I did see those points. I think the ritual as designed does not do a good job of supporting those points because, again, all the pressures are being lined up against pressing the button. I will acknowledge that there is probably no good way to design a ritual to celebrate the virtue of ignoring social pressure and career consequences to do the right thing (At least not one as participatory as this one) but that doesn’t mean we should build a ritual with the exact opposite message.
The Less Wrong team could undertake to pay (say) $500 to the first person to launch the missiles, if anyone does. Perhaps also, since not everyone shares their view of how valuable the LW front page is, undertake to give (say) $2000 to some cause widely regarded as deserving, if the missiles are not launched.
It seems likely that for most people this would make the direction of the personal-gain incentives be the same as Petrov’s actually were. Not the exact same sort of incentives as Petrov’s, of course, but it would surely reduce the extent to which all the incentives are exactly backwards compared to those that Petrov himself faced.
If Petrov pressing the button would have led to a decent chance of him being incinerated by American nukes, and if he valued his life much more than he valued avoiding the consequences he could expect to face for not pressing, then he had no reason to press the button even from a purely selfish perspective, and pressing it would have been a purely destructive act, like in past LW Petrov Days, or maybe a kind of Russian roulette.
I did see those points. I think the ritual as designed does not do a good job of supporting those points because, again, all the pressures are being lined up against pressing the button. I will acknowledge that there is probably no good way to design a ritual to celebrate the virtue of ignoring social pressure and career consequences to do the right thing (At least not one as participatory as this one) but that doesn’t mean we should build a ritual with the exact opposite message.
The Less Wrong team could undertake to pay (say) $500 to the first person to launch the missiles, if anyone does. Perhaps also, since not everyone shares their view of how valuable the LW front page is, undertake to give (say) $2000 to some cause widely regarded as deserving, if the missiles are not launched.
It seems likely that for most people this would make the direction of the personal-gain incentives be the same as Petrov’s actually were. Not the exact same sort of incentives as Petrov’s, of course, but it would surely reduce the extent to which all the incentives are exactly backwards compared to those that Petrov himself faced.
If Petrov pressing the button would have led to a decent chance of him being incinerated by American nukes, and if he valued his life much more than he valued avoiding the consequences he could expect to face for not pressing, then he had no reason to press the button even from a purely selfish perspective, and pressing it would have been a purely destructive act, like in past LW Petrov Days, or maybe a kind of Russian roulette.
lol