There’s another important point that the structure of this game is just very different from what Petrov faced.
The game Petrov was in looked like a chain of decision points, where any individual actor or group of actors could have chosen to de-escalate
US could have backed down earlier, causing background rates to be lower → mechanical detection of nukes could have not malfunctioned → Petrov could choose or not choose to forward this message to superiors → Soviet superior officers could choose to pass or not pass this message upwards → Soviet missile command could choose to fire or not fire their missiles at America → The Americans could choose to retaliate or not retaliate, thus sparing the Eastern hemisphere.
What we faced looked like:
Any 1 of 100 people could choose to nuke LW → Any 1 of 100 people could choose to nuke EAF.
Here, it’s clear that “nuking” is the unilateral action, whereas in Petrov’s case, not nuking is most simply read as the more unilateral action.
Small note:
Additionally, I do believe that these two websites have value to a few thousand people. But it needs to be said that being offline for several hours is not nearly comparable to the lives of millions of people. Yet that comparison was made often. Stating that they are symbolically the same risks devaluing the reputation of the community here.
This seems like a rather odd objection to me, like saying that abstract prisoner’s dilemmas in game theory classes are bad because millions of actual prisoners suffer greatly under the unfair criminal justice system. Metaphors and analogies are often useful for humans to think and reason about the world.
There’s another important point that the structure of this game is just very different from what Petrov faced.
The game Petrov was in looked like a chain of decision points, where any individual actor or group of actors could have chosen to de-escalate
US could have backed down earlier, causing background rates to be lower → mechanical detection of nukes could have not malfunctioned → Petrov could choose or not choose to forward this message to superiors → Soviet superior officers could choose to pass or not pass this message upwards → Soviet missile command could choose to fire or not fire their missiles at America → The Americans could choose to retaliate or not retaliate, thus sparing the Eastern hemisphere.
What we faced looked like:
Any 1 of 100 people could choose to nuke LW → Any 1 of 100 people could choose to nuke EAF.
Here, it’s clear that “nuking” is the unilateral action, whereas in Petrov’s case, not nuking is most simply read as the more unilateral action.
Small note:
This seems like a rather odd objection to me, like saying that abstract prisoner’s dilemmas in game theory classes are bad because millions of actual prisoners suffer greatly under the unfair criminal justice system. Metaphors and analogies are often useful for humans to think and reason about the world.