Stanislav Petrov Day

I'm an environmentalist because I don't want mercury poisoning from my sushi...

H'm, now it sounds like by "good for the environment" you didn't necessarily mean anything that you would consider good for anything at all, but just what a fairly unreflective person off of the street would mean by "good for the environment" in that context. In that case, I agree that the absence of humanity would be "good for the environment", although I don't particularly care what's "good for the environment", which is merely an instrumental value that would largely no longer apply. (That's just me, however.)

So thanks for explaining!

It sounds like hindsight bias, to act like, because we now know that it was a false alarm, it must have been obvious without the later knowledge.

I guess his intelligence was involved somewhat. Also, I'm not sure why I thought that was all that relevant. I wouldn't reward someone for doing something that they convinced themselves would save the world. That doesn't really apply to Petrov.

Are you saying that Petrov had superhero level powers, and so his act was relatively trivial?

It was luck instead of powers, but basically. It wasn't that he's a superhero per se. It's just the same sort of extreme version of the halo effect. He was in a situation where he could do extreme good at extremely low cost, which makes him seem really heroic without actually being very heroic at all.

On the other hand, salt starvation has consequences, especially in a hot climate where diarrheal diseases are common. The salt tax was ended as soon as India became independent.

Illness is a major cause of salt depletion (Black 1953, 305-11). People who are already low on salt are particularly vulnerable. Large quantities of salt can be lost in fever-sweat, in vomit, and most of all in diarrhoea (Marriott 1950, 32-4). This should be continually replenished. Severe diarrhoeas can drain as much as 1 ¾ ounces of salt from the body in a single day, and thus quickly lead to severe dehydration. Without intravenous infusion of saline solution – not an option in the period being considered – recovery would have been unlikely (Souhami and Moxham 1990, 849). However, milder diarrhoeas, which as any traveller can relate are common in India, can over a few days also lead to severe depletion (Marriott 1950, 33). Rehydration can only be effected with the intake of salt. Without this salt, however much water is drunk, recovery is impossible. Many diarrhoeas are self limiting – that is they terminate of their own accord, without drugs, after a few days. Rotavirus diarrhoea, which “is the commonest cause of diarrhoea in children up to 2 years old in the tropics” (Souhami and Moxham, 257), is an important example. It is essential to keep the body from dehydrating, and salt is necessary for this. The main ingredient of modern oral rehydration solutions is salt (257).

Mild salt depletion, resulting from insufficient salt in the diet, produces “extreme lassitude” (Marriott 1950, 40). This will, of course, reduce economic output. For people already on the edge of starvation, insufficient salt will set up a cycle of economic decline.

The Peace Prize has a very poorly defined mission.

Some third world activist who leads a social movement earns a lot of warm fuzzies, but probably doesn't affect the world very much (let's say Maathai).

Someone who pursues a naturally partisan and controversial goal peacefully probably produces a lot of conflict, but less conflict than they would have if they were violent about it. (Gandhi)

Some dictator or lunatic who mellows out and murders less than usual probably has a very large beneficial effect on the world, compared to his usual murder rate (Arafat and the Israelis).

The leader of a very large country, like the United States or the Soviet Union, can have a greater positive influence on the world just by being a fraction of a percent nicer than the average person, than the leader of a small country, or a private individual, can have by being an amazing saint (Obama).

And some random person in the right place at the right time may have a very large effect in terms of sheer scale, but be questionable in terms of genuine virtue (Petrov).

If about 60% of people, in Petrov's situation, would have done what he did, is it better to give the prize to him, or to some activist who has spent her whole life tirelessly struggling for freedom despite adversity?

I'm not a big fan of the Nobel committee's decisions, but given the pressures they face and the confusion of their task I don't think they've done a ridiculously inadequate job.

No, my advice for the most practical and ethical way of dealing with oppressors is to not protest at all, not let them know that you oppose them and systematically assassinate all their leaders until they leave.

I used to think that, but I no longer find it plausible. The premise seems to be that leaders are detachable pieces.

In fact, assassination has a risk of making leaders more frightened and forceful. Additionally, a good many people may be loyal to a leader, so that assassination registers as an outside threat rather than a favor.

A sequence of assassinations is hard. Are you expecting enough of your group to survive and continue? Other groups to take up the project?

Please, don't write "Ghandi" instead of Gandhi.

You are certainly trying hard to make me look bad but regardless of whether you are successful in persuading your audience I reject your claim.

I am not out to get you. I am out to correct your view of historical fact. I apologize for acting such that the latter was mistaken for the former.

I have more than enough evidence to conclude that I would prefer a peace prize that is awarded to Stanislav Petrov and Ghandi than one awarded to Yasser Arafat and Al Gore.

I agree with you.

I further suggest that if you don't think Ghandi's example would be consistent with getting offended by things then you totally missed the point of what he did.

I do not think Gandhi would have organized a fast, walk, or strike over not receiving a prize.

No, my advice for the most practical and ethical way of dealing with oppressors is to not protest at all, not let them know that you oppose them and systematically assassinate all their leaders until they leave.

That sounds likely to fail disastrously.

silly walks to fetch salt as a way to broadcast how offensive things are.

Not sure if intentional.

If the human brains adapted that much genetically during the existing relatively fast ramping up of civilization, powered by cheap accessible energy sources, then it can unadapt in the event of collapse and subsequent slower ramp up, starved of cheap energy.

If a form of civilization based on agriculture is maintained after the technological fallback

Cheap energy had very little to do with our massive changes. We are talking about consistent trend of people getting more adapted to civilization from the Neolithic through the Iron age and up until the 19th century. Freeze technology in any point between, humans would keep adapting to that level. And as long as populations continued to rise and new long distance trade links where being established, according to the 10k explosion hypothesis, faster. But I see your point, eventually as humans reached a new equilibrium and became decently adpated to life in static civilization and since there wouldn't be a lot of change, intelligence may no longer be needed for stuff like farming, human evolution would start slowing down and veering into odd directions. I'm just not sure this [stagnant civ] would actually happen given the absence of say fossil fuels.

Arguably genes for high IQ became maladaptive basically at the same time when we got cheap energy and launched the industrial revolution. Sure there is the possibility that evolution goes ahead and changes us into something like farming, herding mammalian ants in the absence of cheap energy, but why is this so much more likley than say the idiocracy scenario of Azatoth doing horrible things to us in the presence of cheap energy? (depending on how one interprets history we may have evidence in favour of both btw)

We demonstrably are not pretty good at finding substitutes! Look at how well the existing highly experienced and technically sophisticated civilization has done at the task!

On a time-scale of what, a century? In the absence of oil and coal I can't imagine say 18th century European civilization stagnating on a time scale of millennia. These are cosmic eye blinks. Canals, wind-power and watermills had already basically created a mini industrial revolution in some places. I also can't imagine say Aztec civilization stagnating in the absence of easily obtainable gold or copper.

On the grand scale, over time carrying capacities will generally rise as the crops and animals used are improved, people will get better at living in cities, merchant and priestly casts will keep getting smarter, farmers and herders will keep getting more resistant to infectious diseases and better adapted to their diets. And this should accelerate as long as population keeps getting larger.

Writing will be developed and continental scale empires may rise, if no earlier (because of say lack of iron) then when horse/camel/animal X riding hordes start extracting tribute from cities, or very very virulent religious memeplexes arise. The Mongolian peace and the Arab golden age where basically what happens when you tap into and connect a whole bunch of lands with differing intellectual traditions and make trade safe between them.

Eventually civilization will spread to harsh places like say parts Africa or Siberia where gold, silver, gems and even iron are still to be found. If scrap metals have been something known for millennia, and have probably become very high status items, how long before these smarter, perhaps more profit minded humans (at least their merchant caste) don't eventually find a way to smelt them?

And you still have human selecting animals and plants. Combine this with an 19th or even 18th century of knowledge of heredity and you will be able to do really amazing things with domesticated animals on time scales of millennia. I wouldn't put things like dogs breeds that specialize in sniffing out cancer, or parrots that are very very good at simple arithmetic and can be trained to communicate this beyond such a civilization. Not to mention all manners of beasts of burden or very fast birds with very good sense of direction that deliver messages across vast distances. And remember like dogs have been all these animals would basically be developing a human friendly user interface (behaviour a very simple understanding of how humans behave) over time. All of these examples are things that have sort of been done with animals, but we barley got started on before they became obsolete. Remember given enough time speciation would have occured between the breeds. What exactly are the limits?

Even places where not many animals where available for this such as the Americas, things like guinea pigs where domesticated. As long as you have at least one domesticated mammal or perhaps bird, your options are huge on the time-scale of a few thousand years (thing for a second of how dogs in various environments and of differing breeds have been used for everything from food to source of energy for transportation). So the process could easily eventually get started and I think once it does sooner or later, given writing and decent IQs, the knowledge of heredity will follow.

You say we aren't good at finding substitute resources. This may be so.

In the absence of civilization bigger brains where a robust trend among hominids for millions of years. Bigger can be better when it comes to smarts.

And the whole idea of transhuman intelligences being so dangerous is that they are so because intelligence is overpowered in our universe. Would you feel safe dumping say an AI that was quite a bit beyond genius level on a resource starved rock (if stripped of all knowledge beyond that of stone age humans)?

Well, if one was using it for armor it wouldn't be that hard to get a lot from the old cans and cars lying around. And the melting point isn't that high. So it might actually be a common form of armor.