I’m not on LW, so this was the first time I’d heard of this ritual. As designed, it appears to emphasize the precise opposite values that we honor in Petrov:
Petrov famously did not retaliate (according to the information he had). In this game, a co-lead of an EA org publicly pledges to retaliate.
Petrov chose to distrust the systems around him. This game emphasizes a forced choice of trust .
Petrov defied his in-group and suffered professional and social costs, which we honor. Here, defying the in-group would also mean professional and social costs, but are wielded as a threat.
Petrov’s choices had enormous positive externalities. Here, the game emphasizes the insular desires of one community.
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.
I’ll add this to Nathan’s other post, but other ways to celebrate Petrov might be:
write an Opinion piece for a major paper about him (the Washington Post one is over 20 years old! could use an update);
organize a Giving Day;
create a coordinated social media campaign (there was one viral tweet yesterday about Petrov which was cool)
Research other people who’ve had similar impact, but are still unknown to the world (h/t to Kirsten who mentioned this on Twitter a while back)
I appreciate the work of those who organized the game yesterday, and the willingness to listen to this feedback.
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.
I’m not on LW, so this was the first time I’d heard of this ritual. As designed, it appears to emphasize the precise opposite values that we honor in Petrov:
Petrov famously did not retaliate (according to the information he had). In this game, a co-lead of an EA org publicly pledges to retaliate.
Petrov chose to distrust the systems around him. This game emphasizes a forced choice of trust .
Petrov defied his in-group and suffered professional and social costs, which we honor. Here, defying the in-group would also mean professional and social costs, but are wielded as a threat.
Petrov’s choices had enormous positive externalities. Here, the game emphasizes the insular desires of one community.
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.
I’ll add this to Nathan’s other post, but other ways to celebrate Petrov might be:
write an Opinion piece for a major paper about him (the Washington Post one is over 20 years old! could use an update);
organize a Giving Day;
create a coordinated social media campaign (there was one viral tweet yesterday about Petrov which was cool)
Research other people who’ve had similar impact, but are still unknown to the world (h/t to Kirsten who mentioned this on Twitter a while back)
I appreciate the work of those who organized the game yesterday, and the willingness to listen to this feedback.
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.