Doomsday Clock at 100 Seconds to Midnight

Chirpy lot aren't they.

"Former California Governor Jerry Brown....."

There is a reason this was written


 
This is getting silly quite honestly. It is difficult enough to take the Doomsday Clock seriously as it is, what with its constant flopping back and forth and the use of a unit of time as an analogy for a situation that can actually persist for an indefinite period of time; but until now the analogy of "only so many minutes to midnight" at least could be tolerated as a generalized symbol of proximity. Two minutes is "closer to doomsday than" three minutes - yeah okay, fine.

But now "100 seconds"? That's rather absurdly specific, and the fact that we're now suddenly willing to subdivide minutes to account for new developments when previous world events just as momentous were adding or subtracting two, three, four, or even more whole minutes at a time, just completely and totally undermines the whole message of proximity and urgency that had been conveyed up to this point - much like a parent threateningly giving an obstinate child "to the count of three" to obey and, when the child is not moved by "two", continuing with "two and a half" and then "two and three-quarters". Before today, we were at a presumably panic-inducing "two minutes to midnight", but now we find that peace-threatening circumstances are capable of bumping the counter only 20 seconds or so, and suddenly "two minutes to midnight" isn't quite that close at all. And as more bad things happen and the world becomes more unstable but "doomsday" continues to not arrive, eventually major tremendous developments are going to be capable of nudging the needle only a second or two - and then later still by only fractions of a second. It's like some kind of new-age take on Zeno's paradox.
 
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cullennz said:
Have you ever given a moments thought to staying on topic?
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Why is that off-topic? He's saying the Doomsday Clock (the subject of the thread) shouldn't be at its closest to midnight now, because we were far closer to doomsday then.
 
Ian Osborne said:
Why is that off-topic? He's saying the Doomsday Clock (the subject of the thread) shouldn't be at its closest to midnight now, because we were far closer to doomsday then.
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How does this relate to the idiot orange one?
 
cullennz said:
How exactly
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From the article:

"The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode," it said.
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Yes, it uses non-specific language; and yes, it says "world leaders"-plural. But that's simply called "tact" and I think it's pretty obvious what they're saying.
 
cullennz said:
How exactly
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From the article linked in the OP, "The international security situation is dire ... because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode." It doesn't mention Trump by name, but they're clearly talking about Trump and 'international political infrastructure' such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
 
Checkmite said:
This is getting silly quite honestly. It is difficult enough to take the Doomsday Clock seriously as it is, what with its constant flopping back and forth and the use of a unit of time as an analogy for a situation that can actually persist for an indefinite period of time; but until now the analogy of "only so many minutes to midnight" at least could be tolerated as a generalized symbol of proximity. Two minutes is "closer to doomsday than" three minutes - yeah okay, fine.
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On the other hand it gave us a really good Iron Maiden song.

But now "100 seconds"?
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I think they should've given themselves more 'time', so to speak. It's never been better than 17 minutes to midnight.
 
Ian Osborne said:
From the article linked in the OP, "The international security situation is dire ... because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode." It doesn't mention Trump by name, but they're clearly talking about Trump and 'international political infrastructure' such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
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Cool

Apologies but the anti Trump stuff on here is getting so fricken tedious to trawl though it gets a tad confusing.

I'm fine with talking climate.
 
When one's been hearing "WOOOOOOOOOLLLLFFFFFFFF!!!!!" for the entirety of one's life one tends to take these claims less seriously.
 
Given the earth is 4.5 billion years old I reckon that means we are down to our last 5 million years.

I think I can put off preparing for another few weeks.

Even if it started with humans it still has us here for 200 years after Trump. As it is, it is made up panic meter with an arbitrary scale. I prefer to wear Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses and can report that at the moment I still see clearly.
 
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Dr.Sid said:
It's meaningless indeed. Can't they just guess the date ? Like 2050 ? Much more specific. And something I could agree with.
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Good news/bad news there: the world will end when George RR Martin finishes writing the last book of the Game of Thrones series. So we've got about ten thousand years. But we'll never know what happens to all the characters.
 
One thing that's weird to me is how vague the clock is. These guys keep saying we're super close to disaster, and that disaster will happen unless people take action. But they never say what the disaster is, or what action needs to be taken.

I figure, if they knew that, they'd be talking about the specific disaster and the specific steps to mitigate it, instead of waving their hands at this weird clock metaphor. But they don't actually know, which is why the hand-waving and the weird metaphor. They've basically established Chicken Little as a pop culture institution.
 
Most troubling about the Doomsday Clock is how profoundly it's handlers misunderstand how clocks work.
 
I was going with Doomsday Little Plastic Pop-Up Thing That You Stick In Pork Tenderloin To Make Sure It Cooked Enough, but ok, Thermometer works too.
 
I'm more of a "Doomsday Mixed Drink" type of guy.

"The ice is melted, the drink is almost gone, we're in danger...of being watered down"
 
theprestige said:
One thing that's weird to me is how vague the clock is. These guys keep saying we're super close to disaster, and that disaster will happen unless people take action. But they never say what the disaster is, or what action needs to be taken.
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It seems like the disaster was originally supposed to be global nuclear war. Then it was just some nebulous "global disaster", which could be anything.

But what it really seems to measure is just the anxiety level of a small self-selected group of pantywaists.
 
If it were up to me, and for some reason I had set it to 2 minutes to midnight during the Cold War, I'd have it set to not less than 30 minutes to midnight right now. Probably closer to 45 minutes.
 
Arcade22 said:
Yeah the Cuban missile crisis has nothing on Trump blustering.
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I would have thought it was more an acknowledgement that the heating climate is more likely to lay the human species to waste than the Cuban crisis.

Hindsight shows Cuba was well over-stated, while the climate crisis is both real and of immediate concern.
 
I have a strong suspicion we are not 100 metaphorical seconds away from Doomsday of any sort. I further question why these people unveiling analog clocks are Harbingers of Doom.

Eta: shouldn't they at least update to a Doomsday Smartphone or Doomsday Fitness Tracker or something?
 
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Doomsday Fitness Tracker: "World leaders are 3,512 steps away from their yearly goal of 10,000 steps to avert disaster!"

Doomsday Smart Phone: "The world only has 30 minutes of battery life left! World leaders need to put it into power saving mode soon!"
 
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My impression had been that the specific "doomsday" the Doomsday Clock is using for its datum was supposed to be a global nuclear war. Which is why geopolitical instability is the tracked variable; instability increases the risk of war, and the risk of nuclear war in turn goes up the wider the scope of the potential war is.
 
Unless any of us have a sure plan to somehow stop this impending disaster we aren't personally causing it's just chicken little fear mongering.

I've been married twice now so some hypothetical clock running down can't scare me. Worse has already been caused by wedding rings.
 
Lothian said:
Given the earth is 4.5 billion years old I reckon that means we are down to our last 5 million years.

I think I can put off preparing for another few weeks.

Even if it started with humans it still has us here for 200 years after Trump. As it is, it is made up panic meter with an arbitrary scale. I prefer to wear Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses and can report that at the moment I still see clearly.
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You should get a refund, because they're broken.
 
The Atheist said:
I would have thought it was more an acknowledgement that the heating climate is more likely to lay the human species to waste than the Cuban crisis.

Hindsight shows Cuba was well over-stated, while the climate crisis is both real and of immediate concern.
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I think hundreds, even thousands, of thermonuclear warheads destroying (at least) every major city in NATO and the Warsaw pact countries is more dangerous to survival of the human species than a relatively slow heating of the climate.

It's a lot easier to adapt to the latter than the former. Either way, humans will not die out just because the global average temperature rises.
 
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Arcade22 said:
I think hundreds, even thousands, of thermonuclear warheads destroying (at least) every major city in NATO and the Warsaw pact countries is more dangerous to survival of the human species than a relatively slow heating of the climate.
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In hindsight, we know for certain that was never a potential outcome.

Yes, a full-scale nuclear war could be a bit troubling for the species, especially the poor saps in the northern hemisphere, but I'd rate the chances of happening as close enough to zero to ignore.

Arcade22 said:
It's a lot easier to adapt to the latter than the former. Either way, humans will not die out just because the global average temperature rises.
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This is the problem - most people think that, and it's wrong.
 
The Atheist said:
I would have thought it was more an acknowledgement that the heating climate is more likely to lay the human species to waste than the Cuban crisis.

Hindsight shows Cuba was well over-stated, while the climate crisis is both real and of immediate concern.
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There is no climate crisis. The only "immediate concern" with the left is the redistribution of wealth and the implementation of socialism. Maybe you can talk China into it.

https://www.wired.com/story/china-is-still-building-an-insane-number-of-new-coal-plants/
 
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