(I edited in more reply you may want to respond to. I think the button wasn’t actually designed to “destroy world”, it was designed to launch a counterattack. Petrov did seem to think it would based on some other quotes of his, but, like, AFAICT he was wrong. I think this is also true for Arkipov)
Granting for the sake of argument that launching the missiles might not have triggered full-scale nuclear war, or that one might wish to define “destroy the world” in a way that is not met by most full-scale nuclear wars, I am still dissatisfied with virtue A because I think an important part of Petrov’s situation was that whatever you think the button did, it’s really hard to find an upside to pushing it, whereas virtue A has been broadened to cover situations that are merely net bad, but where one could imagine arguments for pushing the button. My initial post framing it in terms of certainty may have been poorly phrased.
There is an upside to being the kind of person who will press the button in retaliation. You hope never to, but the fact that you credibly would allows for MAD game theory to apply. (FDT, etc. etc.)
(I edited in more reply you may want to respond to. I think the button wasn’t actually designed to “destroy world”, it was designed to launch a counterattack. Petrov did seem to think it would based on some other quotes of his, but, like, AFAICT he was wrong. I think this is also true for Arkipov)
Granting for the sake of argument that launching the missiles might not have triggered full-scale nuclear war, or that one might wish to define “destroy the world” in a way that is not met by most full-scale nuclear wars, I am still dissatisfied with virtue A because I think an important part of Petrov’s situation was that whatever you think the button did, it’s really hard to find an upside to pushing it, whereas virtue A has been broadened to cover situations that are merely net bad, but where one could imagine arguments for pushing the button. My initial post framing it in terms of certainty may have been poorly phrased.
There is an upside to being the kind of person who will press the button in retaliation. You hope never to, but the fact that you credibly would allows for MAD game theory to apply. (FDT, etc. etc.)