A reminder for everyone: on this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.
It occurs to me this time around that there's an interesting relationship here - 9/26 is forgotten, while 9/11 is remembered. Do something charitable, and not patriotic, sometime today.
I reward someone who works their whole life on the best cause they find. I don't reward the guy who got lucky. I also won't reward someone for being ridiculously stupid, but it's not as if Petrov got into that situation by intelligence.
Who shows more heroism: someone who can annihilate bullets on contact giving some of his time to save 200 children, or someone who risks his life to save three prostitutes? Who shows more heroism: someone who risks their job to save the world, or someone who spends their entire career when they have an opportunity for a smaller amount of good?
Okay, but what makes you think that it was an easy decision in the first place? 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. Also, disobeying orders with so much at stake requires significant courage.
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