The second–and I think more serious–complaint around lack of opt-in is that it leaves people who object to the ritual with no good option. If you don’t press the button, you are tacitly cooperating with a ritual you object to; if you do press it, you’ll have destroyed value and be subject to serious social sanction.
Moreover, the organizers (me, EA Forum staff) have declared by fiat what the moral significance of people’s symbolic actions are. This goes beyond just deciding what the ritual is and into deciding what’s good and bad symbolic behavior (with strong social consequences). While the Petrov Day ritual might be innocuous, it is a scary precedent if LessWrong/EA Forum organizers freely shape the moral symbolic landscape this way, without the checks and balances of broader community discussion.
I think these problems are inherent in the Red Button. I got a little wild in the postmortem thread for last year, but I still have most of the same thoughts, just more calmly.
But I was most persuaded by the commenters who pointed out that the Red Button doesn’t celebrate what we want to celebrate about Petrov. The moral is not “Thank goodness Petrov didn’t 1) recognize the false positives and 2) send the report up the chain anyway out of spite or poor impulse control or a belief that the satellite signatures were a prank.” It’s “Thank goodness Petrov recognized the false positives, using Bayesian reasoning and game theory, and therefore didn’t send the report.” Conceptually, it’s “Thank goodness a human used zir brain when it mattered and may have thereby prevented the apocalypse.”
Thank you for the thorough postmortem that didn’t ignore these issues.
edit: Lethriloth’s parent comment went up while I was drafting my comment. I see that zir analysis of what we’re celebrating about Petrov is different from mine, but also totally understandable and defensible. I think this literal ambivalence in the story is another reason that LW/EAF should think more about how to celebrate Petrov Day.
I think these problems are inherent in the Red Button. I got a little wild in the postmortem thread for last year, but I still have most of the same thoughts, just more calmly.
But I was most persuaded by the commenters who pointed out that the Red Button doesn’t celebrate what we want to celebrate about Petrov. The moral is not “Thank goodness Petrov didn’t 1) recognize the false positives and 2) send the report up the chain anyway out of spite or poor impulse control or a belief that the satellite signatures were a prank.” It’s “Thank goodness Petrov recognized the false positives, using Bayesian reasoning and game theory, and therefore didn’t send the report.” Conceptually, it’s “Thank goodness a human used zir brain when it mattered and may have thereby prevented the apocalypse.”
Thank you for the thorough postmortem that didn’t ignore these issues.
edit: Lethriloth’s parent comment went up while I was drafting my comment. I see that zir analysis of what we’re celebrating about Petrov is different from mine, but also totally understandable and defensible. I think this literal ambivalence in the story is another reason that LW/EAF should think more about how to celebrate Petrov Day.