I disagree. The fact that Petrov didn’t press the metaphorical button puts him in the company of Stalin, Mao, and every other leader of a nuclear power since 1945. The vast, vast majority of people won’t start a nuclear war when it doesn’t benefit them. The things that make Petrov special are a) that he was operating under conditions of genuine uncertainty and b) he faced real, severe consequences for not reporting the alert up his chain of command. Even in those adverse circumstances, he made the right call. I’m not totally sure how to structure a ritual that mimics those circumstances, but I do think they represent the core virtues we should be celebrating. Not pressing a button is easy; reasoning towards the right thing in a confusing situation where your community pressures you in the wrong direction is hard.
suspected_spinozist
Karma: 54
It seems relevant that class size is one of the factors used to generate the U.S. News & World Report college rankings – and among those factors, it’s one of the easier ones to game (see, e.g., this report on how Columbia manipulated their ranking, summarized by Andrew Gelman here). I’d bet the trend towards more, smaller classes is driven at least in part by competition to keep up in the rankings.