cold War, but deliberately creating a senseless risk does not seem like an appropriate way of celebrating the time we narrowly avoided triggering a senseless risk.
My perspective is that the ritual has more than one dimension: I claim that this is low-risk training for future events, rather than only a celebration of a past event. Many senseless risks remain (including nuclear weapons), and we have no control whatsoever over whether they persist. Petrov is a foundation story because rationalist-as-we-use-it means making good decisions; even when we did not make the risks; even when the situation fundamentally stupid.
If we never even attempt to simulate these situations, then I believe we’re not giving the problem its due.
I think to the extent that the Petrov Day game is training anything, it’s training the opposite of what we should want. In the game, all the social pressure is unanimously and strongly opposed to pressing the button (sometimes to the extent of ostracizing people and threatening their careers). But in real life, if everyone were unanimously opposed to pressing the button, the button would never have been constructed in the first place. The real Petrov was not rewarded for his actions but demoted and sidelined. In the real situation that’s supposedly being trained for, the social pressure will be ambivalent at best, but more likely telling you that you should press the button, and only your own moral compass and fear of death would be telling you not to.
A thousand times this! I haven’t seen anyone pointing out what’s wrong with this ritual more clearly. Exactly, we turn the celebration of individual courage into a celebration of unity/conformity, what an irony.