I understand why this was downvoted and I think it is harsh, but I also think it might be good if people take the sentiment seriously rather than bury+ignore it.
If I received a code, I would do nothing, because it’s clear by now that pressing the button would seriously upset some people. (And the consequences seem potentially more significant this year than last.) And I think the parent commenter undervalues the efforts the pro-taking-it-seriously people made to keep their emotions in check and explain why they take the ritual seriously and would like others to do so too.
But I share the instinctive reaction that the whole thing is a bit overblown and pompous, and even on reflection I think it’s at least reasonable to hold that it was obnoxious to throw unconsenting people into a situation that looked like a game, where the stakes appeared (and IMO were) very low, only to reveal after the fact that playing the game—by taking an action explicitly enabled by the people who run and probably care most about the site—had apparently caused non-trivial distress to others and significant reputational harm to the player.
You make good points. I, for one, strong-downvoted OP because “emotional blackmail” seems not at all accurate, and the criticism itself was shaded “go outside, nerd”, when I would have been more interested in OP’s actual arguments.
Emotional blackmail would be if Ruby emailed me and said “TurnTrout, unless you participate in this ritual, I will be upset at you.” In this situation, if I do nothing, nothing happens to me, whereas Ruby may feel differently about me if I choose to participate in the game by entering launch codes.
It’s like if I built a sand castle, put some light explosives inside, and handed 100 people detonators. If someone blows it up, I could be mad at them. Sure, that might be foreseeable, and probably “my fault” in a sense.
but it seems unnatural to describe this kind of situation as “tantamount to emotional blackmail.”
I agree that “emotional blackmail” is inaccurate, but this exercise is pulling reader’s emotional strings in a bad way. The label was wrong but the overall criticism has merits. Would relabeling it into “gratuitous drama” be a good steelmaning?
“Gratuitous drama” sounds more plausible and appropriate, sure.
this exercise is pulling reader’s emotional strings in a bad way.
“Is”? But to me it just feels like an interesting yearly event, with some real thought put into it. I certainly appreciate it.
If you claim it’s “pulling strings”, I think that you should explain why, or link to an explanation, or at least acknowledge that you don’t have time to explain why you feel that way. If not, these simple “is” statements work to establish (the perception of) social agreement around the “fact” that “this exercise is pulling reader’s emotional strings in a bad way”, without that point actually having been established.
“Pulling strings” by exaggerating the importance of the stakes, by forcing some members to participate in a game where there is nothing to win personnally and a lot to lose (maybe not this year, but I remember previous year’s organisers suggesting to ban the culprit from some rationalist circles) and having all readership witness the totally artificially created drama.
But to me it just feels like an interesting yearly event, with some real thought put into it. I certainly appreciate it.
To me too, but my ‘interesting’ would be something like “I’m glad it exists even if it’s flawed”. The most important problem for me is that in its current shape it does not allow to draw useful conclusions from the outcome (thanks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EW8yZYcu3Kff2qShS/?commentId=C97ngHSu6iHmdCjPc for clarifying that point for me)
I don’t want to have a ton of meta discussion on the day of the experiment, but I am pretty interested in ideas from people on how to reduce the bad parts of the social ritual. I think the benefits of doing a thing like this are pretty high, and I am pretty excited about the benefits of the trust exercise, but also don’t want to needlessly distress people. So if people have any ideas on wording or additional text we could add to the announcements or emails, I think that would be a productive use of time.
The obvious thing is to ask people to consent before entering the game? It’s weird to get an email, out of the blue, with launch codes, telling you that you are now part of this game. While an email that spells out some of the explicit norms, and asks people to opt-in, seems great.
A light-touch intervention could just be giving people a link to click to get the launch codes, that shows some text spelling out norms like this, and ask people to only click the link if they actually want to participate.
EDIT: To be clear, I am participating in this, and would have opted-in—I just think it’s a really bad norm to not ask for consent first, when we’re putting people in a situation with real risks and social consequences, and with wildly differing perceptions of the depth of meaning in this event.
Well, I agree that in general you should ask consent before pulling people into any game, but I suppose that part of the purpose was precisely to see how people react to random responsibilities (which can definitely happen in real life). I mean, the Soviet probably didn’t bother to get Petrov’s consent before putting him in the control room. And all that’s required in our case is basically “please do nothing”… I didn’t receive the email, but I don’t think I would be upset by one message just asking to be ignored (an email asking me to actively do something to prevent destruction would have been a different kettle of fish).
Full disclosure: I clicked the button. Actually, I misclicked the button while hovering on it. I suppose that’s the reason why GitHub and similar services are very careful to hide the “delete repository” button behind long page scrolls and also add an additional “are you absolutely sure?” popup.
For the next Petrov Day, I think we should at least add the blocking popup instead of just having an “Are you sure?” title over the button. Being tricked into pushing the button is one thing, but it should not be possible to push the button purely by accident.
The problem is that people are entered aa a situation where they don’t necessarily understand the context and cultural expectations other people may have, could very reasonably misunderstand things, but are exposed to dede real and meaningful social risks if they do misunderstand things. Framings lakelike “sometimes you get random responsibilities” ONLY make sense a mutual understanding that thesethe situation is taken seriously, which empirically was obviously ot universal here.
I agree, but the people who actually received the codes are supposed to be carefully selected LW users, not totally random people. I would be quite impressed to learn that someone between those 100 users didn’t actually understand the context (on the other hand, I do expect random LW users who didn’t get codes to press the Red Button for the lulz without necessarily knowing the context, and I agree they shouldn’t be blamed for this).
That said, adding more things clarifying the context is probably good. Petrov himself surely didn’t have the context problem.
I was one of 270 last year and am one of 100 this year, I did not understand the context last year. Empirically, neither did Chris last year. Multiple people on the EA Forum have commented about not understanding the context
If it helps, here’s a comment I wrote last year trying to narrate my internal experience of reading the email (I then read the 2019 threads and eventually twigged how seriously people took it, but that was strongly not my prior—it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to ask the question ‘do people take this more seriously than a game?’)
I don’t know if this would defeat part of the purpose, but what about making it opt-in over a long time period, e.g. giving people all year to put themselves on the list of people who might be chosen to receive codes?
Other than that, I think it’s mostly a question of (to the extent possible without undermining what you’re trying to do) making it pretty clear to the recipients that people take this seriously and would genuinely like them to refrain from using the codes. As far as I can tell, that has already improved from last year. (It seems like there might have been some tonal ambiguity last year, with phrasing intended to be heightened but mostly serious coming across to some readers as playful and mostly joking.)
I am pretty interested in ideas from people on how to reduce the bad parts of the social ritual.
One way to make it seem more serious (to me) would be to make the effects bigger. E.g. taking down the frontpage (or the whole site?) for a whole week rather than just a day.
I understand why this was downvoted and I think it is harsh, but I also think it might be good if people take the sentiment seriously rather than bury+ignore it.
If I received a code, I would do nothing, because it’s clear by now that pressing the button would seriously upset some people. (And the consequences seem potentially more significant this year than last.) And I think the parent commenter undervalues the efforts the pro-taking-it-seriously people made to keep their emotions in check and explain why they take the ritual seriously and would like others to do so too.
But I share the instinctive reaction that the whole thing is a bit overblown and pompous, and even on reflection I think it’s at least reasonable to hold that it was obnoxious to throw unconsenting people into a situation that looked like a game, where the stakes appeared (and IMO were) very low, only to reveal after the fact that playing the game—by taking an action explicitly enabled by the people who run and probably care most about the site—had apparently caused non-trivial distress to others and significant reputational harm to the player.
You make good points. I, for one, strong-downvoted OP because “emotional blackmail” seems not at all accurate, and the criticism itself was shaded “go outside, nerd”, when I would have been more interested in OP’s actual arguments.
Emotional blackmail would be if Ruby emailed me and said “TurnTrout, unless you participate in this ritual, I will be upset at you.” In this situation, if I do nothing, nothing happens to me, whereas Ruby may feel differently about me if I choose to participate in the game by entering launch codes.
It’s like if I built a sand castle, put some light explosives inside, and handed 100 people detonators. If someone blows it up, I could be mad at them. Sure, that might be foreseeable, and probably “my fault” in a sense.
but it seems unnatural to describe this kind of situation as “tantamount to emotional blackmail.”
I agree that “emotional blackmail” is inaccurate, but this exercise is pulling reader’s emotional strings in a bad way. The label was wrong but the overall criticism has merits. Would relabeling it into “gratuitous drama” be a good steelmaning?
“Gratuitous drama” sounds more plausible and appropriate, sure.
“Is”? But to me it just feels like an interesting yearly event, with some real thought put into it. I certainly appreciate it.
If you claim it’s “pulling strings”, I think that you should explain why, or link to an explanation, or at least acknowledge that you don’t have time to explain why you feel that way. If not, these simple “is” statements work to establish (the perception of) social agreement around the “fact” that “this exercise is pulling reader’s emotional strings in a bad way”, without that point actually having been established.
“Pulling strings” by exaggerating the importance of the stakes, by forcing some members to participate in a game where there is nothing to win personnally and a lot to lose (maybe not this year, but I remember previous year’s organisers suggesting to ban the culprit from some rationalist circles) and having all readership witness the totally artificially created drama.
To me too, but my ‘interesting’ would be something like “I’m glad it exists even if it’s flawed”. The most important problem for me is that in its current shape it does not allow to draw useful conclusions from the outcome (thanks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EW8yZYcu3Kff2qShS/?commentId=C97ngHSu6iHmdCjPc for clarifying that point for me)
I don’t want to have a ton of meta discussion on the day of the experiment, but I am pretty interested in ideas from people on how to reduce the bad parts of the social ritual. I think the benefits of doing a thing like this are pretty high, and I am pretty excited about the benefits of the trust exercise, but also don’t want to needlessly distress people. So if people have any ideas on wording or additional text we could add to the announcements or emails, I think that would be a productive use of time.
The obvious thing is to ask people to consent before entering the game? It’s weird to get an email, out of the blue, with launch codes, telling you that you are now part of this game. While an email that spells out some of the explicit norms, and asks people to opt-in, seems great.
A light-touch intervention could just be giving people a link to click to get the launch codes, that shows some text spelling out norms like this, and ask people to only click the link if they actually want to participate.
EDIT: To be clear, I am participating in this, and would have opted-in—I just think it’s a really bad norm to not ask for consent first, when we’re putting people in a situation with real risks and social consequences, and with wildly differing perceptions of the depth of meaning in this event.
Well, I agree that in general you should ask consent before pulling people into any game, but I suppose that part of the purpose was precisely to see how people react to random responsibilities (which can definitely happen in real life). I mean, the Soviet probably didn’t bother to get Petrov’s consent before putting him in the control room. And all that’s required in our case is basically “please do nothing”… I didn’t receive the email, but I don’t think I would be upset by one message just asking to be ignored (an email asking me to actively do something to prevent destruction would have been a different kettle of fish).
Full disclosure: I clicked the button. Actually, I misclicked the button while hovering on it. I suppose that’s the reason why GitHub and similar services are very careful to hide the “delete repository” button behind long page scrolls and also add an additional “are you absolutely sure?” popup.
For the next Petrov Day, I think we should at least add the blocking popup instead of just having an “Are you sure?” title over the button. Being tricked into pushing the button is one thing, but it should not be possible to push the button purely by accident.
The problem is that people are entered aa a situation where they don’t necessarily understand the context and cultural expectations other people may have, could very reasonably misunderstand things, but are exposed to dede real and meaningful social risks if they do misunderstand things. Framings lakelike “sometimes you get random responsibilities” ONLY make sense a mutual understanding that thesethe situation is taken seriously, which empirically was obviously ot universal here.
I agree, but the people who actually received the codes are supposed to be carefully selected LW users, not totally random people. I would be quite impressed to learn that someone between those 100 users didn’t actually understand the context (on the other hand, I do expect random LW users who didn’t get codes to press the Red Button for the lulz without necessarily knowing the context, and I agree they shouldn’t be blamed for this).
That said, adding more things clarifying the context is probably good. Petrov himself surely didn’t have the context problem.
I was one of 270 last year and am one of 100 this year, I did not understand the context last year. Empirically, neither did Chris last year. Multiple people on the EA Forum have commented about not understanding the context
Ok, then I publicly declare to be quite impressed.
(I’ll treat this as further evidence that inferential distances tend to be longer than expected)
If it helps, here’s a comment I wrote last year trying to narrate my internal experience of reading the email (I then read the 2019 threads and eventually twigged how seriously people took it, but that was strongly not my prior—it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to ask the question ‘do people take this more seriously than a game?’)
I don’t know if this would defeat part of the purpose, but what about making it opt-in over a long time period, e.g. giving people all year to put themselves on the list of people who might be chosen to receive codes?
Other than that, I think it’s mostly a question of (to the extent possible without undermining what you’re trying to do) making it pretty clear to the recipients that people take this seriously and would genuinely like them to refrain from using the codes. As far as I can tell, that has already improved from last year. (It seems like there might have been some tonal ambiguity last year, with phrasing intended to be heightened but mostly serious coming across to some readers as playful and mostly joking.)
One way to make it seem more serious (to me) would be to make the effects bigger. E.g. taking down the frontpage (or the whole site?) for a whole week rather than just a day.