Something like: “What does ‘would preserve that [virtue] over all others’ mean, exactly? What’s the scenario here, what’s forcing me to make this choice and what exactly do I think will be the consequences of making the selection? Who am I ‘reporting’ my epistemic state to? Why is there no option that talks about seeking the truth and understanding reality? Can I pick ‘the virtue of not taking silly philosophy questions at face value’?”
At the risk of butting in, I also didn’t participate because none of the options reflected my own views on the important virtue of Petrov Day, which is more like “Do not start a fucking nuclear war”. You can try to distill that down to nicely categorized principles and virtues, and some of those might well be good things on their own, but at this level of abstraction it doesn’t capture what’s special about Petrov Day to me.
Trying to file down the Petrov Day narrative into supporting some other hobbyhorse, even if it’s a wonderful hobbyhorse which I otherwise support like resisting social pressure, is a disservice to what Stanislav Petrov actually did. The world is richer and more complex than that.
I personally preferred the past Petrov Day events, with the button games and standoffs between different groups and all that. They didn’t perfectly reflect the exact dilemma Petrov faced, sure, but what could. They were messy and idiosyncratic and turned on weird specific details. That feels like a much closer reflection of what makes Petrov’s story compelling, to me. Maybe the later stages of this year’s event would’ve felt more like that, if I’d seen them at the time, but reading the description I suspect probably not.
I like that you guys are trying a bunch of different stuff and it’s fine if this one thing didn’t land for me.
I’m curious to know what your free-form response would be.
Something like: “What does ‘would preserve that [virtue] over all others’ mean, exactly? What’s the scenario here, what’s forcing me to make this choice and what exactly do I think will be the consequences of making the selection? Who am I ‘reporting’ my epistemic state to? Why is there no option that talks about seeking the truth and understanding reality? Can I pick ‘the virtue of not taking silly philosophy questions at face value’?”
At the risk of butting in, I also didn’t participate because none of the options reflected my own views on the important virtue of Petrov Day, which is more like “Do not start a fucking nuclear war”. You can try to distill that down to nicely categorized principles and virtues, and some of those might well be good things on their own, but at this level of abstraction it doesn’t capture what’s special about Petrov Day to me.
Trying to file down the Petrov Day narrative into supporting some other hobbyhorse, even if it’s a wonderful hobbyhorse which I otherwise support like resisting social pressure, is a disservice to what Stanislav Petrov actually did. The world is richer and more complex than that.
I personally preferred the past Petrov Day events, with the button games and standoffs between different groups and all that. They didn’t perfectly reflect the exact dilemma Petrov faced, sure, but what could. They were messy and idiosyncratic and turned on weird specific details. That feels like a much closer reflection of what makes Petrov’s story compelling, to me. Maybe the later stages of this year’s event would’ve felt more like that, if I’d seen them at the time, but reading the description I suspect probably not.
I like that you guys are trying a bunch of different stuff and it’s fine if this one thing didn’t land for me.