I was not aware of this story and happy to hear it. While I think having the day of celebration and rememberance should be done, I wonder about the exercise with the button.
First, just not pushing the button and bring the page down for a day seems not to fit the problem. The button should be shutting down someone else’s site with the realization that they will have some knowledge of that coming and have a button that shuts your page down. Perhaps next year the game could include other sites, and particularly sites whose members do not really see eye-to-eye on things.
Second, it doesn’t really tell others much about avoiding such situations. Reading Eliezer’s post the critical insight for me seems to be that of remaining calm and taking the time available to think a bit rather than merely react and follow instructions of a mindless process. That Petrov realized that launching 5 missiles just made no sense, so came to the conclusion that there was a system error/false positive is critical here.
We had some original plans of coordinating with the EA Forum people on this, but didn’t end up having enough time available to make all of that happen. Agree that the ideal reenactment scenario would include two forums (though with mutually assured destruction in the later parts of the cold war, the outcome is ultimately the same).
A slightly different thought that might be easier to coordinate. Have the button hide all the comments of a specific user on LW—adds the variance that the thread is not merely bilateral. We could also add something that might obscure the actor, thought not entirely hide their action.
Additionally, we could have the button delete a selected subset of comments/posts allowing a scenario where one needs to decide if an all out attack was launched or something else is going on. That seems to be what Petrov faced. I would also add something that produced an almost identical signal even if no one pushed their button.
Though, now it’s becoming more like a war game on LW than simply noting a (at least I think) positive event in history. Still, we might make it a good experiment and see what can be learned.
Maybe I’m in a dark mindset here....
Seems like today, even with (due to?) the advances in weapons and other technology that MAD assumption may no longer be believed. I recall Putin claiming Russia would in fact survive an all out war with the USA. I wonder how much that view might change the way the game plays out.
On a tangent here, part of the concern is the proliferation of the technology. What would a Guarantee Assured Destruction (GAD) policy be for any country/group seeking such technology? Is that a better world than what we have now?
I was not aware of this story and happy to hear it. While I think having the day of celebration and rememberance should be done, I wonder about the exercise with the button.
First, just not pushing the button and bring the page down for a day seems not to fit the problem. The button should be shutting down someone else’s site with the realization that they will have some knowledge of that coming and have a button that shuts your page down. Perhaps next year the game could include other sites, and particularly sites whose members do not really see eye-to-eye on things.
Second, it doesn’t really tell others much about avoiding such situations. Reading Eliezer’s post the critical insight for me seems to be that of remaining calm and taking the time available to think a bit rather than merely react and follow instructions of a mindless process. That Petrov realized that launching 5 missiles just made no sense, so came to the conclusion that there was a system error/false positive is critical here.
We had some original plans of coordinating with the EA Forum people on this, but didn’t end up having enough time available to make all of that happen. Agree that the ideal reenactment scenario would include two forums (though with mutually assured destruction in the later parts of the cold war, the outcome is ultimately the same).
A slightly different thought that might be easier to coordinate. Have the button hide all the comments of a specific user on LW—adds the variance that the thread is not merely bilateral. We could also add something that might obscure the actor, thought not entirely hide their action.
Additionally, we could have the button delete a selected subset of comments/posts allowing a scenario where one needs to decide if an all out attack was launched or something else is going on. That seems to be what Petrov faced. I would also add something that produced an almost identical signal even if no one pushed their button.
Though, now it’s becoming more like a war game on LW than simply noting a (at least I think) positive event in history. Still, we might make it a good experiment and see what can be learned.
Maybe I’m in a dark mindset here....
Seems like today, even with (due to?) the advances in weapons and other technology that MAD assumption may no longer be believed. I recall Putin claiming Russia would in fact survive an all out war with the USA. I wonder how much that view might change the way the game plays out.
On a tangent here, part of the concern is the proliferation of the technology. What would a Guarantee Assured Destruction (GAD) policy be for any country/group seeking such technology? Is that a better world than what we have now?
If you’ve got launch codes, wait until tomorrow to read this eh? —
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