Technology, Connected - He Saved Humanity From Nuclear War

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

September 26, 1983. Soviet bunker. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov watches computers say US nuclear missiles are incoming.The data says: Launch.His intuition says: Wait.Petrov overrides the system. Saves the world.If AI had been in charge, everyone would be dead.Mark and Jeremy use the Petrov story to explore Federico Faggin's argument in *Irreducible*: information is not the same as consciousness.We unpack:- Why Petrov's decision shows the gap between rule-following and conscious judgment- How "information makes consciousness" sits at the center of Faggin's theory- Why AI systems that flip 1s and 0s can't replicate intuition or qualia- Why AI will never be consciousMachines follow rules. Petrov broke them. That's consciousness.The computers processed information perfectly. They were also perfectly wrong. Petrov had something machines don't: the ability to sense what the data couldn't show.This is a short from our 13-part Book Club on Faggin's *Irreducible*. If you're interested in AI, consciousness, and the limits of information theory, listen to the full series.The question: As we hand more decisions to machines, what happens when the data is right but the answer is wrong?---Series: Irreducible Book Club (Episode excerpt)Book: *Irreducible* by Federico FagginTopics: Consciousness, AI limits, intuition, nuclear weapons, decision-making, information theoryHistorical event: 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm--We like you. Connect with us:⁠Listen to every podcast⁠Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠Follow us on ⁠X⁠Follow Mark on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Follow Jeremy on ⁠LinkedIn⁠Read our ⁠Substack⁠Email: [e-mail]

Disruptors and Curious Minds. Book lovers, you're tuned into the Thinking on Paper Book Club. I'm Mark. This is Jeremy, and this is your weekly check-in with your humanity. You're in a war, ladies and gentlemen. There is a battle for your attention, for your choice, for your thinking.

But you've joined us for 30 minutes. The algorithm can't touch you. There will be no short form content. There will be no social posts. There will be no emojis. Just you and a book? Like the good old days, we're on Chapter 4 and 5 of Irreducible by Federico Fajan. And on the 26th of September 1983, in the midst of the Cold War,

the world was saved from nuclear disaster thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov. Thank you, Stanislav, who did not trust the data sent by the satellites announcing the imminent attack of atomic missiles launched by the USA against the Soviet Union. I was an analyst, he said. sure it was a mistake. My intuition told me. Convinced it was some error, Petrov did not communicate to his superiors that an attack was imminent. And he saved the planet. Maybe I decided this way because I was the only one who had a civilian education while all the other employees were soldiers used to giving and following orders. Information makes consciousness, Jeremy. Wow. Yeah, I read that

and I'm like, how in the world have I not heard of this guy? Like we would not literally not be here if it weren't for him looking at data presented to him and being being someone in a very mechanical environment, right? The military soldiers. The order comes in. You execute the order. You don't think. You do. And like you said, his background coming from outside in is pretty interesting.

And also think about like in Russia back in the in the Cold War, USSR back in the Cold War, right? it wasn't the most friendly environment to just be thinking on your own, right? So holy crap, we need to celebrate this guy because he was thinking on paper for sure. I have done something very unthinking of paper. I didn't actually check that story was true. I assumed it was true because Federico has gained my trust. I looked, so I looked it up. And ironically, that what, and this is just what,

got fed to me in my in my searches but apparently he was like all right so there's only five missiles coming from the u.s if they were really doing this would they send just five missiles so um again the the gall and pomp that that was what kind of triggered his i smell a rat there's a mistake was it because there wasn't enough wasn't enough missiles yeah wow wow okay what was the problem was actually the mistake a computer system had just picked up something that... Early warning system allegedly misfired

and sent this warning out without missiles being in the air so it was a little glitch in the ones and zeros in the symbols that were being processed without semantic meaning until our friend jumps in, right? Oh yes

well he saved the planet yeah it's a good place to start consciousness because of a machine, a robot and AI wouldn't have had that intuition. And it's interesting. The more I read this book, the more I think that people are already projecting AI to be this conscious entity when at the core of things, he says this a couple of times, at the core

of things all computers are doing is differentiating between a one and a zero. That's all they're doing. Which, when you think about it like that, you're like, damn, okay. So anyway, let's jump right in. So, you're right, though, sentient AI, people talk about it as if it's, It's just, oh, it's going to happen next year. And there's no comprehension of what consciousness is, what being sentient is, what being aware is. So, chapter four, let's root this in at the start.

All right. So what did we just watch right there? We watched Thinking on Paper, bite-sized, a shot of technological tequila to your prefrontal cortex. It's just a taster, a smorgasbord of what awaits you with the full thinking on paper interviews. There really is nothing to like it out there at the moment, connecting the dog. lots of all these technologies. So subscribe where you're listening. Check the long former interviews out. And remember, stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.