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I've taken vague note of the Doomsday Clock for a long time -- and it's a clever concept without a coherent calibration mechanism. No quarrel with their direct
by GCA10 10y ago
I've taken vague note of the Doomsday Clock for a long time -- and it's a clever concept without a coherent calibration mechanism.
No quarrel with their directional moves ... now or at any other time. But they've ended up in the incongruous situation of saying that 2017 at this very moment is already more risky than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, or Barry Goldwater's mutterings about nuclear options in Vietnam in 1964, or the China-Russia border war of 1969.
No. Simply no. They missed the chance in the early 1990s to move the clock back to about 3 p.m., giving themselves much more room to create carefully graduated increments of alarm as fresh stresses arose. The current state of play in the USA deserves much more than a 30-second adjustment, and somewhat less than a declaration that it's 2 1/2 minutes before midnight. I can think of at least a dozen ways things could get worse before we're at imminent risk of breathing radioactive isotopes for the (annoyingly short) rest of our lives. Some of those perils already popped up in the 1950s/1960s, and we made our way through them.
The current clock settings hardly do justice to the scientific method, or the rightful role of subject experts in public debate.
- strasser 10y agomoving some imaginary clock back and forth to give/relieve oneself anxiety always struck me as kinda weird. Don't people have anything else to do?
- lbebber 10y agoCome on—trying to determining the risk of a nuclear war or any global catastrophe and communicating that risk to the public seems pretty important to me. Don't fixate on the "imaginary clock" aspect, it's just a representation.
- grzm 10y agoThe concept of how close humanity is to global catastrophe is difficult to convey directly, yet it's useful to be able to do so. The Doomsday Clock is one easy way. Large, complex systems are by there very nature difficult to understand. Being able to summarize them easily — even if they don't completely capture the nuance — allows people to get an idea of what's going on. It's not much different from using KPIs and other metrics to understand a business. You can argue that the metrics aren't useful, but providing reasons why you think so, and possibly suggest better ways would help justify your claim.
- gus_massa 10y agoThe problem is that they don't have a clear method of calculation and a clear meaning of what a minute means. For example, let's made up some criteria: 1 minute = 99% probability of human extinction in 10 years 2 minutes = 98% probability of human extinction in 10 years 3 minutes = 97% probability of human extinction in 10 years I'm not sure what 2 hours means. Probably the scale should not be more complex than (100-p) * min/% Or perhaps it's better to define 1 minute = 90% probability of human extinction in 100 years Or 1 minute = 50% probability of human extinction in 1 year It's not clear what 1 minute before doomsday officially means. Moreover, let's say that they define that 1 minute is x% chance of humanity destruction in y years. How are they calculating it? Do they have any model? How did they calibrate the model? How did they test the model? Is it reliable? It's a made up number, without any scientific base. It's only an opinion of a bunch of people that happened to work as scientific, not a scientific measurement.
- grzm 10y agoI think you've made a lot of valid points. It's a pretty complex system they're trying to quantify. You have to start somewhere, and having a group of people who specifically decide to take into account what they consider useful criteria and deliberate about it is a step forward. I think it's clear it could be better if it were more rigorous. It wouldn't surprise me if there are people out there working to do just that. It's not useless just because it's attempting to quantify a complex system in a more subjective manner when it's not clear better alternatives are available. You're right that it's an opinion of scientists, and not a scientific measurement. They're experts in their fields and their opinion does mean something. You're free to weight that how you want, of course.
- gus_massa 10y agoIt blurs the line between science and bullshit. For example in Scientifics say the Doomsday clock is 2:30 minutes before Midnight Scientifics say this wall painting is 40.000 years old Which one is reliable? Which one should a young Earth creationist believe? Are 40.000 years real years or some kind of metaphor? Is that number reliable?
- grenoire 10y agoWho said that the scale was linear?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- new_hackers 10y agoPerhaps the clock sits on a train of which the current velocity of our situation relative to the speed of light has increased when compared to the speed of the "good ol` days" train. Thus, 30 seconds perceived at our current speed while on this train would be perceived as a much longer time if viewed from the other train. Perhaps our situation will continue to gain velocity to a point which great increases in danger to human kind is perceived to be only a fraction of a second, until the point at which we reach the speed of light, our matter becomes energy and we have no need for clocks anymore.
- anigbrowl 10y agothe rightful role of subject experts in public debate You mean the people the administration is overtly sidelining in favor of their 'alternative facts' on a wide gamut of subjects?