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Spoilers for Man in the High Castle ahead.
LW have thought about Petrov somewhat and I found myself torn a bit balancing various virtues in a fictional situation that seems to be a limit case.
Kido as the highest rank of the Kempeitai (martial and secret police) gets the job of figuring out who tried to shoot the emperor. He is expected to succeed in this or forfeit his life. He discovers that a sniper of a super power with nukes essentially confesses to the act. He thinks that relying this information up the chain would push his country into war which it would lose (his country doesn't have nukes). Instead he suppresses the evidence and prepares to fail on his task. In the eleventh hour a "safe" suspect presents itself and the plot moves on.
Does Kido here do a heroic act like Petrov? He is tasked with a truth uncovering mission and fabricates a falsehood to bolster stability. I know that "the first victim of war is truth" but here it seems to be made in name of peace. With Petrov he knew the system wasn't reliable and that other people might not have the skill or context to evalaute the data better. Here it seems that reporting the facts upstream would not place the decision makers in a worse position. I guess if multiple people know about it it would be harder to pretend it didn't took place. Leaking it to the press could force emperors/capitals hand but are 5-7 people knowing up the chain about it too much?
In an AI that is supposed to cooperate in not bringing about catastrophic outcomes would it be proper to priotize non-war over technical accuracy or is the corruption of truth unacceptable here and taking autonomy to decide their own fate away from the AIs operators/customers?
If we change "blow up the world" to "kill a fly" at what point does the confidence start to waiver?
If we change "will blow up" to "maybe blow up" to "might blow up" when does it start to waiver?
Another very edge case comes from Star Control II. The Ur-Quan are of the opinion that having a random sentient species in the universe is a risk that it is a homicidial one or makes a torture world and kills all other life is unacceptable. The two internal factions disagree whether dominating all other species is enough (The Path of Now and Forever) or whether spec... (read more)