Yvain comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong
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Comments (164)
WHAT? It's an OUTRAGE that they passed over both Hitler and Stalin! An OUTRAGE! Who do these people think they are?
More seriously, I don't see this as a deal-breaker. If I asked a bunch of people for the people with the greatest positive effect on human history, and the people with the greatest negative effect on human history, the same names would probably appear on both lists several times (Mohammed, for example). Certainly he'd be higher up than Bob Q. Random.
If a list of people is indistinguishable from a shoddily done list of worst person of the year and a shoddily done list of best person of the year, it's mostly of psychological interest for telling us about the award givers, rather than anything about the recipients.
Perhaps we could calculate what a list of people would look like relative to the Nobel Peace Prize recipient list if the only criteria was influence. We could then compare the lists.