I added a seventh candle for agriculture, as I found the previous handling of that confusing (one candle represented first agriculture and then writing).
I removed the text saying that the plague hampered scientific progress, because to my understanding that is not true. The plague is still mentioned, but just as a tragedy.
I scaled back the many papers on AI: I just kept the early I.J. Good quote plus some developments after 2020. I did this because I want to use the booklet with my friends who aren't into AI risks, and they likely wouldn't get much out of reading research paper abstracts.
I added three things for 2026: OpenAI models contributing to open math problems, the New START treaty expiring (as it was the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia), and the Huggingface incident.
Claude Opus 5 estimates this booklet should take 60 to 80 minutes to go through.
I'm excited to have my first Petrov Day this September!
September has come, and with it Petrov Day is approaching.
I made a new booklet for it, picking the parts I liked best from four versions I found online: James Babcock's, the Austin Less Wrong Ritual Working Group's, Ray Arnold's and Ozy Brennan's.
Link to google drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p1-Cb8vSHqccsDTZ9NnnYnF6s1A0xsDfHgkAm2_kDO4/edit?usp=sharing
My main changes:
Claude Opus 5 estimates this booklet should take 60 to 80 minutes to go through.
I'm excited to have my first Petrov Day this September!