I don’t think much of people who unilaterally try to take down something more like a public utility for 24 hours.
If you’re going to appeal to consequences, you are as much at fault for getting the site taken down as the attacker. It is reasonable for the attacker to assume that you would not do something you think is bad. He can conclude that you must not be assigning blame based on consequences, aka it’s a game.
Would it also be reasonable for a user to expect that the administrator of a site would not expose it to being shut down by some random person, if the administrator did not see the matter as a game?
That’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s wrong in this case. Ben greatly values both LessWrong staying up and this serious experiment celebrating Petrov day. But the experiment can be serious only if he commits to shutting down the site when somebody enters the codes. Ben thought there was only a 20% chance of that happening. So the other reasonable conclusion is:
Value of Petrov Day Experiment > 0.2 * Value of LessWrong not going down for a day
It is reasonable for the attacker to assume that you would not do something you think is bad.
It is reasonable and it is wrong. The point of Petrov Day is that Petrov didn’t do what was reasonable, he actually managed to take the right action. Perhaps it’s not much criticism to say someone doesn’t live up to Petrov’s standards, but nonetheless, if you blindly trusted the admin team, you didn’t live up to Petrov’s standards.
I disagree with this. Yes, the admins put a valuable resource at risk, which in their estimation has a non-trivial negative impact if it is taken down. But this was done in the hopes of gaining something more important than what they risked: a meaningful signal of trust, not just in any particular person, but trust in an entire culture and community (i.e., the LessWrong community), trust that selected people from this community can be given the power to do harm, and have things not go poorly. This common knowledge is very valuable (especially when this community is actively currently dealing with an existential risk that is just as dangerous, even more so, as nuclear war is/was), more than what the admins put at stake to hopefully earn this trust.
In contrast, a participant in Petrov Day who fails to live up to expectations, not only causes a harm which is intended (by the organizers) to be non-trivial, but also sacrifices our chance at building this trust, a chance we won’t have again for 12 more months.
If you’re going to appeal to consequences, you are as much at fault for getting the site taken down as the attacker. It is reasonable for the attacker to assume that you would not do something you think is bad. He can conclude that you must not be assigning blame based on consequences, aka it’s a game.
Would it also be reasonable for a user to expect that the administrator of a site would not expose it to being shut down by some random person, if the administrator did not see the matter as a game?
That’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s wrong in this case. Ben greatly values both LessWrong staying up and this serious experiment celebrating Petrov day. But the experiment can be serious only if he commits to shutting down the site when somebody enters the codes. Ben thought there was only a 20% chance of that happening. So the other reasonable conclusion is:
And Ben acted accordingly.
Yes, that follows logically and was part of what I was trying to communicate.
It is reasonable and it is wrong. The point of Petrov Day is that Petrov didn’t do what was reasonable, he actually managed to take the right action. Perhaps it’s not much criticism to say someone doesn’t live up to Petrov’s standards, but nonetheless, if you blindly trusted the admin team, you didn’t live up to Petrov’s standards.
I disagree with this. Yes, the admins put a valuable resource at risk, which in their estimation has a non-trivial negative impact if it is taken down. But this was done in the hopes of gaining something more important than what they risked: a meaningful signal of trust, not just in any particular person, but trust in an entire culture and community (i.e., the LessWrong community), trust that selected people from this community can be given the power to do harm, and have things not go poorly. This common knowledge is very valuable (especially when this community is actively currently dealing with an existential risk that is just as dangerous, even more so, as nuclear war is/was), more than what the admins put at stake to hopefully earn this trust.
In contrast, a participant in Petrov Day who fails to live up to expectations, not only causes a harm which is intended (by the organizers) to be non-trivial, but also sacrifices our chance at building this trust, a chance we won’t have again for 12 more months.