I didn’t learn about Stanislav Petrov until I saw announcements about Petrov Day a few years ago on the EA Forum. My initial thought was “what is so special about Stanislav Petrov? Why not celebrate Vasily Arkhipov?”
I had known about Vasily Arkhipovfor years, but the reality is that I don’t think one of them is more worthy of respect or idolization than the other. My point here is more about something like founder effects, path dependency, and cultural norms. You see, at some point someone in EA (I’m guessing) arbitrarily decided that Stanislav Petrov was more worth knowing and celebrating than Vasily Arkhipov, and now knowledge of Stanislav Petrovis widespread (within this very narrow community). But that seems pretty arbitrary. There are other things like this, right? Things that people hold dear or believe that are little more than cultural norms, passed on because “that is the way we do things here.”
I think a lot about culture and norms, probably as a result of studying other cultures and then living in other countries (non-anglophone countries) for most of my adult life. I’m wondering what other things exist in EA that are like Stanislav Petrov: things that we do for no good reason other than that other people do them.
The origin of Petrov Day, as an idea for an actual holiday, is this post by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Arkhipov got a shout-out in the comments almost immediately, but “Petrov Day” was the post title, and it’s one syllable shorter.
There are many other things like Petrov Day, in this and every culture — arbitrary decisions that became tradition.
But of course, “started for no good reason” doesn’t have to mean “continued for no good reason”. Norms that survive tend to survive because people find them valuable. And there are plenty of things that used to be EA/rationalist norms that are now much less influential than they were, or even mostly forgotten. The first examples that come to mind for me:
Early EA groups sometimes did “live below the line” events where participants would try to live on a dollar a day (or some other small amount) for a time. This didn’t last long, because there were a bunch of problems with the idea and its implementation, and the whole thing faded out of EA pretty quickly (though it still exists elsewhere).
The Giving What We Can pledge used to be a central focus of student EA groups; it was thought to be really important and valuable to get your members to sign up. Over time, people realized this led students to feel pressure to make a lifelong decision too early on, some of whom regretted the decision later. The pledge gradually attained an (IMO) healthier status — a cool part of EA that lots of people are happy to take part in, but not an “EA default” that people implicitly expect you to do.
I would be happy to celebrate an Arkhipov Day. Is there anything that could distinguish the rituals and themes of the day? Arkhipov was in a submarine and had to disagree with two other officers IIRC? (Also when is it?)
Haha, I don’t think we need another holiday for Soviet military men who prevented what could have been WWIII. More so, I think we should ask ourselves (often) “Why do we do things the way we do, and should we do things that way?”
As Aaron notes, the “Petrov Day” tradition started with a post by Yudkowsky. It is indeed somewhat strange that Petrov was singled out like this, but I guess the thought was that we want to designate one day of the year as the “do not destroy the world day”, and “Petrov Day” was as good a name for it as any.
Note that this doesn’t seem representative of the degree of appreciation for Petrov vs. Arkhipov within the EA community. For example, the Future of Humanity Institute has both a Petrov Room and an Arkhipov Room (a fact that causes many people to mix them up), and the Future of Life Award was given both to Arkhipov (in 2017) and to Petrov (in 2018).
I think Arkhipov’s actions are in a sense perhaps even more consequential than Petrov’s, because it was truly by chance that he was present in that particular nuclear submarine, rather than in any of the other subs from the flotilla. This fact justifies the statement that, if history had repeated itself, the decision to launch a nuclear torpedo would likely not have been vetoed. The counterfactual for Petrov is not so clear.
I didn’t learn about Stanislav Petrov until I saw announcements about Petrov Day a few years ago on the EA Forum. My initial thought was “what is so special about Stanislav Petrov? Why not celebrate Vasily Arkhipov?”
I had known about Vasily Arkhipovfor years, but the reality is that I don’t think one of them is more worthy of respect or idolization than the other. My point here is more about something like founder effects, path dependency, and cultural norms. You see, at some point someone in EA (I’m guessing) arbitrarily decided that Stanislav Petrov was more worth knowing and celebrating than Vasily Arkhipov, and now knowledge of Stanislav Petrovis widespread (within this very narrow community). But that seems pretty arbitrary. There are other things like this, right? Things that people hold dear or believe that are little more than cultural norms, passed on because “that is the way we do things here.”
I think a lot about culture and norms, probably as a result of studying other cultures and then living in other countries (non-anglophone countries) for most of my adult life. I’m wondering what other things exist in EA that are like Stanislav Petrov: things that we do for no good reason other than that other people do them.
The origin of Petrov Day, as an idea for an actual holiday, is this post by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Arkhipov got a shout-out in the comments almost immediately, but “Petrov Day” was the post title, and it’s one syllable shorter.
There are many other things like Petrov Day, in this and every culture — arbitrary decisions that became tradition.
But of course, “started for no good reason” doesn’t have to mean “continued for no good reason”. Norms that survive tend to survive because people find them valuable. And there are plenty of things that used to be EA/rationalist norms that are now much less influential than they were, or even mostly forgotten. The first examples that come to mind for me:
Early EA groups sometimes did “live below the line” events where participants would try to live on a dollar a day (or some other small amount) for a time. This didn’t last long, because there were a bunch of problems with the idea and its implementation, and the whole thing faded out of EA pretty quickly (though it still exists elsewhere).
The Giving What We Can pledge used to be a central focus of student EA groups; it was thought to be really important and valuable to get your members to sign up. Over time, people realized this led students to feel pressure to make a lifelong decision too early on, some of whom regretted the decision later. The pledge gradually attained an (IMO) healthier status — a cool part of EA that lots of people are happy to take part in, but not an “EA default” that people implicitly expect you to do.
I would be happy to celebrate an Arkhipov Day. Is there anything that could distinguish the rituals and themes of the day? Arkhipov was in a submarine and had to disagree with two other officers IIRC? (Also when is it?)
Haha, I don’t think we need another holiday for Soviet military men who prevented what could have been WWIII. More so, I think we should ask ourselves (often) “Why do we do things the way we do, and should we do things that way?”
As Aaron notes, the “Petrov Day” tradition started with a post by Yudkowsky. It is indeed somewhat strange that Petrov was singled out like this, but I guess the thought was that we want to designate one day of the year as the “do not destroy the world day”, and “Petrov Day” was as good a name for it as any.
Note that this doesn’t seem representative of the degree of appreciation for Petrov vs. Arkhipov within the EA community. For example, the Future of Humanity Institute has both a Petrov Room and an Arkhipov Room (a fact that causes many people to mix them up), and the Future of Life Award was given both to Arkhipov (in 2017) and to Petrov (in 2018).
I think Arkhipov’s actions are in a sense perhaps even more consequential than Petrov’s, because it was truly by chance that he was present in that particular nuclear submarine, rather than in any of the other subs from the flotilla. This fact justifies the statement that, if history had repeated itself, the decision to launch a nuclear torpedo would likely not have been vetoed. The counterfactual for Petrov is not so clear.