The vast, vast majority of people won’t start a nuclear war when it doesn’t benefit them
But there are more people than Petrov who faced incentives to push us into [nuclear] war do so but didn’t. Say, the Cuban missile crisis. There were pressures to escalate and I think we should also be celebrating the virtues of leaders who didn’t choose to escalate in those circumstances. E.g. people who deescalate even when there’s a force pushing in the direction of “better strike first before they day do”.
Even if in all those cases deescalation was the only sane move, I think we should celebrate the sanity.
Maybe “Petrov Day” anchors us too narrowly, but i don’t think the holiday should be that narrow.
But there are more people than Petrov who faced incentives to push us into [nuclear] war do so but didn’t. Say, the Cuban missile crisis. There were pressures to escalate and I think we should also be celebrating the virtues of leaders who didn’t choose to escalate in those circumstances. E.g. people who deescalate even when there’s a force pushing in the direction of “better strike first before they day do”.
Even if in all those cases deescalation was the only sane move, I think we should celebrate the sanity.
Maybe “Petrov Day” anchors us too narrowly, but i don’t think the holiday should be that narrow.