Clarifying the Petrov Day Exercise

I strongly agree with all this. Another downside I've felt from this exercise is it feels like I've been dragged into a community ritual I'm not really a fan of where my options are a) tacitly support (even if it is just deleting the email where I got the codes with a flicker of irritation) b) an ostentatious and disproportionate show of disapproval. 

I generally think EA- and longtermist- land could benefit from more 'professional distance': that folks can contribute to these things without having to adopt an identity or community that steadily metastasises over the rest of their life - with at-best-murky EV to both themselves and the 'cause'.  I also think particular attempts at ritual often feel kitsch and prone to bathos: I imagine my feelings towards the 'big red button' at the top of the site might be similar to how many Christians react to some of their brethren 'reenacting' the crucifixion themselves.

But hey, I'm (thankfully) not the one carrying down the stone tablets of community norms from the point of view of the universe here - to each their own. Alas this restraint is not universal, as this is becoming a (capital C) Community ritual, where 'success' or 'failure' is taken to be important (at least by some) not only for those who do or don't hit the button, but corporate praxis generally. 

As someone who is already ambivalent, it rankles that my inaction will be taken as tacit support for some after-action pean to some sticky-back-plastic icon of 'who we are as a Community'. Yet although 'protesting' by '''''nuking''''' [sic] ([sic]) LW has some benefit of a) probably won't get opted in again and b) maybe make this less likely to be an ongoing 'thing', it has some downsides. I'm less worried about 'losing rep' (I have more than enough of both e-clout and ego to make counter-signalling an attractive proposition; '''''nuking''''' LW in a fit of 'take this and shove it' pique is pretty on-brand for me), but more that some people take this (very) seriously and would be sad if this self-imposed risk is realised. Even I disagree (and think this is borderline infantile), protesting in this way feels a bit like trying to refute a child's belief their beloved toy is sapient by destroying it in front of them.  

I guess we can all be thankful 'writing asperous forum comments' provides a means of de-escalation.

I'm not on LW, so this was the first time I'd heard of this ritual. As designed, it appears to emphasize the precise opposite values that we honor in Petrov:

• Petrov famously did not retaliate (according to the information he had). In this game, a co-lead of an EA org publicly pledges to retaliate.
• Petrov chose to distrust the systems around him. This game emphasizes a forced choice of trust .
• Petrov defied his in-group and suffered professional and social costs, which we honor. Here, defying the in-group would also mean professional and social costs, but are wielded as a threat.
• Petrov's choices had enormous positive externalities. Here, the game emphasizes the insular desires of one community. 

Additionally, I do believe that these two websites have value to a few thousand people. But it needs to be said that being offline for several hours is not nearly comparable to the lives of millions of people. Yet that comparison was made often. Stating that they are symbolically the same risks devaluing the reputation of the community here. 

I'll add this to Nathan's other post, but other ways to celebrate Petrov might be:

•  write an Opinion piece for a major paper about him (the Washington Post one is over 20 years old! could use an update); 
• organize a Giving Day; 
• create a coordinated social media campaign (there was one viral tweet yesterday about Petrov which was cool)
• Research other people who've had similar impact, but are still unknown to the world (h/t to Kirsten who mentioned this on Twitter a while back)

I appreciate the work of those who organized the game yesterday, and the willingness to listen to this feedback.

I agree with the sentiment here. I am confused about how some people are taking this super seriously and some people are not, and I feel distracted by being worried about offending people over this ritual. I'd love to play a game, play in a social experiment, or observe a ritual, but I agree it would be more fun to know which. Right now, this is not as fun as it could be.

Context: I have both LW and EA Forum launch codes. I never opted-in.

Hey, I got an email with a code and then I entered it. 

What does it do? Is there a prize?

It seems fairly likely (25%) to me that had Kirsten not started this discussion (on Twitter) I would have pushed the button because:

• actually preventing the destruction of the world is important to me.

• doing so, especially as a "trusted community member", would hammer home the danger of well intentioned unilateralists in the way an essay can't, and I think that idea is important.

• despite being aware of lesswrong and having co-authored one post there, I didn't really understand how seriously some people took the game previously.

• worse, I was in the dangerous position of having heard enough about Petrov day to, when I read the email, think "oh yeah I basically know what this is about", and therefore not read the announcement post.

I decided not to launch, but this was primarily because it became apparent through this discussion how socially costly it would be. I find people being angry with me on the internet unusually hard, and expect that pushing the button using the reasoning above could quite easily have cost me a significant amount of productive work (my median is ~ 1 week).

As an update, I've decided not to push the button this year.

However I tentatively believe that this event in its current form is net negative for community health. I also see that a lot of the issues were predictable from last year's comments but were not addressed.

For that reason, if next year's event hasn't been changed enough to be positive for community health (ie clear purpose, shared understanding around social pressure, opt-in if it could have any impact on people's friendships) I am pre-committing to pressing the button. If I'm not invited I'll encourage someone else to press it.

If you make it opt-in, please do feel free to invite me - really! There are a lot of versions of this that I think I'd enjoy and I promise I'm not an entirely uncooperative person

Thanks for writing this! I personally am a pretty big fan of the idea of this Petrov Day celebration, and have gotten joy from previous years, but mostly within the frame of the game or prompt for interesting discussions and explorations of norms. To me, this doesn't feel like a community ritual, though it clearly does to some. Though I could imagine getting value and connection from an alternate version of this that did feel like a real ritual.

But I strongly agree that not asking people for consent/to opt-in is clearly bad here, and significantly under-cuts a lot of the possible value. In particular, I just do not think a community ritual works without asking people to buy in to it. And I feel pretty uncomfortable that people are entered into a game that may have real social consequences to them or give them opportunity to upset other people, without really having context on this - in particular, what happened at LessWrong last year seems terrible. 

Epistemic status: I'm still pretty confused about this whole thing, and wasn't involved in ideation. (Though I helped when asked by choosing whom to email, editing the LW email , and making a post.)

A few good people who were genuinely concerned about me mentioned to me privately that if I don't take the Red Button exercise, there could be social consequences, or it might even lead to me missing out on job opportunities in the EA Community.

I'll second Ruby in taking some blame for the overly serious/sanctimonious tone of the email, which I made some edits to before both emails were sent. I didn't make it more serious, but neither did I make it less serious, even though this whole practice feels more like a "fun social game" than "serious community ritual" to me.

To be clear, I don't know whether the aforementioned "social consequences" would exist. I wouldn't plan to think about the results of Petrov Day if I were considering someone for a job, or in any other context where I had any say in someone's EA community experience. And maybe everyone else is on the same page with me — judging by the comments here, it feels like the Forum's users generally don't take the activity seriously in its current form.

But if someone out there does plan to "impose consequences" in some form, and states that desire, I think they risk damaging our ability to do fun community things that aren't also tied to future professional success.*

 In the future, I don't want this event to be associated with social pressure or coercion, however incidentally. I've also never been enthusiastic about it in its current form, and if I'm still working on the Forum this time next year, I hope I'll be helping to produce something different for the holiday.

*Though fun community things can still be meaningful! The best discussion I've seen on different ways to interpret the activity, and the balance between "serious and fun", is here. 

Habryka's reply is a good representation of what seems valuable about the activity to me. But I wouldn't want to follow him in "losing trust" in anyone who pressed the button. (As long as they had a good reason; if the reason is "I never liked the Forum much and I wanted to watch it burn", that's obviously a bit different.)

I agree with pretty much everything except:

At present, however, participants aren't given any way of opting out without deeply hurting their friends, regardless of whether this ritual reflects their values, which undermines the value of the ritual.

It seems like anyone who received codes who didn't want to participate could easily just ignore the email and not participate without any negative consequence. I don't understand why you think opting out would lead to one's friends being hurt.

I like the idea of having an obvious opt-in form into the game/ritual that makes it clearer that you understand how people might react to how you use the code. Maybe just something simple like having to click through two Google Docs in order to actually get your code, or a small Google Form that has the code on its confirmation screen. I really like the overall ritual and game, but also don't want people to feel like they are tacitly signaling approval. The form could also have a simple checkbox that says "I don't want to see my codes, and I don't want to be sent codes in future years", which we could take into account when deciding on who to send codes to in future years.

Thanks for writing this, and I agree with your take that it's toxic when people find out after starting to engage that they may face serious consequences for not taking it seriously enough (and indeed whether or not they actually would, since it's still unsettling to believe it). I'm sorry that this has been your experience.

If anyone wants to suggest what they'd like to see from Petrov Day, I've written a question here. 

I thought it was explicit in the announcement post that we should take this seriously, but in not the e-mail I got:

If LessWrong chose any launch code recipients they couldn't trust, the EA Forum will go down, and vice versa. One of the sites going down means that people are blocked from accessing important resources: the destruction of significant real value. What's more, it will damage trust between the two sites ("I guess your most trusted users couldn't be trusted to not take down our site") and also for each site itself ("I guess the admins couldn't find a hundred people who could be trusted").

For exact rules of the game, see the final section below.

Last year, it emerged that there was ambiguity about how serious the Petrov Day exercise was. I'll be clear as I can via text: there is real value on the line here, and this is a real  trust-building exercise that was not undertaken lightly by either LessWrong or the Forum. Both sites have chosen recipients who we hope will understand this.

FWIW, I made a joke comment on the EA Forum announcement post shortly after I got my code, and then deleted it (without a trace) a few minutes after, maybe after more carefully reading the announcement post. The joke was that I'd try to make the average predictions in this comment as wrong as possible (and I made it clear that I was only joking after an edit). I was indeed worried that it would hurt my reputation and the reputation of those in EA I associate with, and wanted to see what tone things would take first.

Thanks for writing this. I've been thinking about this a lot today.

Another purpose could be raising awareness of nuclear risk and unilateralism. And that could either be as a game or as a community building ritual. But I agree it should be clear which of those it is.

My guess is that is meant to be a community building exercise but to add some jeopardy, it's been gamified. If it were opt in, I reckon there would be little risk of the button being pressed, which would be less interesting. As Khorton says, this is pretty confusing and potentially harmful for those who misread the situation.

Based on how others have been warning you, it feels like the kind of psychological/social experiment you would need to have a psychological debriefing after to get ethics approval, and even then, still might not get approval.