I (and I suspect I am not alone here) believe that the current structure of the Petrov day ritual misses what is admirable about Petrov by about a mile. You write that the goal of the ritual is to eventually be able to demonstrate that:
we have 1000 people that if we give them the chance to be a troll or a conscientious objector or a something–they don’t take it
but Petrov himself was a conscientious objector (of a sort) and that's why we admire him. He - in defiance of social pressure, risk of professional consequences, and danger to his life - abandoned hi...
Strong upvote for the comment. I think the situation is even worse than what you say: the fact is that had Petrov simply reported the inaccurate information in his possession up the chain of command as he was being pressured to do by his own subordinates, nobody would have heard of his name and nobody would have blamed him for doing his job. He could have even informed his superiors of his personal opinion that the information he was passing to them was inaccurate and left them to make the final decision about what to do. Not only would he have not been bl...
I'm actually ok with the social pressures inherent in the activity. It's a subtle reminder of the real influence of this community. The fact that this community would enforce a certain norm makes me more likely to be a conscientious objector in contexts with the opposite norm. (This is true of historical C.O.s, who often come from religious communities).
Yeah I think this is a pretty important point. I pointed out this before here, here, and here (2 years ago). I personally still enjoyed the game as is. However I'm open to the idea that future Petrov Days should look radically different, and wouldn't have a gamefying element at all. But I think if we want a game that reflects the structure of Petrov's decision that day well in an honest way, I personally would probably want something that accounts for the following features:
1. Petrov clearly has strong incentives and social pressures to push the button.
2. ...
I did see those points. I think the ritual as designed does not do a good job of supporting those points because, again, all the pressures are being lined up against pressing the button. I will acknowledge that there is probably no good way to design a ritual to celebrate the virtue of ignoring social pressure and career consequences to do the right thing (At least not one as participatory as this one) but that doesn't mean we should build a ritual with the exact opposite message.