4 ms·

No..it's not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

• swiley 6y ago
  Meh. That's a very political thing at this point.
  • nix23 6y ago
    >That's a very political thing at this point. Yes and?
    • im3w1l 6y ago
      Political in the sense of "they decide the time disingenuously to score political points".
      • nix23 6y ago
        You mean once a year?
        • im3w1l 6y ago
          No I mean x minutes to midnight.
          • nix23 6y ago
            What has that todo with "disingenuously"?
  • Fnoord 6y ago
    As is ignoring it (assuming it is factual).
• cheph 6y ago
  Not sure how the link supports your claim. The question was not "is the doomsday clock moving closer to midnight" and safety is non synonymous with time on the doomsday clock. And it really just detracts from a well written and reasoned counter argument to what Steven Pinker said. I tend to agree with the article. And it is good counter to the old "don't mind the gangs, they only kill each other" claptrap really. The core point this article raises is that it is not clear why homicide rate should be accepted as the sole and primary measure of safety. And here you come and suggest that instead we should take the doomsday clock ... which I would argue would be a step back.
• rafaelflores 6y ago
  Self-destruction is a kind of violence
  • cheph 6y ago
    And the doomsday clock is not a measure of violence, safety or self-destruction. It is a measure of the opinion of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
    • sgt101 6y ago
      It represents something about the greatest tail risk that our society faces. This afternoon 300m people could die, all of our major ports, cultural centres, top 250 research institutes and universities, top 100 ports, most major hospitals, most power stations and on and on could be destroyed. This afternoon. The rolling consequence of this event would lead to a large number of subsequent deaths - possibly billions - within 2 years. Progress and development would be stopped for years everywhere, many regions would fall backwards by 50 or 100 years. It's possible that human civilisation would never recover. Some matter of opinion.
      • cheph 6y ago
        > It represents something about the greatest tail risk that our society faces. through what mechanism? How is the time connected to this and what procedure can I undertake to devise the number other than poll the people who set it for what they think it should be? And why should I substitute this for the definition of safety?
        • sgt101 6y ago
          There are some clear indicators that you can use : - number of warheads active - number of anti-ballistic measures in play - active conflicts involving nuclear armed powers - active conflicts between nuclear armed powers - new nuclear technologies (ie. Bayesian fuses, hyper-sonic maneuverability, suppressed trajectories) - new nuclear powers/capabilities (ie. NK gets H-bomb, NK and India deploy boomers) - change in treaties (withdrawals) - threats made by national leaders I don't know what you mean by "definition of safety" - while there are thousands of nuclear weapons in play no one is actually safe, ever.
• vansul 6y ago
  The Doomsday clock idea has a lot of respectable people behind it but I've always been unclear how it isn't just a bias-o-meter. Kahneman and others have done a lot of persuasive work examining how experts are often quite bad at judgement/prediction. How can we be sure the Doomsday Clock actually means anything substantive (as compared to data)?
  • nix23 6y ago
    >bias-o-meter Oh i think it absolutly is...but a good one ;)